The Studio experience

Saturday morning ritual- re-string. This time, it's my Gibson Les Paul Studio Premium Plus. This is actually my happiest LP experience to date. When I bought this guitar, I was truly happy with everything it had to offer. I didn't give it a thorough inspection at the store as I had to make a quick decision; someone was eyeing it & making calls so it was a done deal after he ended his call. He asked me how much it was & said he was prepared to only pay $1K for it- yeah, right. A Gibson LP Studio at that price right off the shelf? He should maybe travel back in time to get that kinda deal.

Standards

This is a follow up of last weekend's activity- playing my Gibson Standards. Both of them do not hold true to their original specs; the Les Paul had a set of locking tuners (GOTOH Magnum Lock) in there which improved tuning stability quite markedly, while the SG had the pickups swapped out to Seymour Duncans. Despite the industry's recognition of them being flagships of their respective series, I don't deem them special. I don't quite fancy Gibson in terms of tone & playability in the first place, maybe that's the reason why I don't click with them as well as my other guitars. However, I make it a point to own Gibsons as a mark of respect to the craftsmanship & playing these 'difficult' guitars forces me to re-evaluate my technicalities & playing approach.

Legitimate replacements

Fender now offers genuine replacement necks & bodies. The current selections are limited to Stratocaster/ Telecaster/ P-bass/ J-bass range. There isn't a wide variety namely because it's at its fledgling stages. You are basically looking at American & Mexican replacement necks & bodies with an average of USD200 difference. The American versions are not priced as scraps, mind you, a Strat neck, for instance, goes for a whopping USD499.99, while its Mexican counterpart is only USD199.99.

So this gives you the perfect reason to assemble part-build Fender instruments to rival the manufacturer's finished article, you might think? If you take time to crunch the cost of assembling an all-American Strat, you'd realize that the American Special range is hard to beat at about SGD1,300. Please don't dream of inflating prices of your Franken-Strats & telling people out there they are 'custom' build by you. Even a genuine finished article retains about 70% of its retail price in the after market so how much do you think your Franken-strat would fetch? It's still a demand-supply situation when it comes to such pricings & the objective of offering these geunine replacement units is largely to pacify owners in the belief that their personal, war-torn, battle-scarred Fenders can be resurrected should the neck/ body fall apart in its entirety along the way. But heck, who would truly want to refurbish such personal relics? :-)

Fender's ashes

Fender's ashes... sounds a little morbid but this is actually good news from the manufacturer- a Summer 2013 American Rustic Ash series. I am applauding this move because these guitars are not beyond reach & they still carry Fender's American QC. Yes! 

Re-string: Ibanez 540R

I had the opportunity to work with this Ibanez 540R over the weekend, it belongs to Brother Halim (who is having a day off work & most probably sipping coffee while reading this) who passed the guitar to me before he departed for KL.

It required a re-string & a change of string gauge from a set of .009 to .010. The first thing done was to 're-set' the fine tuners to a neutral level- I had it up halfway so there is an equal leeway to flatten (raise up) & sharpen (screw down) the notes after the nut is locked. This is one of the most fundamental things to do but often overlooked.

I removed all strings when re-stringing an instrument for the sole reason of being able to clean/ re-condition the fretboard. In this case, the 540R required only a little bit of re-conditioning but the stubborn bits were the ones over at the first fret but that was dealt with using a toothbrush. Remember, if you are doing this, use a soft-bristled brush. Any harder & you'll end up scratching the board.

I managed to tighten this gap here which gave me some play for the action adjustment subsequently. In fact, I only needed to raise the action very slightly to accommodate the thicker set of strings (.010). 

Over at the headstock, I was happy to have successfully removed those minor scratches caused by the tip of strings during re-stringing. I managed to give it 5 rounds of treatment while watching a Van Halen DVD- applied rubbing compound, scoured, swapped cloth & wiped clean the cloudy build-up.

All in all, I must say that it was an enjoyable episode with the 540R. It's a battle-scarred guitar & there's only so much you can do to such an instrument to make it appealing. Bringing it back to its initial condition is an impossible engagement, it's like asking the cobbler to revive a seasoned pair of shoes to a fresh, out-of-the-box status without accepting the fact that some parts are worn out & require replacement instead of a mere refurbishment.

Douglas: Grendel 725

Greetings everyone, the first day of July; nothing like a fresh start :-)

The other item I acquired from Rondo music was the above 7-string guitar, a Douglas Grendel. It's nothing upper tier material- no flash. Just a simple 7-string with a reverse headstock, two humbuckers, it's even a non-whammy player. I heard good things about Agile guitars from online players & the Rondo guys are the only chaps selling them but I was skeptical with the shipment. I therefore decided to test things out by getting something fundamental for the sake of knowing how things would work out in terms of shipment (Douglas is a sister brand of Agile like Epiphone is to Gibson). The above guitar arrived 8 days after order confirmation. They were quick with the processing, once confirmed, the rest of the wait was about tracking the FedEx shipment. It could have arrived 2 days earlier but there was a hiccup at China hence the 48 additional hours of waiting.

The guitar arrived in tip-top condition & virtually faultless. It was also a lightweight unit despite having more neck material to accommodate the additional string. It's only upon handling that it succumbed to being a budget unit because all the fitting & finish would put many other more known brand name models to shame, really. The first few moments spent with this guitar was actually a physical inspection & I did a thorough end-to-end check. Verdict: IMPRESSED!