Deepavali 2026

Best wishes to those celebrating. There rest of us are celebrating the long weekend, of course. One more public holiday to go before the year turns.

Nut Job: LP

Last night's minor surgery - nut replacement for my LP Studio 60s tribute. Yes, I do nut replacements myself, I learned how to remove glued-on nuts carefully over the years & file the slots accordingly to suit the guitar.

This was what happened - I flicked the strings aside to lubricate the slots after re-stringing the guitar & it got chipped at two spots (blue arrow). There were also rusts embedded into the slots which could not be removed (red arrow). The guitar nut is an expendable item, we should not be too sentimental when replacement is due.

So my beloved P90 LP was good to go. When both pickups are activated, it sounds good (to me) for tapped notes. Also, nothing beats the P90 growl for doom.

ASAT Saturday

Enough of humbucking tones for this week, time for some single coil action. Glad I grabbed this before City Music moved out of Peace Center & the G&L brand calling it a day: Fullerton Deluxe ASAT Classic. I didn't realize those are brass saddles till I did a re-string 😅

I still have a few Rotos in the house & a set went into this guitar. Those MFD pickups are wicked in driven settings. I have no idea if this was meant to be as such because we normally grab a Tele-esque guitar for crystalline cleans. I'm not much a of a clean player anyway.

Premium S

I realized this is the only Premium Ibanez model that I currently own. Used to own a Premium RG once but that was sold off more than five years ago. The Premiums were / are not a hit with me, I prefer paying for a standard instead. This S970 is rather heavy due to the ZR bridge there which is also not my thing. There'a a cult following for this bridge with ardent fans calling for its return. Nope, not for me. 

Rotosound pinks before things got going.

SD in this one:

• Jazz (n): One of my go-to neck pickup because it sounds good in both clean & driven modes
• Q-Pound (m): I had to push this one quite deep into the cavity to level its volume against the neck / bridge counterpart. Despite its high output nature, it sounds darn good clean. Never dismiss any pickup's reputation just because the manufacturer touted it to be of a certain character.
• '59 Custom: This one's rather fat-sounding despite its truncated bottom end. 

B-pop (2)

Had a good time with the RG1451 for the last few days or so. Maybe it's the psychology of playing a fixed bridge guitar; I feel more accomplished. 😅

I have no excuses for not liking my tone as I have Seymour Duncans in this guitar: Jazz (n) /Classic Stack (m) / JB (b). I don't use the middle pickup much but it got some play time nevertheless.

Every time I thought I ran out of Ernie Ball strings, I discovered I still had a final set waiting to be used. I dated my strings upon purchase & this was from an August '26 acquisition.

Ibanez - DB (2)

This Tube Screamer is a part of the Ibanez - Dragon Ball collaboration that happened recently (Oct '26). Yes, it's just a standard TS-808 with the DB aesthetics. If you missed it, that's the unique star LED on the pedal.

Pic: Ibanez