#74685  by raisingfreen
 
Hope all is well. I have been meaning to share this information for the past few months. About a year ago I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Olson of AO Guitars via a fellow Musician friend. His shop located about 30 minutes from me in Freeport Maine. Our initial discussions were headed towards a basic setup and some upgrades to my 82 Fire Red Ibanez Musician. I had initially planned on possibly refinishing this guitar as I had heard that there may be some interesting wood underneath that thick paint. I asked Andrew about this and our initial conclusion was that it would be time consuming and may cost few bucks. So we explored some other options, pickups, and maybe giving it a worn even more vintage look. This guitar was a gift from my wife so I knew I would be holding onto it as well as playing this forever so I threw caution to the wind and asked him how much to just do it up and refinish the guitar right. The price did not scare me as much as I would have thought and we decided to proceed. I had a lot of questions and Ideas. He was gracious in all replies and provided solid information that made sense. I then got to thinking he is an artist, why not just let him do what he does best and let him do his thing. Being an art director myself I love the thrill when clients just let me do what I do best and be creative. So thats exactly what I decided to do. Below are some pics of the results as well as a pic of what he had to start with.

Some basic details as to what was done:
1982 Ibanez Musician MC150 (All original slightly worn for its age)

The mods:
Complete refinish, New Custom Pickups, Tuners, Switching, Waldo Buffer (Sweet!!!), and 2 Series/Split/Parallel switches. Notice how creative he was at using the existing vol/tone holes, only having to add one hole. You would never know it started as a basic gibson 4 knob style setup.

Time to complete:
About 3-4 months (he is busy building seriously cool custom guitars as well and patience pays)
IMG_0156.jpg
DSC00210.jpg
DSC00217.jpg