New Axis BFR is awesome… but…

Just under 30 years ago or so, I bought a trans black EVH… It suited me perfectly at the time, being a huge Eddie fan playing in hard rock bands… As time passed and my tastes mellowed, I gravitated towards strats and single coils — until one day I decided to sell the EVH. It wasn’t getting used, and having been heavily gigged it didn’t have a whole lot of collectibility left in it — it was a player’s guitar at best.

In the days since I kept an SG around as a more “rockin” dual-humbucker guitar when needed, but never really loved them in terms of feel, fit and finish…. So I recently thought — why not go back to where I started? Ima rekindle my youth and get me another Axis!!! Ever since I sold it, I maintained in my mind’s eye that it was the most comfortable and effortlessly playing guitar I ever owned.

And so I did… a few months ago I bought a new Burl top Axis Super Sport BFR. It had everything I wanted — coil splitting, locking tuners, stainless steel frets… roasted flamed maple neck with that smooth effortless feel… looks awesome!!! Sound is surprisingly flexible — the coil splitting, while not a perfect replacement for a single coil, is absolutely useable…. And the standard (non Floyd) EBMM trem is reaaaaaaally impressive — has a nice light feel compared to something like a Gotoh 510 and stays in tune shockingly well for what it is…

Buuuut… having played strats the past 20 years, and more recently Suhr variants with bigger necks and wider nuts, I’m having a hard time negotiating the narrow/smaller neck profile on the axis. It’s not that I can’t play it, but with 35 years of playing under my belt I know enough to recognize it’s no longer my preference or best suited to my style. (My main gig is actually as a banjo player and i tend to do a lot of finger picking on guitar, so wider spacing between strings is always welcome.)

I’m not sure what I’m looking for in this posting other than perhaps talking myself through to acceptance with the situation, lol. Has anyone encountered similar, with regard to the Axis neck profile? I hate to take a bath selling it, but I’m also not really in a position to hold onto something without some utility behind it…. It’s been sitting here mostly unplayed, and I guess I’m just disappointed. Not in the guitar — it is everything it claims to be — but at the recognition that maybe it just isn’t my thing anymore…

I’ve played a few other EBMM’s over the years — silhouettes and maybe one or two others, but really don’t recall any nuances in terms of feel. Is it a fair statement to say that the Axis neck profile and width is on the smaller end of the EBMM spectrum? Or are they all in a similar ballpark? FWIW I’m definitely not a fan of the wide/thin necks on a lot of the usual suspect super strats… nor am I looking for a baseball bat… Right now I’m feeling like another Suhr may be my best option, but would ideally like a bit of variety. Spice of life and all, right?