Burlap and Blues, The Blues Blog

When I first picked up this example of the AXL guitars, SRO Marquee series guitar, I was told that the Tremolo bar had broken off. This was the first thing I critiqued in the hardware review.

After manipulating the tremolo bar a few times, I realized that the trem bar was very soft and was easily malleable. My youngest daughter did inform me that that is a property of all metals, but not necessarily a good thing with a trem bar. I would easily worry that the trem bard would snap again if left in, so I decided to screw the trem springs in hard, take off the trem bar and make the guitar an effective trem-less guitar.

After opening the back cavity, I noted a very nicely routed body. I have taken apart several Squier strats and some look like the local grade school was given lessons on routing on the bodies. This was nice and clean without any dust. The hardware under the back plate was solid and in good order. The trem came with three springs and it was easily screwed down.

Further evaluation of the bridge showed some nice saddle pieces similar to the 'break resistant' saddles that are on my Fender. The saddles were easy to move to get the guitar intonated.

The next piece of hardware I looked at were the tuning pegs. A set of no-name pegs seemed to be installed nicely. During my review I did not see a loss of tuning during playing the guitar.

The truss rod needed a little tweaking and was easily accessed. There seemed to be plenty of room for adjustment in the truss rod. It did not seem to be anything of concern there.

Overall the hardware on this AXL SRO Marquee series guitar seemed pretty good, a noticeable level better than the Squier guitars that I have owned and worked on over the years. The only thing that was odd is the total failure of the trem bar to function properly.

Tomorrow, clean tone clips of the AXL SRO Marquee Series Guitar