Re: Your Main Axe (Include Pics!!)
This is my #1:
Ibanez RGR320 Gold Arctic Frost (GAR) (although the "gold" looks more like a green to me), limited edition run from Year 2007, bought it new in 2008. Its Wizard neck took a while for me to get used to (after having primarily played Fender Strats for the previous 7 years), but now it's what feels right to me.
That's a Dimarzio Humbucker From Hell in the neck. I tried various aftermarket pups in the bridge, but ultimately came back to the stock Designed by EMG pup. I like a lot of clarity even in my high gain tones, and found that the aftermarkets were too hot right out of the gate. With these pup choices, I feel the guitar is very versatile, yielding great clean tones and high gain tones.
This guy is also sporting a Tremol-no in his trem cavity.
It was only a few weeks ago that I expanded the bridge cavity (the side facing the neck) so I could squeeze in the Roland GK3 pickup behind the bridge pup. I placed the Roland interface unit off center (vs. sitting on the body strap pin), so I could still easily access the Floyd's fine tuners. I was worried that moving the bridge pup 6-8mm forward would negatively affect the tone, but was happy to find that this move actually enhanced the "notched" sound of Position 2 (both humbuckers in parallel), with no discernable affect on the bridge-only tone. I am still into Strat-type sounds, so this benefit was a happy surprise. I also went the extra mile and spray painted the silver metal jacks on each end of that patch cable from the Roland unit to the guitar's output jack, to black to match the black hardware on the guitar.
