The Electra Forums

Just got this beautiful trans. blue today from a deal on the 'bay. Impressions: Pretty good acoustic tone, plugged in, pretty bright sounding...single coils sound great, better than my strat, but the UBC bridge humbucker isn't wowing me: It is not a Super Magnaflux. Output level is just ok, quite bright as is the guitar overall, and articulate, but it's not as rich sounding as the bridge pickup on either my Omega or Outlaw. Single coil mode (tone pot pulled out) sounded thin here as well

Pickups were VERY low when I got it, cranked them way up to a similar height that I have set on my other guitars.

Bear in mind, this is all 'just out of the box' - the pickup height adjustment and tuning. I will re-string, clean it up, and re-test. I will also aim for some pix this evening.

De pix....I'll post more after clean-up...

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b94/C ... 63d6f4.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b94/C ... aa7351.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b94/C ... 1c9781.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b94/C ... 8a45b0.jpg
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b94/C ... e5b5cc.jpg

I love that see through blue colour, I was tempted by a red one a while back, nice to see some close-ups of the finish, Ebayers are always taking bad pictures of the MX and they always look like a solid colour.

Looks Sweet.

Thanks to AriaProII for help with image posts.

Anyone know procedure for adjusting the bendmaster trem on this? Do the pivot screws adjust overall bridge height as well as trem travel? I have The Claw adjust with back of bridge floating approx. 1/16" off of body with 2 springs, and it feels good, but any pointers would be great. I am only familiar with strat and jazzmaster trems.

Yes, the pivot screws do adjust bridge height. Sounds like you have about the ideal setting right now.

Bendmasters are really good bridges, if you take a little care you should find it stays in tune very well. One piece of advice (and this goes for any free-floating bridge): before you ever tune, get in the habit of giving the bridge a little wiggle up and down, to recenter it. Over time it will tend to recenter itself, but at first it helps to do this- otherwise, when you bend it, even slightly (as happens when you bend strings) it may stay a little off-center, and as usual this will detune some strings more than others, so if you then retune without recentering, now everything's off, and within minutes you're sputtering and cursing and the guitar's way out of tune (or at least that's what happens to me). Just get in the habit of that little recenter wiggle before touching the fine tuners, and you'll find it stays remarkably in tune, especially with the locking nut and graphite nut that I believe the MX has.

No locking nut, but it's graphite. It is working well so far, I have adjusted The Claw for 10s, set action, and I'm now intonating. I'll keep in mind the pre-tune wiggle step, makes sense. Thank you.

SHould be good to go. It's a really great bridge that should server you well, and they did a good job of making a combination that works- that graphite nut is a huge improvement.

I played my FX for months before realizing I'd forgotten to tighten the locking nut, and it stayed in tune the whole time, so you should have no problems.