Hello everyone, this is my first post in the forum which seems like an awesome place btw. A few months back I finished a guitar project I started with a couple of friends and the end result got posted in the Seymour Duncan facebook group, which was awesome. So I guess it would be nice to say a few things about this particular guitar over here and post some pics, in case you missed it then.
First of all it is (maybe "was" is a more fitting verb) a 1987 Ibanez RG560, that I bought second hand in 1991. It's my first guitar and I grew up with it, I only bought my second guitar in 2005. The picture below shows one exactly like it, same exact original colour and hardware. Ibanez used to call this "sky blue", god knows why. I think "appaling blue-ish silver for the vision impaired" would be more fitting, but beggars can't be choosers as we know, especially since I got it very cheap from the other guy.
The guitar as it was, was quite average overall but it did have some very nice features. For example it was very very light, so it was very easy to carry around and to play. The best thing is the neck and fretboard, I just love everything about it, it's very very thin and quite wide with jumbo frets that make playing very very easy for me. The only guitar that I've played and gave me a better feel than the Ibanez is my PRS Custom 24 and that says a lot. Other than that, the guitar is pretty average. Basswood body and crappy stock pickups that lost whatever little they had over time, things that offered very little sustain.
Needless to say, I hadn't touched the guitar since I got my Les Paul back in 2005 and then came the PRS Custom 24 and a hotrodded Fender Strat with Kinman pickups that seemed to put the final nail on the coffin for the Ibanez. Or did they? A few months ago I started wondering about the Ibanez, I had left it in my parents' home and thought about getting rid of it or starting a little project to rejuvenate it. I just couldn't sell it, it was my first guitar and although it was laughable compared to the others, I really felt I was emotionally tied with it. So I asked the help of a luthier friend and my brother, with the aim to bring the Ibanez back to life, better than ever!
We sat down and discussed our options. The only sure thing was that the colour was going to go and the guitar would be handpainted by my brother. We didn't know how we were going to go about it and we did some research on the internet and we found a guy who uses Posca water-based paint markers to paint guitars among other stuff. He has some videos up on youtube and explains the process very thoroughly. Next up was the decision about the design on the guitar and some minor shape-altering. We decided the shape would be less juvenile if we trimmed the sharp edge or the lower "horn" and made it more round. We also decided to change the shape of the headstock since it wouldn't be an Ibanez anymore. Then it was time to make a decision about the pickups. We decided to go for Seymour Duncans, since I never played a guitar with SD pickups and didn't like the sound. So we started looking for our options in the SD website when I realised that I could never ever remember myself using the middle pickup for anything, so I said why buy one of those, just leave the middle pickup slot empty and only go for a humbucker and a single coil for the neck. Yeah, but why leave the hole over there and not fill it with a piece of basswood and cover it completely? Great idea! And why do I need a single coil for the neck, while I will only be using the guitar for the harder stuff? Nothing can beat the original Strat for single coil tone at the neck pickup, anyway. So what do we do? Cover that hole also? No, we just go for a mini humbucker and make a HH config! We sent an email to Seymour Duncan telling them about our plans and asked them which would be the best pickup choices for what we had in mind. I wanted a guitar that would be able to deliver a sound close to that of John Sykes in the 1987 Whitesnake album. So they came up with the suggestion of a Custom 5 trembucker (TB14) for the bridge and a Cool Rails mini humbucker for the neck. I made the order and got the project started.
This is the guitar as it was before the start of the project
Paint removed
Pickups, pots etc bought
Middle hole filled
Lower "horn" rounded and headstock shape altered completely
Body primed and almost ready for paint
Body handpainted and ready for gloss finish
Finished!!!
That's it guys and gals. I think it has turned out pretty amazing visually and it's sounding a thousand times better now with the new pickups. I just can't believe the difference the pups made.
First of all it is (maybe "was" is a more fitting verb) a 1987 Ibanez RG560, that I bought second hand in 1991. It's my first guitar and I grew up with it, I only bought my second guitar in 2005. The picture below shows one exactly like it, same exact original colour and hardware. Ibanez used to call this "sky blue", god knows why. I think "appaling blue-ish silver for the vision impaired" would be more fitting, but beggars can't be choosers as we know, especially since I got it very cheap from the other guy.
The guitar as it was, was quite average overall but it did have some very nice features. For example it was very very light, so it was very easy to carry around and to play. The best thing is the neck and fretboard, I just love everything about it, it's very very thin and quite wide with jumbo frets that make playing very very easy for me. The only guitar that I've played and gave me a better feel than the Ibanez is my PRS Custom 24 and that says a lot. Other than that, the guitar is pretty average. Basswood body and crappy stock pickups that lost whatever little they had over time, things that offered very little sustain.
Needless to say, I hadn't touched the guitar since I got my Les Paul back in 2005 and then came the PRS Custom 24 and a hotrodded Fender Strat with Kinman pickups that seemed to put the final nail on the coffin for the Ibanez. Or did they? A few months ago I started wondering about the Ibanez, I had left it in my parents' home and thought about getting rid of it or starting a little project to rejuvenate it. I just couldn't sell it, it was my first guitar and although it was laughable compared to the others, I really felt I was emotionally tied with it. So I asked the help of a luthier friend and my brother, with the aim to bring the Ibanez back to life, better than ever!
We sat down and discussed our options. The only sure thing was that the colour was going to go and the guitar would be handpainted by my brother. We didn't know how we were going to go about it and we did some research on the internet and we found a guy who uses Posca water-based paint markers to paint guitars among other stuff. He has some videos up on youtube and explains the process very thoroughly. Next up was the decision about the design on the guitar and some minor shape-altering. We decided the shape would be less juvenile if we trimmed the sharp edge or the lower "horn" and made it more round. We also decided to change the shape of the headstock since it wouldn't be an Ibanez anymore. Then it was time to make a decision about the pickups. We decided to go for Seymour Duncans, since I never played a guitar with SD pickups and didn't like the sound. So we started looking for our options in the SD website when I realised that I could never ever remember myself using the middle pickup for anything, so I said why buy one of those, just leave the middle pickup slot empty and only go for a humbucker and a single coil for the neck. Yeah, but why leave the hole over there and not fill it with a piece of basswood and cover it completely? Great idea! And why do I need a single coil for the neck, while I will only be using the guitar for the harder stuff? Nothing can beat the original Strat for single coil tone at the neck pickup, anyway. So what do we do? Cover that hole also? No, we just go for a mini humbucker and make a HH config! We sent an email to Seymour Duncan telling them about our plans and asked them which would be the best pickup choices for what we had in mind. I wanted a guitar that would be able to deliver a sound close to that of John Sykes in the 1987 Whitesnake album. So they came up with the suggestion of a Custom 5 trembucker (TB14) for the bridge and a Cool Rails mini humbucker for the neck. I made the order and got the project started.
This is the guitar as it was before the start of the project
Paint removed
Pickups, pots etc bought
Middle hole filled
Lower "horn" rounded and headstock shape altered completely
Body primed and almost ready for paint
Body handpainted and ready for gloss finish
Finished!!!
That's it guys and gals. I think it has turned out pretty amazing visually and it's sounding a thousand times better now with the new pickups. I just can't believe the difference the pups made.
Last edited:
