What an S! (4)

The default Ibanez pickups in this guitar made way for a trio of DiMarzios: Fusion Edge (b) / Cruiser (m) / Air Norton (n). I'm a Seymour Duncan fan but do not dismiss DiMarzio pickups; they are good but not appealing to my kind of music. The DiMarzios here are essentially exiled pickups, quite forgotten so to speak because they performed poorly elsewhere to such an extent that I lost faith in them.

Not so in this case. The Fusion Edge, for instance sounds muffled, with poor bass definition but in this guitar, it gives off that pleasant grisliness most suitable for bottom end chugging. The Cruiser - I dislike it because it's so single coil-ish, it fails to perform well under high gain settings but somehow, in this S270, it can pull off that high octane single coil distortion tone without the excessive single coil clunkiness. Air Norton - I thought it's just a slight variation of the Norton which I really like but it's very PAF with vintage vibes aplenty. I'm not into that kind of responses, it's all out attack for me which the Air Norton failed to complement but strangely in this instrument, it has a very Seymour Duncan '59 vibe to it with clarity to boot. These forsaken pickups, I'm really glad I held on to them. That's the least I could say. 

What an S! (3)

The Ibanez S270 features the discontinued SLT101 bridge. Despite looking like a Floyd Rose bridge, it is actually a non-locking unit. So how are the strings secured here? 

The strings are inserted at the end of this barrel type feature. The ball ends are visible & these stay put by virtue of the string tension pulling them inwards. As such, there is a chance of movements taking place if the whammy is in use. The SLT101 were equipped in the lower series instruments & proved to be short-lived together with the ILT version.

What an S! (2)

The Ibanez S270 that I dealt with earlier had a deteriorated bridge cavity lining. It dried & became fragile, felt like that sponge my Mum inserted into her flower vases as faux soil.

So it was removed & all the cavity surfaces sanded. This helped level the surfaces to accept the new replacement material. 

My choice for the replacement material - shoe insole. The thinnest version was chosen & I prefer this rubberized material. It's synthetic rubber, really.

Done - everything glued into place. 

To be continued...

What an S!

This is an archaic Ibanez S270. It's dated to be a 1997, made in Korea. It was in a neglected state but brought back to life recently. In fact, I got Beez to do his magic on this guitar yesterday. It's now a treasured member of my S-Series line up.

To be continued...