'Behringer Blackie' arrives ... once worked over, the thing might even play ...

Thursday, June 25, 2015, 1:30 a.m. -- Just finished working on my new guitar that arrived today, the Behringer strat copy (the pre-iAXE 393 model). It wasn't due for delivery until Monday, but I'm very happy to have delivery of it today as I had some time to mess with it.

The eBay seller said it was like-new and had hardly every been played. That much I believe 100 percent -- it was barely playable the way it arrived. The guitar obviously wasn't played, and no real attempt was made to set it up to make it playable.

TRUSS RODS. The guitar arrived in some semblance of tune, but before I worried about that I checked the neck relief. I have trouble really getting a good eye for relief, but this one obviously had more bow than you would like. I made a minor truss rod adjustment to reduce the relief to just about nothing.

TUNING? The tuning on this thing was a mess! Every string's tuning changed when I moved to the next string. The tremelo has some issues, I think the springs are weak. I screwed the claw down to increase the spring tension, but the rear of the bridge was still a little higher than I like. I think I'm going to block the trem and eliminate the tuning hassle.

ACTION. The way you can tell this guitar wasn't played beyond the "gee thanks!" moment was the string action -- it was way, way too high to be playable. Fortunately, this guitar came with a cable and the two allen wrenches necessary to adjust the action and the truss rod.

I had to lower the string saddles on the bridge a tremendous amount on every string. This brought the action down and really made a difference in playability. I think I've avoided string buzz, but time will tell. Once the action was lowered, I was able to get the intonation dialed in.

The pickups may need to be lowered because the string action put the strings so much closer to the pickups, but we'll see how it plays tomorrow. I'm beat, and I'm heading to bed!

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