My second Variax 700 was an acquisition made in the suburbs of Rotterdam, taking the bicycle on the train from Amsterdam, riding another 10km from the station and meeting an old rocker dude at his place. I didn’t test the guitar, it was in such a nice shape for the low price that I didn’t care how well it worked. The locking Sperzel tuners and the impeccable condition of the honey-maple body and mahogany neck were unusual for a guitar more than 15 years old. I soon discovered there was one main problem with it: the modelled sounds of the Variax were sounding totally wrong: the low strings sounded very tinny and the high strings had too much percussive attack even for piezo bridge guitars like this.
As soon as I opened the back plate, the problem was apparent: someone had re-connected the D/A board backwards, and the high strings were pretending to be the low strings and viceversa. That easy fix and setting up the neck, a bit of fret polishing and adjusting the saddles were the only adjustments needed. A fine instrument for a fraction of the original price.