The call

It's the call of Cthulhu once again. I refer to this guitar fondly as Cthulhu for obvious reasons. It's currently one of my most played Ibanez. I'm somehow more at home with 22 frets, will always lookout for used 22-fretted S-Series.

Managed to re-string this over the holiday (Deepavali) & I am quickly settling down with the Olympia brand of strings for many guitars. The price factor is an obvious enticement but the fact that the quality on offer is good for the money made me switch over with limited resistance. Guitar in question is an S370, reduced to a pair of humbuckers & excessive stickers to mask up finish flaws.

Indoor Sunday

Not much happening today. Stayed indoors with those two (above) keeping me occupied. When you are sick(ly) & having your expenditures curbed, keeping yourself occupied / distracted is the way to go.

GRGR010LTD: I sometimes forget how good this one sounds. Simple guitar & I'm still loving that copper finish. Shreddy stuff on this one & I'm sticking to legatos lately; the smooth, connected notes sound addictive. Trying to play in the Olympia strings which still feel new & unseasoned. 

S370 (mod): This one went out of tune despite not being played for a few days. Got the tuning sorted out & keeping watch of the blocked bridge which, I think, is the suspect. Lots of doom ideas with this one. It's not about what guitar it is but what it inspires you to play. 

Wishing you all a good week ahead.

Call of Cthulhu (4)

The pickups in this revived Ibanez S370 is a pair of DiMarzio ibz humbuckers. Back in its time, it was burdened to fulfil the DiMarzio expectations but Ibanez clearly mentioned these were created in the image of a typical DiMarzio spec but not being an outright DiMarzio per se. These do not possess the smooth voicings of a DiMarzio once high octane distortion is in use. A stronger midrange response is its firm identity, inclining towards the Super Distortion. In clean mode, these are quite devoid of any PAF warmth hence its much maligned existence back then. I am totally alright with such tonal offerings, the reason I look out for them in the after-market. They give me what I want to hear. 

To be concluded... 

Call of Cthulhu (3)

I got this guitar for cheap & it needed some attention especially in dealing with the body finish. This S370 has a quasi-trashed body. It was badly scratched in some areas & had chunks of wood missing as well. It's like it might have been run over by a trolley or chewed up by a dog. I used wood putty to fill up the various cavities like the ones you see above. This was left to dry for a few days & sanded the surface back to shape. Really grateful the adhesive properties of the putty saw this through.

The sticker treatment for the final finish.

To be continued...

Call of Cthulhu (2)

For older guitars, once you remove the trem spring for maintenance & re-install it, it won't stay put. It keeps popping out of the hole where it's supposed to anchor. I've had enough of this nonsense so an easy fix here would be to wedge in an extra bit of string & hammer in the spring together with it for a tight fit. You can then proceed to trim off the extra bit to make it look more presentable. In this case, a bit of .011 string length was used. So there.

To be continued...

Call of Cthulhu

Another salvation project completed yesterday. Made a trip down to Beez's for the re-wiring & stuff. Bonus - it actually sounded good. 

To be continued...