Sterling by Music Man AX40 Electric Guitar

Body - Basswood, Quilted Maple Veneer Top
Neck - Maple, bolt-on, 25.5" scale
Fingerboard - Rosewood, dot inlays, 22 medium jumbo frets
Hardware - Chrome
Bridge -  Sterling Double Locking Tremolo bridge
Tuners - Music Man locking tuners
Pickups - 2 * Sterling A5 Zebra Humbuckers
Controls - 1*volume, 1*tone, 3-way selector

Axis of Tone! This version of the AX guitar uses a Sterling Double Locking Tremelo bridge and locking nut.
The bridge is mounted on top of the body for a stable platform to rest your picking hand without tuning warbles.
The easy to use tremolo has fine tuners, and an adjustable arm for loose or tight arm tension. The locking nut matches the fingerboard radius and offers excellent tuning stability.
2 humbuckers are mounted directly to the body without mounting rings for better depth of tone. The 3 way switch offers, bridge, bridge and neck combined and neck pickup positions.
The center position is very versatile and offers a single coil vibe with more output and low noise.
The Sterling AX40 has a very small, compact headstock, with an all over gloss finish, the new 'Sterling by Music Man' logo and AX40 in black to the front. The front also has a long, chrome string tree, putting all 6 strings under increased tension.
The rear, which is fairly plain, houses the 6 machine heads, 4 on the bass side, 2 on the treble, which are Chrome die-cast, with white pearloid buttons.
The base of the headstock here shows 2 recessed bolt heads that keep the metal locking top nut in place.
The Maple neck has a super smooth satin finish, with a very nice grain on show. It's a fairly slim neck with a rounded C profile. Nut width is a narrow 41mm.
The fingerboard on the AX40 is also Maple, again with a satin finish showing of a swirly wood grain, with tiny black dots marking the usual fingerboard positions. Fretwork is, as expected, excellent, and the board is good to play, plenty smooth enough for bends and fast runs.
Action as supplied from the Indonesian factory is good, between 2-3mm across the board at the 12th fret.
The neck is bolted to the body, there is an engraved Chrome plate at the joint on the back, with 5 bolts holing things together. The offset, cutaway body shape joins at the 16th fret on the bass side, 20th on the treble side, and access to the top fret is easy.
The back of the body is plain black, with 2 large plastic access covers to get into the innards. The upper bout has a bit of chamfering to make for a more comfortable playing position.
The front of the AX40 has a beautiful quilted Maple veneer top, here finished in Trans Gold, a bright orangey colour. The front is also bound in creamy yellow, custard(?) coloured plastic binding.
The body, and whole guitar really, feels small and compact, although it is still fairly heavy.
The AX40 has a pair of open coil Zebra humbuckers, no pickup surrounds, they're designed and made by Music Man, and they are very good quality, with plenty of bite on the drive channel, plenty of clarity too on the clean channel. The bridge pickup, as you'd expect is brighter than the more mellow neck humbucker.
Both pickups have plenty of character to make the AX40 a pretty versatile instrument. Good for blues and jazz, pop, rock and of course, metal, which with the superb double locking tremolo system, this guitar excels at.
This bridge is Chrome, with a screw in Chrome trem bar, and 6 matt black fine tuners. It's not a floating system, so you can only bend up, but the bridge is so light, the merest touch of the bar and you're in danger of dive bombing!
Controls are as simple as you can get, a 3 wat pickup selector and single volume control.
Overall, the Sterling by Music Man AX40 is an excellent all round guitar, great for a variety of music styles, a set of powerful humbuckers, well made, nice playing and plenty of vibe.

£499 - Includes Gig Bag