Grateful Dead Music Forum

Here is a guitar I will be sending out tomorrow. I think it turned out nice.

Beautiful work!

The owner of that guitar is going to be VERY happy!
; )

I wish I had more hands so I could give that 4 thumbs up.

That looks really good !!!
I am doing the same thing to my Ibanez Musician.

Did you do the brass work ?
Did you keep the original metal plates under the pickups?
Is the pickup cavity a swimming pool & if so did you add any kind of partitions between the pickups ?

Yes I do all the metal work.I had to modify my existing triple ring to surround the end of the neck and then I cut a 1/32 off the end or the fret board to give a small shelf for the ring to sit on.I then added some maple to the corners of the existing p-up rout, closest to the neck, to give a place for the mounting screws. I removed the metal underneath the p-ups an then routed 1/4 below the lowest point in the cavity. I use 4 pin din pugs for the p-us and they need a little more room. I only routed enough room for the middle p-up to fit because you need meat for the mounting screws. I had a special long shaft router bit made, for routing out the sides of control cavities with out changing the size original cover plate. I had to make room for the larger mil spec pots, extra FX jack , the 5-way switch and the battery. For shielding, I used to use copper tape (I still do for the backs of cover plates) but, now I use Super Shield nickel based, industrial paint by MG chemicals. this stuff in no stew mac shield paint. It is used in industrial and mil applications and is very effective (not cheap, about $45 a can)but, much quicker and cheaper than Copper tape at $100 a roll. I used 3 tone knobs to occupy the holes and converted the 5 hole to the 5-way. This is my first experience with a Musician and I can see why Jerry like them, nice guitars.

You do really nice work man !
Thank you for your answers to all of my questions!!!
I wish that I was not almost done with mine because I would have had you do the work for me.
I made a brass pickup ring also & it does not look so good..... & it was a PITA

I was wondering how you fit all that in the control cavity & now that I know you routered out some material it makes more sense.
Is the top switch for the OBEL ?
How much would you charge to make me a pickup ring & switch plate like that ?

How can I make sure the bridge is oriented correctly ? Or does it matter ?

Thanks

On a side note I would like to offer a suggestion to the site moderators.
It would be great if there was a separate topic title that members of Rukind could use to list what their services are.
I think it would be a great resource for both the consumer & the product creators.
Just my two cents......

No the top switch is a dummy.The 3rd switch is the OBEL 1st, is the middle coil tap, 2nd is the bridge and neck.In the past I have run in to problems in fitting all the components in the cavity after the back is glued on. I always route the electronics cavity before I glue the back on. After the control cavity cover area is routed, if you need to make the area larger because a customer wants to all a feature or whatever I could never find a bit with a long enough shaft or a cutter head that was large enough in diameter to clear out the sides. So i went to a machine shop and had them weld one up. It has a 3 in head and and is 1/2 inch cutter depth and the shaft is 3 inches. It was about $200 but, I use it on almost every build. I can have new cutters welded on for about $30 when it gets dull.

That's a beaut! I have a 78 MC200 that I bought in '86. I recently did a few upgrades to it, but I'd love to take it even further in the direction you did.

I replaced the stock pups with an Air Norton and a Tone Zone, made them tapped the coils,and put in an Alembic Stratoblaster. I love the guitar, but putting in the non stock pickups was a challenge. I bought some plastic pickup adaptors that a fellow who specializes in old Ibanez rebuilds had. Then I had to glue my pick ups into the plastic adaptors so I could mount the pups. How did you deal with mounting the pickups?

Considering a unity gain buffer too...what is your take on that? Does it make much difference?

nabco wrote:On a side note I would like to offer a suggestion to the site moderators.
It would be great if there was a separate topic title that members of Rukind could use to list what their services are.
I think it would be a great resource for both the consumer & the product creators.
Just my two cents......

Here ya go! A few of these guys will make you a pickup ring or any other metal parts as well as do any Jerry mods or build your whole guitar for you.

forum/viewtopic.php?f=426&t=13210

Nice work! Sweet guitar! Always like the Musicians!