Just got it in and it looked like it had been re-shrink wrapped, hope it was due to the parts being loosely packed. Sized it up for my half shelf rack mount, it's to tall. Checked the feet and they are not removable (still would be to tall). Checked out the 13 pin connector and its of poor quality, hard to connect and even harder to disconnect. Haven't even connected it up fully to test, just hope I cann't judge the electronic quality by the package. Not the German craftsmanship I've come to expecting, must have been a bad day at the Taiwan factory. Just hooked up the power, no noise. Hooked up the instrument out to a mini amp, no noise. Hooked up the 13 pin connector unterminated, hi freq noise. Hooked up the midi guitar and I get white noise, same noise I got on my GI-20 (I sent my GI-20 for repairs for nothing, it might be the GK-3 pickup). The white noise may not be a problem of the AX 50 and I hope the hi freq noise goes away after I up date the firmware. I do so like playing with new toys.

Opened the midi guitar electronics to check for gound loops, it's worked great for years, why it desided to go noisy now I don't know. What I saw was not pretty, most of the joints were cold, or globbed, I'll try to clean them up. Hope the roland circuit board hasn't gone bad. I have not had to troubleshoot or attempt to repair down to this level in many years. While I'm in the guitar I'll check for possible sources of 50/60 cycle hum some people are having and see if I can come up with possible solutions. Gonna be a long weekend.

Quiet forum! I finished rewiring my guitar, cleaning up the wiring, replacing the mix switch. Bad news it looks like my GK3 pre-amp is injecting the white noise into the 1/4 audio jack. I can play 1/4 or 13 pin clean seperate but not together. The Anox software had no problem loading onto Win 7 64 Ultimate. The AX 50 firmware update went smooth. There is quite a large learning curve on calibrating the AX 50 with the midi guitar, still not even close, to many misses (no pickup) unless I slam the strings. The software doesn't play well with other software. My MidiOx is used for midi cross-connect routing to my tone generators and synths, but takes turns locking up with the AX 50 software. The string to tone generator response time is not that great, so I would not call it the fastest. I'll give a little more time, but I think it's going back. The Roland might not have pretty software or drivers for 64 bit, but it was responsive and acurate.

Good Luck

I've decided to give the AX 50 another chance. I've gutted by guitar electronics. It's possible that if the faulty GK-3 preamp that is causing white noise on the 1/4 audio jack could also be feeding noise through the 13 pin jack, just no way for me to hear. If that's the case then the AX 50 would have a hard time picking out the strings to convert them to midi. The only thing I'm keeping is the Humbuckle Red Hots on the neck and the bridge. I have to research for the right pots and tone cap. I'm also going to line the electronics compartment and set up a equal potential ground. It gives me something to do, who knows I might learn something.

Just saw your post, there's been a lot of discussion about hum/noise that needed the usb cable ground isolation or something. You might read up on that...

I only had some noise when I was trying to use midi and audio together under certain conditions.
I don't really use both at the same time so I never looked into a solution.
I also use the midi port for the output and usb just for the editor. Then I do audio tracks with mag or bridge pickups separately.

Thanks for the replay. I ordered a new Gk-3 Kit and high end pots. I'm shielding the cavity and setting up a central ground point, don't think I'll have problems with hum. I'm on a pause for frustration at the moment, tried to pust the knobs on and pushed the guts out of the high end pots, oh well. I'll work it out an see how things go. With the new GK-3 kit I hope to be rid of the white noise, so I can check the quality of the Axon 50 USB out.

Later

It's done! No hum, buzz, or white noise. Just quiet tones. The problem was the internal pre-amp of the GK-3. All returns/grounds are tied to a central point, no short-cuts or daisy chained componet grounds. The pots and switches get their common contact through the copper shield and the shield has one connection to the common ground point. Now all I have to do is to calibrate it in the Axon software for string response.

Later

Time to close out this thread. Except for the low-end thirteen pin connector, The Anox AX 50 USB could be classified as a good Guitar to Midi interface. It does what it is advertised to do. My problem was the learning curve. Before tweaking the Axon, tweak your guitar. Neck alignment, Action, Intonation, and pick-up height. The Axon was more sensitive to these settings than my other unit. Now all I have to do is figure how to mount it in my rack and I'll be good to go. (aside from learning to play a guitar).