Nut case

Is there a way to remove a dead, stubborn nut? WD-40 had no effect on it. The dirt & corrosion had virtually glued the nut into place. Unmovable. You have no fancy tool to cut it away; you're not a pro tech.

But you have a file. Nothing fancy, the one that you use to address fret sprouts & some other minor issues. You realized you could actually file the side of the nut & calmly detach it from its supposed resting place. Done.

Fixed

Just seen the new LTD releases. Yes, it's an ESP affair but I don't see any ESP on any headstocks so it's an LTD release (plus some E-IIs in the mix), let's not kid ourselves. When Squier released new models, they didn't say it's a Fender release.

Glad to see non-whammy models amongst the 2026 lineup. While these understandably address ease of use issues for newbies, they do serve the old farts as well. Those of us who get sick of the whammy some time, need something of this nature to sustain our inclinations. On that note, despite these guitars being in the supposedly affordable tier, prices are crazy these days. The Deluxe models (1XXX model numbers) were once in the $1.5K range. These are now pushing the $2K limit further up. The 2XX & 4XX were once affordable darlings but these are nearer to $1K instead of staying in the entry-level figures. What does entry level even mean these days when prices do not reflect what the label suggests.

Pics: ESP

S-Sunday

Spending more time with my S-Series this year as this is my preferred Ibanez model, not the RG. In any case, I will utilize whichever model that would manifest my ideas / needs. This particular model is an S1625 which I bought used for quite cheap because:

• the default D-Tuner was missing
• the default Q pickups were in bad shape, one of which had collapsed into the body & the former owner did not bother to rectify
• 5-way selector was not working in some positions
• one pot was missing a knob
• body was chipped in several places, dents & scratches aplenty
• whammy bar was missing

I did my best to revive this guitar, nothing pristine but more presentable than it was before:

• Wiped-down + polished. There is this car polishing cream you can purchase at the petrol kiosks here & it managed to remove minor scratches + restore some shine to the body. 
• Fretboard was cleaned + moisturized. I actually used a penknife blade to scrape away built-up dirt on some of the fretboard areas.
• 5-way selector made way for a 3-way version
• New GOTOH pots & knobs. FYI, GOTOH pots are now extinct, they stopped making electronic components but hardware (tuners, bridges, etc.) are still in production

The biggest decision was to have these Seymour Duncan '59s in there. These are not known for overdriven applications but let that be everyone else's grievance because till you try these yourselves, you just wouldn't know what they are capable of. I still believe the Jazz is preferred in the neck if you are into distortion, the '59 in this position was very much conceived for clean applications.

Dunlop strings for today.

Ibanez: RG653DX

Regardless of the other distractions, this new RG653DX is a winner in my books (in the RG category). It doesn't stray away too much from its other RG siblings in terms of design. On that note, players out there agree that the big block inlays & that 'shell pickguard might put loyalists off. Both colours feature an ash body & DiMarzio pickups (Norton / TZ). By the way, the 6XX models are not new to Ibanez, there was an RG655 (2014) which was basically a variation of the RG550.

Pics: Ibanez 

Faux gold

I'm actually upset with this finish but in a pleasant way 😅 This is actually an Ibanez S421, I re-finished the top. I bought a can of spray paint which said copper on the label. It looked copper-ish when applied. After some time, it turned into this gold-top type colour. Can you see those areas which sport darker hues from the rest? This was a result of uneven sanding. Of course, I'm not particular with how it turned out. It was meant to be a DIY project & the guitar remains functional. 

This corrosion resistant set will not outperform Elixirs but I'm OK with the lifespan on offer.

Preferred

These images were from Malaysia's music maestro's FB page, Az Samad. He attended the Ibanez 2026 new models launch at Bentley Music, KL on 14th January 2026. FYI, Malaysia's official Ibanez distributor is Bentley Music, not Swee Lee. 

I'm not reading too much into this event but there are some implications here which, for the most part, is my personal anxiety for all things Ibanez since I'm an Ibanez fan from the start. If you share this perspective, then you can relate to some conceptual concerns.

Ibanez chose Bentley for a product launch ahead of the NAMM 2026 show. Ibanez chose to work with Bentley that observes domestic (Malaysia) operations as opposed to Swee Lee that has storefronts in seven other countries in addition to Singapore. I'm giving this a benefit of the doubt - maybe Ibanez & Swee Lee have other grand plans in the near future but the exclusive treatment of giving your distributor partial ownership when it comes to product launches is hard to beat, even priceless to a certain degree. 

In view of commercial interest(s), there might be a shift in operational trends & Swee Lee would do well to know what these are. I'm not a Swee Lee employee, I'm not professionally related to them as well. I'm just an Ibanez fan who sometimes tried too hard to acquire nuggets of info which are readily available elsewhere. I'm in no way implying there should be a preferential / exclusive treatment for certain distributors in view of how they flex their commercial muscle. These days, we don't go where the wind blows but to where the money flows. 

Pics: Az Samad FB