USED: Jan 2026 - April 2026

Not much re-stringing this time round. Only a small cookie container full.

TEJ

After some digging, I found out this is a Fernandes TEJ-75 model. I am the third owner of this guitar, the second owner had scant info that he gladly shared with me. The body's previous finish was stripped down & re-finished with what looked like a gold top. There were numerous scratches on the guitar body so I gladly re-finished it in blue with a light glitter coat.

Here are the scratches, evidently, I didn't use a filler before applying the blue coat. This was intentional because I used whatever colours I have in the mean time, I obviously did not have any fillers 😅 The glitter coat was meant for another guitar but it made its debut here. The pickups in there are DiMarzio Distortion S models. Was told the previous pickups were active units but I am not a fan. I prefer angry passive pickups.

Will continue to use Olympia strings as long as they are still available. 

Labour

In every economy, labour continues to be the spine of progress. Disrespecting labour is telling them to exercise restraint in an economic downturn for the greater good without toeing the line with them. 

Happy Labour Day, everyone. Your blood, sweat & tears define your country. Onwards!

Ibanez April 2026: B

Ending April in the knowledge that Ibanez actually added more to the AZES lineup instead of doing away with this series entirely. We would have thought the AZ Standard would be the new spruced up entry-level models for the AZ family but heck no. The AZES are still active in the mean time. There is an AZES40 already in the lineup, the AZES40B - that B there denotes black pickguard.

Pics: Ibanez

Resolved

The pickups in this SML721 are a pair of DiMarzio Fusion Edge. I've had both bitter & delightful episodes with the FE & in this guitar, it's the former. The neck humbucker is especially disappointing; darn muddy & quite pointless for my kind of music / tone. It took me a while to finally replace the pots of these guitar.

Pics: ESP

That's right - pots. The default pots were working fine & required no replacement but they were suspiciously under-performing. I came to this realization after looking at the specs of my guitars with FEs in them. Those guitars did not sport the default pots as I did away with them due to corrosion / oxidation. I bought a pair of BOURNS pots from Davis GMC which are currently the OEM for ESP & they are indeed the rightful solution to this issue.

I asked Beez what could possibly be the issue with the default pots as they were working fine since Day 1. He told me budget pots might sometimes be labelled erroneously like in my case, the default pots might be a 250K version instead of the preferred 500K for humbuckers. That might be the case here & it turned out to be a simple fix. Beez fixed these into my SML521 a few days ago. After hours of playing, I must say that BOURNS is living up to its reputation for being good. As good as GOTOH & CTS, to name a couple which are benchmark brands for this purpose.

Studio trouble

Gibson now has the Studio version of the Double Trouble Les Paul (USD1,599). The initial version was a Standard, this time round, things get more affordable as the Studio version has no binding & it comes with a soft case. Be informed that modern weight relief (aka generous chambering) is a feature of this guitar.

Pic: Gibson