So I got this Guitar...
"No shit there I was..."
..visiting my sister at the house she shared with some mutual friends in the Steel City. Kicked back on the couch, I noticed something I hadn't seen before: a black Ibanez electric guitar tucked neatly in the corner created by the wall and the entertainment center. Being a pretty avid six-string player I had to get up and have a look (and a strum) and was surprised to find the poor little axe was covered in dust and sitting on a little pile of colonizing cat hair.
It wasn't a big deal of a guitar, a Korean-made job maybe five years old, but no guitar should be left to age untouched in a corner acting less like an instrument than an obelisk amidst a veritable warren of dust bunnies. No sooner had I picked it up and set it in my lap than my sister's boyfriend comes sauntering into the livingroom.
"Hey man, don't even bother. That guitar SUCKS."
And, not heeding his advice, I gave it a wee bit of a strum. He was right... sort of. On top of being painfully out of tune, I quickly noted that the action was about as high as the crowd at a Grateful Dead concert. But I thought that with a little TLC and a LOT of adjustment, it could be made at least "playable" and I said something to the fact.
"Dude, if you can get that thing playing, I'll sell it to you for fifty bucks."
I instantly accepted the challenge. I took the guitar with me, saying that if I could fix the action I'd gladly fork over the cash and if I couldn't, I'd slip it back among the hairballs when his back was turned.
And that's how I wound up with this little gweeter:
Not anything to write home about, perhaps, but after a few hours of tweaking on the Floyd Rose (licensed) floating tremolo and getting everything to pitch while at the same time creating a nice low and smooth action, I thought that I could make this guitar something worth BLOGGING about. Well, that's not exactly how it happened; I'm leaving out one or two important details that got me from "I'm gonna make this thing work" to "I'm gonna blog the shit out of this!"
Let me back up a bit and tell you a little about myself.
(Cause I can tell that you're all SOOOO interested.)
::step up to podium::
*a-hem* Hi, uh... my name is Vade.
other people
at meeting: "HI VADE!"
Uh, yeah. "Hi." ::scratches back of head::
Anyway, I'm a guitarist but I pretty much only play acoustic right now since I'm in a folk band. We play Irish music. (we've even got a MySpace page and everything but this isn't about that) Anyway, I started by playing bass -mostly heavy metal stuff- and moved from a 4 string to a 6 for the extra low-end. Well, one day I was at a fleamarket (or car boot sale for all my folks back in the UK and Ireland) and found an acoustic guitar for about a hundred bucks. Being that I'm really into camping and that an unamplified electric bass is little more than a clicktrack around a campfire, I snagged it with the intention of expanding my musical horizons and having something to pluck while in the woods with friends. Within about a year I found myself playing 200 year old Irish tunes and I've pretty much never looked back.
Now, years later, I kind of miss really rocking out and I had thought about picking up my first electric (non-bass) guitar to, again, delve into otherwise untapped areas of musical creativity. Fortunately, one just sort of fell into my lap and I was pretty happy about it.
For most people, that would be the end of the story but I tend to take a perfectly good situation and try to make it even better. In this case, I thought that since I'd saved so much money on the initial cost of the instrument, I could afford to improve it with higher quality hardware and possibly a new set of pickups. Then I thought "If I'm gonna do that and have the guitar pretty much stripped down anyway, why not change the color? I've never really been one for shiny black guitars; they require way to much wiping down to stay looking good."
Well, the snowball kept rolling and pretty soon I was thinking about making all sorts of aesthetic mods until finally I had locked onto the idea of reshaping the entire body so that it didn't even look like an Ibanez anymore, or... at any rate... not like an Ibanez RG.
As an aside to all you loyal "Ibby fans" please don't think that I don't like Ibanez's. I actually love them! The look, the sound, the playability- it's all there in spades. I'm a big fan of Satriani and Vai myself so had pretty much planned on B-lining to the Ibanez guitars when I had enough cash to be "in the market." The 270 though is getting pretty close to the bottom of the RG barrel so I (personally) don't think that really going to town on one is that much of a sin. ...moving on.
I'm pretty big into researching the living hell out of anything that I consider a "major decision." Before I blow a lot of money on something, I make sure I'm getting the best of what my money will buy. If I'm going to get inked or pierced, I ask around until I find the BEST person for the job. And in a case such as this, I try to learn everything I can from those that have gone before me.
Surprisingly, I don't know anyone who has modded a guitar personally. And even more amazing, when I searched for this kind of thing on the internet, the documented mods I DID find were limited to refinishing, refretting, new electronics... stuff like that. The most out-there things I could find were still relatively tame like converting a floating trem to a hardtail or adding a Jem-style monkeygrip into another instrument (usually, strangely enough, an Ibanez RG.)
The plans I have for this go way beyond these mods... not saying that what I have in mind is any more difficult or impressive than, say, rerouting a body for a different tremolo, I'm not suggesting that! But the finished product will be a pretty different creature than what first goes down on the table. It is my intention to finish with an instrument that other players will regularly ask "What kind of Guitar is THAT?" ::crosses fingers:: Since none of my searches turned up a similar project complete with step-by-step "how I did it" and "things to watch out for!" I decided that I'll make my own. That way I'll have a record of the whole process and others like me who have the undeniable urge to "ruin a perfectly decent guitar" will have a little something to get them started!
If there's one thing I can say for myself its that I'm pretty different from most folks. After hearing people tell me that (in some form or another) time and time again, I came to realize that I don't just think of myself as "an interesting and unique person" in the way that all of us like to think we are. . . I really am way off in left field even when compared to those people that my friends used to call "the weird ones." Fair enough; I'm happy to be different from everyone else and I wear that badge proudly. And as such, I like a lot of the things I have, wear and use to reflect that difference, hence my desire to finally have a guitar that's "a little left of center" just like me.
A tall order, perhaps.
What makes it even worse is that aside from adjusting my own instruments and once cutting a guitar body out of a hunk of walnut in woodshop when I was 15, I have no experience with this kind of thing whatsoever! So yeah. It probably looks like I'm setting myself up for a grand and absolute failure. And you know what? If you're thinking that, you just might be right. If you've actually read all of this (I'm amazed) then chances are you're either a guitar builder/modder yourself or, like me, have thought alot about taking that step into the iffy realm of guitar customization.
I figure this:
Best case scenario, I prove that even without any training or prior experience, I have the raw skills required to mod a guitar beyond recognizability. At the end of it all, I'll have a one-of-a-kind instrument and bragging rights.
The worst that could happen is that I fark this thing up royally and prove that small steps IS the best way to learn this sort of thing, but even then I can hopefully make some people laugh by my grandiose failure and if I make a couple people smile, then it will have been worth all the extra hours beyond the mod project to photograph, photoshop and blog about the process.
Beyond everything else, I hope that you (the total nutjob who is actually taking the time to) read this and walk away with some snifty ideas of your own, a smile on your face or perhaps a little of both!
Wish me luck...
(...gods know I'll need it.)
~~VADE
..visiting my sister at the house she shared with some mutual friends in the Steel City. Kicked back on the couch, I noticed something I hadn't seen before: a black Ibanez electric guitar tucked neatly in the corner created by the wall and the entertainment center. Being a pretty avid six-string player I had to get up and have a look (and a strum) and was surprised to find the poor little axe was covered in dust and sitting on a little pile of colonizing cat hair.
It wasn't a big deal of a guitar, a Korean-made job maybe five years old, but no guitar should be left to age untouched in a corner acting less like an instrument than an obelisk amidst a veritable warren of dust bunnies. No sooner had I picked it up and set it in my lap than my sister's boyfriend comes sauntering into the livingroom.
"Hey man, don't even bother. That guitar SUCKS."
And, not heeding his advice, I gave it a wee bit of a strum. He was right... sort of. On top of being painfully out of tune, I quickly noted that the action was about as high as the crowd at a Grateful Dead concert. But I thought that with a little TLC and a LOT of adjustment, it could be made at least "playable" and I said something to the fact.
"Dude, if you can get that thing playing, I'll sell it to you for fifty bucks."
I instantly accepted the challenge. I took the guitar with me, saying that if I could fix the action I'd gladly fork over the cash and if I couldn't, I'd slip it back among the hairballs when his back was turned.
And that's how I wound up with this little gweeter:
Not anything to write home about, perhaps, but after a few hours of tweaking on the Floyd Rose (licensed) floating tremolo and getting everything to pitch while at the same time creating a nice low and smooth action, I thought that I could make this guitar something worth BLOGGING about. Well, that's not exactly how it happened; I'm leaving out one or two important details that got me from "I'm gonna make this thing work" to "I'm gonna blog the shit out of this!"
Let me back up a bit and tell you a little about myself.
(Cause I can tell that you're all SOOOO interested.)
::step up to podium::
*a-hem* Hi, uh... my name is Vade.
other people
at meeting: "HI VADE!"
Uh, yeah. "Hi." ::scratches back of head::
Anyway, I'm a guitarist but I pretty much only play acoustic right now since I'm in a folk band. We play Irish music. (we've even got a MySpace page and everything but this isn't about that) Anyway, I started by playing bass -mostly heavy metal stuff- and moved from a 4 string to a 6 for the extra low-end. Well, one day I was at a fleamarket (or car boot sale for all my folks back in the UK and Ireland) and found an acoustic guitar for about a hundred bucks. Being that I'm really into camping and that an unamplified electric bass is little more than a clicktrack around a campfire, I snagged it with the intention of expanding my musical horizons and having something to pluck while in the woods with friends. Within about a year I found myself playing 200 year old Irish tunes and I've pretty much never looked back.
Now, years later, I kind of miss really rocking out and I had thought about picking up my first electric (non-bass) guitar to, again, delve into otherwise untapped areas of musical creativity. Fortunately, one just sort of fell into my lap and I was pretty happy about it.
For most people, that would be the end of the story but I tend to take a perfectly good situation and try to make it even better. In this case, I thought that since I'd saved so much money on the initial cost of the instrument, I could afford to improve it with higher quality hardware and possibly a new set of pickups. Then I thought "If I'm gonna do that and have the guitar pretty much stripped down anyway, why not change the color? I've never really been one for shiny black guitars; they require way to much wiping down to stay looking good."
Well, the snowball kept rolling and pretty soon I was thinking about making all sorts of aesthetic mods until finally I had locked onto the idea of reshaping the entire body so that it didn't even look like an Ibanez anymore, or... at any rate... not like an Ibanez RG.
As an aside to all you loyal "Ibby fans" please don't think that I don't like Ibanez's. I actually love them! The look, the sound, the playability- it's all there in spades. I'm a big fan of Satriani and Vai myself so had pretty much planned on B-lining to the Ibanez guitars when I had enough cash to be "in the market." The 270 though is getting pretty close to the bottom of the RG barrel so I (personally) don't think that really going to town on one is that much of a sin. ...moving on.
I'm pretty big into researching the living hell out of anything that I consider a "major decision." Before I blow a lot of money on something, I make sure I'm getting the best of what my money will buy. If I'm going to get inked or pierced, I ask around until I find the BEST person for the job. And in a case such as this, I try to learn everything I can from those that have gone before me.
Surprisingly, I don't know anyone who has modded a guitar personally. And even more amazing, when I searched for this kind of thing on the internet, the documented mods I DID find were limited to refinishing, refretting, new electronics... stuff like that. The most out-there things I could find were still relatively tame like converting a floating trem to a hardtail or adding a Jem-style monkeygrip into another instrument (usually, strangely enough, an Ibanez RG.)
The plans I have for this go way beyond these mods... not saying that what I have in mind is any more difficult or impressive than, say, rerouting a body for a different tremolo, I'm not suggesting that! But the finished product will be a pretty different creature than what first goes down on the table. It is my intention to finish with an instrument that other players will regularly ask "What kind of Guitar is THAT?" ::crosses fingers:: Since none of my searches turned up a similar project complete with step-by-step "how I did it" and "things to watch out for!" I decided that I'll make my own. That way I'll have a record of the whole process and others like me who have the undeniable urge to "ruin a perfectly decent guitar" will have a little something to get them started!
If there's one thing I can say for myself its that I'm pretty different from most folks. After hearing people tell me that (in some form or another) time and time again, I came to realize that I don't just think of myself as "an interesting and unique person" in the way that all of us like to think we are. . . I really am way off in left field even when compared to those people that my friends used to call "the weird ones." Fair enough; I'm happy to be different from everyone else and I wear that badge proudly. And as such, I like a lot of the things I have, wear and use to reflect that difference, hence my desire to finally have a guitar that's "a little left of center" just like me.
A tall order, perhaps.
What makes it even worse is that aside from adjusting my own instruments and once cutting a guitar body out of a hunk of walnut in woodshop when I was 15, I have no experience with this kind of thing whatsoever! So yeah. It probably looks like I'm setting myself up for a grand and absolute failure. And you know what? If you're thinking that, you just might be right. If you've actually read all of this (I'm amazed) then chances are you're either a guitar builder/modder yourself or, like me, have thought alot about taking that step into the iffy realm of guitar customization.
I figure this:
Best case scenario, I prove that even without any training or prior experience, I have the raw skills required to mod a guitar beyond recognizability. At the end of it all, I'll have a one-of-a-kind instrument and bragging rights.
The worst that could happen is that I fark this thing up royally and prove that small steps IS the best way to learn this sort of thing, but even then I can hopefully make some people laugh by my grandiose failure and if I make a couple people smile, then it will have been worth all the extra hours beyond the mod project to photograph, photoshop and blog about the process.
Beyond everything else, I hope that you (the total nutjob who is actually taking the time to) read this and walk away with some snifty ideas of your own, a smile on your face or perhaps a little of both!
Wish me luck...
(...gods know I'll need it.)
~~VADE
Labels: guitar, guitars, how-to, ibanez, luthier, modding, projects, vade, woodworking
posted by Vade at 8:10 AM
3 Comments:
Vade:
Thanks for the kind words and congratulations on getting your project blog up and running. It has been an interesting read so far . . . very entertaining. Keep up the good work and I'll check in often to see how things are going. I'll look forward to seeing how this guitar turns out.
Crispy
HEY EVERYONE LOOK! THAT'S Crispy!
::jumps up and down, waving arms and pointing::
((Anyone who is interested enough in this stuff to be reading my "I have no idea what I'm doing, so start playing TAPS for this poor guitar right now" blog, you really should check out the link in my sidebar to his Stagemaster Project. I wouldn't have even thought of doing this without his step-by-step!))
I'm glad you stopped by, man! Knowing that you'll be checking up on me makes me feel both a little more nervous and almost as though I have my own guardian modder-angel watching out for me! ::chuckles:: I hope that you enjoy mine as much as I enjoyed yours!
"Welcome to the insanity."
haha. dude your funny!
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