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NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

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  • NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

    Figured it's been a long time since I've frequented the forum, might as well drop in, but who gives a **** about me, you're here for the Ibanez.

    So I was driving down the road and see this older gentleman roughly in his late 60's early 70's sitting on his lawn with a large amount of guitars, a bass, a banjo, and some 20 aloe vera plants for sale, at first I see a squier and a silvertone and I'm like nah I don't think I'll stop. But an hour later on my way back the man is still sitting there, it looks like nobody has so much as stopped. It's a rural area people don't really stop for much, they were doing about 70 mph on this little dirt road blasting past the poor guys house. I decide I want to stop and take a look and probably buy something to make the guys day because he looks like he's having a particularly bad one. The guy ends up talking about guitars and stuff and then tells me about himself, introduces himself and when asked why he's selling so many guitars he says he has more and he's thinning the herd. Ends up talking about how he was diagnosed with and beat prostate cancer among various other things. Has to be in honesty one of the friendliest people I have ever met.

    The guy has this Epiphone Demon V sitting up against a tree and I kinda wanted it, majorly beat up, covered in masking tape to make words, the paint was sanded to paper thin on top of the wood, flaked to all hell. "Sure that looks like something I can fix up and work on, gives me something to do, it needs a lot of work." he says $100 I say sure he puts it in the house, I stay and keep talking with the guy and I'm hovering over this natural samick he's got with a trem bar he's bent into a quarter circle. I think it's goofy and want to play it, end up liking the guitar and tell him I might come back for it but I don't have any cash on me today I'll have to grab them later. He says he's not sure if he can sell me the Epi because it's not his and he has to call the owner that abandoned it years ago. I head home and I grab cash and stop back over there one more time, he says $50 for the samick, sure that's fair, it has an older hard case, you know the ones that are basically thin cardboard? Yeah one of those. Guitar was fairly priced. I spend the night cleaning it and taking it apart, I taped up the fretboard and got it ready to level, crown, and polish the frets and hung it up on the wall.

    I get a call the next day and he says come over as soon as possible he has a guitar he knows I'll want to buy, says he has an Ibanez V. At first I'm thinking it's a newer V and I won't really want it, it'll be something I don't really care about or something, he claims it's in rough shape.

    When I get there I see an old fender style case leaned on the very same tree and he says open the case and give it a look, I have this staring me in the face...
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    He says play it, says it's been under his bed for about 5-6 years.


    The case had some cobwebs in it and he goes on to say that the guitar has a few missing screws, it has a missing fine tuning screw and so on. He says "$100. The case is worth that much." I said "Wait what?" and within less than 5 seconds handed him the money. He's fully aware that he gave me a deal to say the least and requested that I come jam sometime which I will happily oblige.

    I spent the morning cleaning it up and cleaning the case, the tolex on the case is mildly gross but cleaned up well, the inside of the case is immaculate and just needed to be vacuumed and I sprayed it with a mixture of cinnamon and clove with water(essential oils) to get the smell of old dusty case out of it and left a cotton ball covered in cinnamon in the case. During my cleaning I popped the hatch on the case and it had a replacement 2 fine tuning screws, both of the factory replacement washers/screws for the locking nut, a box with replacement nylon threads for the pop in bar on the trem, and various other things that he had aside for it and must have forgotten about.

    The literal only thing wrong with it is the A string's fine tuner was originally busted off in the trem, it's not like there's not tools around here to drill and tap it to fix it. I'm absolutely ecstatic about this guitar, I do not care that it is a bolt on, the V5's sound beautiful and I have nothing to change about this guitar.


    Now for the Samick that nobody cares about:
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    Frets leveled, crowned and polished within an inch of their lives. 400 -> crowning file -> 400 -> 600 -> 800 -> 1,000 -> 1,200 -> 1,500 -> 2000 -> mothers mag polish -> meguiars cleaner wax.
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    After I cleaned the entire guitar up and got it set up exactly the way I wanted it, it played great and I was happy... Then I plugged it in and found out the alpha volume pot is dead as a door nail and I have to replace the pots, but whatever, again something to do. (lol at the fact that samick put an Epiphone pickup in the bridge and that it's stamped epiphone on the base plate.)

  • #2
    Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

    Awesome guitar and a good story to go along with it! Are those pre Edge Ibanez trems any good?

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    • #3
      Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

      love the V!! Major score!
      Believe me when I say that some of the most amazing music in history was made on equipment that's not as good as what you own right now.

      Jol Dantzig

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      • #4
        Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

        Nice one.... or two!

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        • #5
          Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

          Originally posted by BartOfDarkness View Post
          Awesome guitar and a good story to go along with it! Are those pre Edge Ibanez trems any good?

          I can't really say because I have limited experience with Ibanez guitars that aren't hardtailed, It kinda feels like an older floyd but with less tension to depress it fully. Seems pretty stable, highly doubt I could get parts for it if I tried though.

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          • #6
            Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

            Oh, yes - IBZ parts are available..... I just forget where the link is. And Squeebay, of course.
            aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

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            • #7
              Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

              I actually really like that Samick... A friend had a Samick branded SG type (set neck, all mahogany, the body LOOKED 2-piece) that was absolutely killer. As far as the Epi branded pup, I bet Samick used a lot of what was lying around from their OEM builds, on their other stuff. How heavy is it? Is the neck nice, or pencil-y?

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              • #8
                Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

                Originally posted by daan View Post
                I actually really like that Samick... A friend had a Samick branded SG type (set neck, all mahogany, the body LOOKED 2-piece) that was absolutely killer. As far as the Epi branded pup, I bet Samick used a lot of what was lying around from their OEM builds, on their other stuff. How heavy is it? Is the neck nice, or pencil-y?
                4 piece maple(?) body(looks fine I don't mind it.), weighs 8.7lbs, the neck is about a medium c. It's not a baseball bat but it's not a pencil, and yeah I was hovering it outside and the wood grain just kept making me stare at it, I've taken it completely apart and it's of pretty decent quality honestly. It feels like they just cheaped out on the electronics and hardware more than anything. Sustains pretty nice and it's pretty resonant and loud unplugged, felt like a fun guitar to mod. I measured the nut width and uh, it's wider than the Squier I have hanging next to it, so there's that.

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                Last edited by StoRMiE; 09-24-2017, 10:13 AM.

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                • #9
                  Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

                  That's nice! I really don't have a problem with multi piece bodies, unless they're 334564 pieces, or they're super mismatched ones. Not that the mismatch changes the sound.

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                  • #10
                    Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

                    Sick V!

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                    • #11
                      Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

                      That is one nice looking PR 1660!!! Do you still have it, and if so,- have you been happy with it? I'm about to get exactly like that one, the thing is that I'm bit aprehensive about that Pro Rock' r-tremolo... Thinking if I need to find spare parts already... ��

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                      • #12
                        Re: NGD(belated): 1985 Ibanez PR1660 and Cheapo Samick LS-35 BDS/N

                        Originally posted by Mikelangelo View Post
                        That is one nice looking PR 1660!!! Do you still have it, and if so,- have you been happy with it? I'm about to get exactly like that one, the thing is that I'm bit aprehensive about that Pro Rock' r-tremolo... Thinking if I need to find spare parts already... ��
                        Love it to death, those trems get more flak than they deserve. They're just a pain in the ass to learn to set up properly, what you have to watch out for is if somebody over tightens the allen head intonation adjustment screws or the phillips that holds the string in place too much because it can snap off a metal piece that you can't get a replacement for. Other than that it's a bit odd to maintain, holds tuning in it's current setup as a floating trem but it's not really what it was designed for.
                        Last edited by StoRMiE; 05-17-2020, 07:43 PM.

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