Product Description

Introducing the Revolutionary iAXE393 USB-Guitar from Behringer You have a great song in mind and want to record it straight to your PC. You want all your amps and effects in your workstation so you can jam like you're in the studio or on stage. With the Behringer iAXE393 USB-Guitar you're just a cable away. The high-quality electric guitar comes with a fantastic maple neck and its screaming tone sings through 3 single-coil pickups with 5-way switching. A built-in connector allows you to connect your headphones straight to your guitar so you can jam with your favorite band. Cool, isn't it? The iAXE393 USB-Guitar comes with the great-sounding "Guitar Combos Behringer Edition" software pack from Native Instruments featuring the exclusive Tapedeck and Metronome

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12259 in Musical Instruments
• Brand: Behringer
• Model: iAXE393
• Dimensions: 20.00 pounds

Features

• Plug this amazing USB-guitar straight into your computer and turn your PC or Mac computer into a guitar amp and recording system without the need for any other hardware
• You get a top-notch electric guitar featuring a 22-fret maple neck, solid body, chrome machine heads, 3 single-coil pickups, 5-way switching and vintage vibrato bridge. The guitar can also be used with any traditional guitar amplifier
• Enjoy immediate access to "Guitar Combos BEHRINGER Edition" from Native Instrumentsthe leading authentic guitar amp and stomp box modeling software
• Package also includes Kristal 16-track music production and Audacity editing software
• Works directly with your PC or Mac computerultra-low latency ASIO driver for PC included

Customer Reviews

Decent enough for the price, but that's not saying much.
My review, broken into a couple of sections for quick reference.

Ease of use:

This guitar was extremely easy to setup and use. I was playing within about 30 seconds of opening the package without installing any software or drivers. I am using a MacBook Pro, though, and so I can't speak to the ease, or lack thereof, on a PC. It does include an installation CD for drivers and software, but I prefer Garageband and Logic's guitar effects. Also of note, this does NOT use a MIDI output, in case anyone is wondering. I didn't buy it with the expectation that it was, but I wasn't entirely sure. This means no using the guitar to play trumpets, pianos, etc. in Garageband or your favorite program.

Build quality:

Very poor. Just after opening the guitar I noticed several screws were loose and falling out. I tightened them as best as I could, but many were installed at odd angles which just made it feel like it was slapped together and sold without any quality control.

Sound:

Out of the box, the guitar sounds and feels awful. The strings just felt cheap and sounded very tinny. I replaced them with some others I had, and that helped out a lot. I would recommend that for anyone using this guitar, have a pair of your favorite strings ready to go to replace the crappy ones that come with it. The pickups were pretty well balanced on mine, with the exception of the high E, which has almost no pickup at all. I don't know if the pickup on that string is broken or what, but it is painfully obvious that it is missing in comparison to the others. I have to pluck it much harder to get an equivalent volume when recording.

Conclusion:

This guitar feels cheap, plays cheap, and is cheap. And it only costs $99. This is very much an instance of the "you get what you pay for" mantra. I wouldn't recommend this guitar to anyone who is trying to learn to play or in any way serious about recording. Having said that, it's a decent guitar for just messing around with in Garageband and will only set you back a hundred bucks. Mine has been banished to a closet and I break it out every once in a while when I just want an easy to way to lay down a quick guitar track. Don't expect anything special, and you won't be disappointed.

This Behringer iAXE393 guitar is not very good at all.
The Behringer iAxe 393 is simply no good. The build is very under-par. In the playing, the guitar loses tuning far too quickly. To top it all off, after just two months, the very thing that makes this guitar special -- BROKE! I'm referring to the USB module. It now is no longer recognized by ANY system I plug it into. The driver installation software doesn't know when it's plugged in and when it isn't.

On Behringer's end, the Windows Vista driver is extremely poor. Everytime the device was unplugged and re-plugged, none of the programs would recognize it without re-installing the device driver. This was a very tedious and painful task. Tedious because there was no indication after rebooting that the device would now work properly. Painful, because it simply shouldn't be this way!!

The only pro to this device is the IDEA behind it -- that of a guitar built to interface directly with the computer without having to do some magic trick with cables, amps and adapters. But when the device breaks after just two months, of what use is it then? As a regular guitar? It loses tuning every half-hour.

The cons -- too numerous to mention, but here are the biggest ones: 1) USB fixture is faulty. 2) Device drivers are very unstable, especially for Windows Vista. 3) loses tuning after just one half-hour. 4) There are multiple reports of shoddy workmanship on the assembly line.

You would do well to do a LOT of personal reading on ALL Behringer models before making any purchase. Personally, I would avoid this one completely.

Suggestions/Thoughts
I agree with the gentlemen that the idea behind this is great. I've never heard of this before now, though I've been playing for years. I have no patience for Cubase or ProTools. I just want to store ideas, and be able to bring my laptop and guitar to work for breaks. My idea is this: if the guitar is crap, could one extract whatever electronics make it a usb axe and put it in a better guitar? Just a thought. If on the Behringer, tuners are a problem, change them. Get some Sperzl locking(the knock offs from GuitarFetish suck btw). Sound problems? Maybe change the pickups(GF has good knockoffs), put roller saddles on the bridge(save the springs, the GF ones suck. Grab a graphite nut and put it on there. Or have your local guitar guru do all this and set it up. Sure, either way one would spend a bit more fixing it up, or transfering hardware, but, to have a well working axe to quicky lay down tracks, might help the idea behind this and make it better. I've found some Behringer pedals to be quite good-Vintage Phaser, Acoustic modeler. The octaver sucked. Anyway, perhaps someone with luthier skills could comment on this?