ThePhilosopher
Reason User
I received this guitar in a trade as a lightly modified black Ibanez RG8. I typically don't like the Ibanez neck shape; however, for this guitar it seemed to work well for me (I think it's the extra width). Not being satisfied with the guitar's appearance I had it painted something like the old Vampire Kiss color of the old Ibanez RG7420/7620's.
I kept it that way for about a year and then thought about adding passive pickups and a Floyd-Rose bridge.
So, I ordered the bridge and looked around for people that would to the modification for me to no avail.
I then contacted @djohns74 here to build a custom Ibanez FR shaped body for me; he had done some good work for other members and came highly recommended. He sent regular updates on the body build.
We ran into some issues with the stock FR block being too tall. Here's testing the stock block, the bridge sits much higher than I would like (and the neck shelf isn't routed quite as deep here).
I ordered a new copper sustain block from the guys at Floyd Upgrades. I had it shipped straight over to the Dave to avoid any additional slow downs. He verified the clearances and worked continued.
The guitar was then grain-filled and sent back to me.
I was going to have the body oil finished by a guy locally, but he botched the job and I ended up going with a member of UnofficialWarmoth to redo the body finish for me. It was a huge nightmare of a job for him to correct and I'll spare you the horror of the shape my guitar was in. Initially, I was thinking of this since I was going to have a professional finish done.
I ended up going with this finish as the grain looked so nice.
I thought, this isn't crazy enough and ordered more parts.
I had my tech (who is doing the assembly and electronics work) do some more modifications to the body while I had the base plate of the bridge slotted out to accommodate the wires.
Here it is at my tech's house waiting on a new jumper cable to join the two Graphtech summing boards together (the first one I had was bad). A bit of finishing touches and some QA by me when I pick it up, and it'll be ready for some detailed shots of the work done. That'll all have to wait until Hurricane Harvey packs up and leaves the Houston area.
I kept it that way for about a year and then thought about adding passive pickups and a Floyd-Rose bridge.
So, I ordered the bridge and looked around for people that would to the modification for me to no avail.
I then contacted @djohns74 here to build a custom Ibanez FR shaped body for me; he had done some good work for other members and came highly recommended. He sent regular updates on the body build.
We ran into some issues with the stock FR block being too tall. Here's testing the stock block, the bridge sits much higher than I would like (and the neck shelf isn't routed quite as deep here).
I ordered a new copper sustain block from the guys at Floyd Upgrades. I had it shipped straight over to the Dave to avoid any additional slow downs. He verified the clearances and worked continued.
The guitar was then grain-filled and sent back to me.
I was going to have the body oil finished by a guy locally, but he botched the job and I ended up going with a member of UnofficialWarmoth to redo the body finish for me. It was a huge nightmare of a job for him to correct and I'll spare you the horror of the shape my guitar was in. Initially, I was thinking of this since I was going to have a professional finish done.
I ended up going with this finish as the grain looked so nice.
I thought, this isn't crazy enough and ordered more parts.
I had my tech (who is doing the assembly and electronics work) do some more modifications to the body while I had the base plate of the bridge slotted out to accommodate the wires.
Here it is at my tech's house waiting on a new jumper cable to join the two Graphtech summing boards together (the first one I had was bad). A bit of finishing touches and some QA by me when I pick it up, and it'll be ready for some detailed shots of the work done. That'll all have to wait until Hurricane Harvey packs up and leaves the Houston area.
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