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6K views 56 replies 36 participants last post by  mark9169 
#1 ·
Simple question, really just interested in what originally brought you to Jemsite (no smart arsed comments like "my browser" please), what made you join and what keeps you coming back.

My story, I was a lurker once in a blue moon over the years, then I needed help identifying a drunken purchase. What made me stay was the helpfullness and maturity of the members. I had previously looked at many guitar related sites and found two (to remain nameless) of the biggest ones in particular to be full of flamers and the usual "it's the net so I can say the things that would get me beaten like a ginger step child in real life here". Jemsite was refreshing and populated by people who actually have a passion for their axes.

Dying to hear your stories.
 
#2 ·
In 1995 or a bit later, I had built my first Windows PC after sticking with Commodore Amiga's for so long...Commodore had let the Amiga die, and id Software were doing amazing things on the PC.

Found BBS's, started using them, and on one of them a sysop decided to break into chat and ask me to test out this "internet" sharing he was thinking of implementing through the BBS. So I obliged.

First thing I searched for (using Yahoo! of all things...google wasn't the powerhouse it is now yet) was, "Ibanez Jem".

jemsite appeared somewhere in the results, and I signed up. It took minutes for the front page of the original forums to load via whatever internet connection the BBS had over to 28.8k on my end.

MINUTES.

But I managed to sign up before the great database crash of the 2000's.

Kids these days have it so easy. So much information, and content available in just a few clicks.

Anyway, that's how I found jemsite.
 
#3 ·
(no smart arsed comments like "my browser" please),
.
Google? 8O

I didn't have a computer, a long time ago, and at that time every commercial said "and our site is www dot whatever". A best friend had a computer so I went over on their band practice night and said "stick me online, I want to see what this inter web thing is all about!" So he put up Google, told me to type anything I wanted, and it would look for it. WOW, how cool?

I sat there for a few seconds trying to figure out what to search for first, and, as I'd been looking for a JS1BK for about 7 years, WTF, I typed "Ibanez JS guitar" [or something similar], and within a few minutes I was on Jemsite, on the classified page, reading an add for a JS5 listed for $1100, just reduced to $1000. It wasn't what I wanted, I wanted BLACK! Black is hot. But, I called and the owner sold it to me like a used car salesman, [I had a recent $1500 burning a hole in my pocket]. I was to drive down the next night [DC] and buy it if I liked it, when he calls me a couple hours before I left with the "ehhh, got it out and took it out of the case last night, and I don't want to sell it.". Huh?? By then I was excited about buying a JS with a rainforest painted on it, [even though I had no idea what it looked like], so I had to talk him back into selling it to me, at his original $1100 asking price, AND throw in 3 Satch picks. Drove down, loved what I saw, and brought it home. And it's still one of the most beautiful guitars I own. ;)

A few days later my friend was setting up my first computer, I had plenty of wants in my head I wanted to start looking for! :lol:

I came back to Jemsite, to learn about Ibanez guitars, This was one of about 3 sites online you could do that, and was by far the best with the most information, and, the best Classified site for the best guitars!. Better than those listed on that other site, ebay. It also had a Forum to chat with other guitar nuts. And everybody had GAS, including me. Recently divorced with 18 years of pent up suppressed guitar buying, and that JS5 just made me want more! Within a couple months I was a paying authorized vendor in the classified, flipping stacks of 90HAM's I had stumbled across searching for guitars to buy, and all of a sudden I was a guitar dealer. It just kinda happened. Strange how life plays out sometimes!
 
#5 · (Edited)
Very cool! So that's how you started Ibanezrules!

and LOL at wanting a black Ibanez!!!!!

You know, Google.com was first registered on 15 September 1997. I wonder if my timeline is skewed. When was the first iteration of jemsite.com created I wonder? Paging Mr Glen, paging Mr Glen.

edit: A google search suggests jemsite.com was founded 16 years ago. So, 1998. My timeline is a bit skewed, looks like I didn't try the internet via a BBS till 98! :O
 
#6 · (Edited)
I thought it was more 95'ish when Glen started the site. When I first joined I was a few years behind everybody else, and I'm pretty sure that was in 97'. Soon after I bought the JS5 I dove deep, Butch Slusher told me about the 10th, and I had to order one of those for the collection [it was either that or one of the JS3's Ed Roman had for $2500. I figured I could always buy one of those later, but they were only going to make a claimed 150 of the Chromes!! How little did I know at the time?!], through my little local dealer at a very steep discount, so that was post NAMM 98'. Before it came in I had sold 5 or 6 of them as a dealer, selling everything thru Jemsite classified and a spam email list of several thousand I had started saving of anybody buying, selling, or even asking about good Ibanez guitars. You'd be surprised how many guitars I sold on that list, or how many of them are still repeat customers and friends to this day. I finally just had to start making a web page, that was in 2000.

To ramble on, that JS10th, when it came in 14 months later, had horrible neck alignment, and at the time I was certainly no master tech, and wasn't going to risk pulling the neck on that chrome finish to figure it out, I called Bansalem, 40 miles away, and they told me to bring it up, they'll give me the tour! Jim Donahue met me at the door, and an hour later after a full walk thru the warehouse, the boardroom collection display, and an amazing look thru a scrapbook in his office of everything from the original outline drawing of a Radius with the JS changes drafted over it, and the angle to which JD would have to bend Joe's bars traced to one side, to amazing pictures, and of course, the Donnie with plate #000001 that hung over his desk!! [drool], I left with a full roll of film shot.

Call 2 weeks later, it's done, come pick it up. Great, JD meets me at the door, hands me the case, I open, and the whole lower half of the front was a haze of 7 billion uber fine scratches. I point it out with a WTF?!!!! and was explained that a string had put a light scratch in it and he had to polish it out, the polish creating the haze that was far worse than any scratch would have been. I was then told that if I didn't want it, no problem, he'd take it back and sell it to somebody else, they couldn't get any more. My first strong arm by HUSA! But started a long relationship with JD where he put up with literal thousands of emails of questions and curiosities, and information I'd get him to get from japan, etc. JD is where my real Ibanez education came from. The man was there in the middle of everything going on at the time.

I took it home, I immediately started posting adds to trade it for any JS2, 3, 4, or 5 [my usual add 3 of us early hunters just saturated the internet with as often as humans could tolerate], and one of the other hunters write within an hour, just plucked a JS3 from a closet, had also just gotten HIS new JS10th order, and was so in love with it he wanted another to use as a player, and mine was perfect for that. We did a dead even trade. After I got it, and looked at it with pictures that weren't upside down and sideways, I recognized it, It was the one on the left in this picture.

[image]http://ibanezrules.com/images/jemsite/ER2JS3.jpg[/image]

why isn't the image tag working??

If you recognize, that was Romans original picture of the 2 Donnies I could have bought when I ordered the JS10th instead. How crazy is that? Almost every one of those JS buys/trades has an interesting story attached to it!!
 
#7 ·
Fantastic stories Rich, really love how you got into the business, got an autobiography title for you "The Accidental Dealer - One man's story of how a single purchase led to him supplying 1000s of addicts through the internet". Don't mention anything about guitars for the 1st 2 chapters. People will snap it up thinking it's a crime story. I would say you lost it when you saw the scratches, sounds like an "oh ****, a scratch, I know buff it out, oh ****, I better buff the whole guitar so it looks natural".

@ Will Those early days of the web, I was originally an Amiga user too. 28k modems, remember how an image could take 5 minutes? I remember Yahoo, the first incarnation, then Aks Jeeves came along, then Webcrawler. Any innocent link could land you on a not so innocent site and friends would arrive in groups at my apartment enquiring "can we look at the internet? Is it really full of porn?" to which I would reply "yes of course, just look at my overdeveloped right arm, guide dog and hairy palms, but you can find out anything about anything" (I lived in the centre of a major shopping district in the city centre at the time, they would leave their gfs shopping and sit huddled in groups saying things like "ask him which is faster?" like Jeeves was a person). It was all very innocent back then.
 
#8 ·
@ Will Those early days of the web, I was originally an Amiga user too. 28k modems, remember how an image could take 5 minutes? I remember Yahoo, the first incarnation, then Aks Jeeves came along, then Webcrawler. Any innocent link could land you on a not so innocent site and friends would arrive in groups at my apartment enquiring "can we look at the internet? Is it really full of porn?" to which I would reply "yes of course, just look at my overdeveloped right arm, guide dog and hairy palms, but you can find out anything about anything" (I lived in the centre of a major shopping district in the city centre at the time, they would leave their gfs shopping and sit huddled in groups saying things like "ask him which is faster?" like Jeeves was a person). It was all very innocent back then.
Very cool! Did you also partake in monthly Amiga Format magazines? hehe, loved those magazines and demo disks!

Man, I forgot about AskJeeves! That's too funny. Yeah, the waiting for an image to load line by line on netscape. Those were the days. Image descriptions in HTML were actually useful back then! lol.
 
#9 ·
In 1999 I had a Peavey Wolfgang on loan from a store, as a huge fan of EVH, I was ready to make the move from strat guitars to humbuckers. I was not happy with the guitar, so I called the store and asked if they had any other double humbucking guitars. They had a used one for about the same price. A guy from the store would bring the guitar with him, we met up and swapped. When I got home and opened the case I saw a used Jem 10th for the first time. I had no clue what it was, but I had to buy it. I also had a strong urge to find out what this was. Searching for Ibanez Jem 10 lead me to Jemsite. I registered for the first time on the old version. That version shut down, and I didn't notice the new version was up for about half a year later. :D That would never happen today! The 10th got sold when I found a cheap 7RB that I liked better. Gave it a swirl and it's now the only guitar I won't sell. All the information about pickups, swirl, where to buy parts - all from Jemsite. Thank you!

For some reason I knew very well who Steve Vai was before I knew about Jems. I even had most of the catalogues from 1990 onwards, but I never saw any Jem in any store. 20-30 Ibanez guitars later, I find myself slowly drifting away from the brand. Guess I'm getting older... :/
 
#10 ·
I originally joined only about 2 1/2 years ago (seems like much longer though) because I wanted to sell a RG550DXPN in the classifieds... I stayed for all the cool projects I saw going on. Eventually got up the nerve to strip down a 570 and dunk it in a big tub of water :D

Then guys like AndyT and Zoot inspired me to start building my own guitars from the ground up. Jemsite has been a huge influence on my life when I really think about it...

It's definitely my favorite non-porn site :mrgreen:
 
#12 ·
I had taken a long hiatus from playing (8 years) but when I got back into it in 2008, I was always going to get another Ibanez guitar. I had looked at the Ibanez site and was totally in love with the RGT320QRBB, but figured that was just going to be way more than I could spend.

I went into my local Guitar Center and they had both the RG2570Z and RG2550Z, which were the two step down models from the RGT320 in the lineup and almost walked out of there with an RG2550ZGW for $800. But then I saw a '98 RG3120TW on the used rack and there was no way I was ever going to buy the RG2550.

The 3120 was in pretty rough shape and I basically knew it wasn't worth the $850 they were asking for it, so I went searching for more info about the guitar and ended up here. So in a way, I am kind of here because of Google :lol: After getting more info about the guitar here, I tried to lowball them based on the condition of the guitar, but they wouldn't go lower than $550 or something like that. I ended up getting an RG3120DR from a different Guitar Center in the area when they were doing their Memorial Day sale.
 
#14 ·
Lol... Commodore Amigas! My first interesting job when I got out of the military was working for Newtek Inc making peripherals for Amigas. It was a small company in an old brick building where we stuffed pc boards, wave soldered, cast in epoxy, packaged, and shipped worldwide. I was production/shipping mgr and sent our stuff to India, Africa, Australia, you name it... We built the Digiview modules, Digipaint sw, Digidroid servo colorizing wheels, and eventually the "Video Toaster" that changed the face of video production forever. The owner was a real creative genius (built the first real-time video digitizing circuit using dual CMOS) and it was a fun place to work. Always had interesting people like Penn & Teller and Brad Carvey stopping by. What a flashback!

Anyway, back to the subject... I found this site while searching for info on how to tune a floating trem on my RG5EX1 that I had bought and was trying to tune it back to std from Eb. I had been away from playing guitar for 20 years while raising kids and wanted a floating trem... but trying to tune it was a disaster until I found this site and Rich's site. Then I ended up getting setup advice and lost my fear of touching a truss rod. I stayed because of the nice and helpful people... nobody called me a loser for not knowing everything about guitars... Eventually bought an RG520 from the classifieds and found out what a real tremolo was like. I've enjoyed the guitar challenges too... although I may have caused some bleeding eardrums in the process.;)
 
#20 ·
Lol... Commodore Amigas! My first interesting job when I got out of the military was working for Newtek Inc making peripherals for Amigas. It was a small company in an old brick building where we stuffed pc boards, wave soldered, cast in epoxy, packaged, and shipped worldwide. I was production/shipping mgr and sent our stuff to India, Africa, Australia, you name it... We built the Digiview modules, Digipaint sw, Digidroid servo colorizing wheels, and eventually the "Video Toaster" that changed the face of video production forever. The owner was a real creative genius (built the first real-time video digitizing circuit using dual CMOS) and it was a fun place to work. Always had interesting people like Penn & Teller and Brad Carvey stopping by. What a flashback!
Holy crap! That's very cool man! I remember when the videotoaster came out, I so wanted one. But I was a kid, and pocket money from chores would never afford me such things lol.

Why did I join? Because I'm an ibanez nut, but one who can't afford being so, so I linger here watching you all post your little "NGD Jem 10th" or "NGD- DNA!!!" while I sit here seething, longing for a Jem guitar that could finally bring me the eternal peace and/or happiness I have been waiting and striving for for 4 years now...
I bought my first Jem new at 21 as a 21st birthday present to myself. You'll get there. I was in a similar boat, I was in my mid teens when I frist found this site.

I use to dream of jems, and draw them during class. Old people use to tell me to work hard, and do well at school. The harder you work when you're young the easier it is when you're older.

I didn't really believe them. But they were right.

we are pre-google (who having seen it's rise, their fall will be more interesting & beneficial to society & the web). People didn't have mobile phones generally or cell coverage.

Jemsite was launched (setup) in the dialup days with IRQ chat (search it, that predates ICQ of course).

In ~1994-5 the "jem & uv collector site" was posted with a bunch of photos (scanned film) from axes i acquired. A lot of the stuff was done by me on lunch breaks @ work with shared 56k dialup and a trusty old (IBM) Thinkpad. (which is ironic as i type this from a Thinkpad S1 Yoga... these are just impossible to migrate from thanks to the keyboard)

The Jemsite.com domain came a few years later when a bunch of "forum/chat" members did a CD for charity... the cd had the URL on it.

The original "site" was always redirected because the images would max out bandwith. The forum on a different domain so it could switch "hosts" on a moment's notice.

The first forum was the same "threaded system" that Harmony Central used. The traffic killed that software & server and the next and the next (Discuss (not the one today), ikonboard then VB). Back then finding a server to host the traffic was a full-time job.

Anyways the maturity and "like a family" atmosphere was always something that was a critical prerequisite at Jemsite and why it exists today, ~20 years later... glen
Thank you for starting the site up and keeping it going. It seems to have always been around for me through good times, and teen angsty bad. (kinda glad that the bad time threads died with the old board! Or were deleted by you or mods... thank you)

This is what existed before the net.
+1. I use to make a yearly trip out to a music store (1 hour by bus then train) who would keep an Ibanez catalog aside for me each year.
 
#15 ·
Well I actually joined in 2011, but I literally forgot my password every single time I tried to log in, which still pisses me off because I wrote a few reviews (at the tender age of 13)

Why did I join? Because I'm an ibanez nut, but one who can't afford being so, so I linger here watching you all post your little "NGD Jem 10th" or "NGD- DNA!!!" while I sit here seething, longing for a Jem guitar that could finally bring me the eternal peace and/or happiness I have been waiting and striving for for 4 years now...

Or it could be I just like to talk about this stuff.
 
#16 ·
we are pre-google (who having seen it's rise, their fall will be more interesting & beneficial to society & the web). People didn't have mobile phones generally or cell coverage.

Jemsite was launched (setup) in the dialup days with IRQ chat (search it, that predates ICQ of course).

In ~1994-5 the "jem & uv collector site" was posted with a bunch of photos (scanned film) from axes i acquired. A lot of the stuff was done by me on lunch breaks @ work with shared 56k dialup and a trusty old (IBM) Thinkpad. (which is ironic as i type this from a Thinkpad S1 Yoga... these are just impossible to migrate from thanks to the keyboard)

The Jemsite.com domain came a few years later when a bunch of "forum/chat" members did a CD for charity... the cd had the URL on it.

The original "site" was always redirected because the images would max out bandwith. The forum on a different domain so it could switch "hosts" on a moment's notice.

The first forum was the same "threaded system" that Harmony Central used. The traffic killed that software & server and the next and the next (Discuss (not the one today), ikonboard then VB). Back then finding a server to host the traffic was a full-time job.

Anyways the maturity and "like a family" atmosphere was always something that was a critical prerequisite at Jemsite and why it exists today, ~20 years later... glen
 
#25 ·
The first forum was the same "threaded system" that Harmony Central used. The traffic killed that software & server and the next and the next (Discuss (not the one today), ikonboard then VB). Back then finding a server to host the traffic was a full-time job.
When you say "threaded system" do you mean the HTML-based boards where there were no forums, just essentially a blog? They were text-based but you could post images or links using the code to do it. Once a thread got sufficiently old, it was essentially gone.

The first board I posted on (a motorcycle board) in either late '99 or very early '00 was that way. Two different car forums I joined in 2000 were either VB or UBB, can't remember. But it's funny what you say about the server. The guy who ran the car site basically lied to ISP's about the nature of the site and the amount of bandwidth used. This of course resulted in the board using fly-by-night operations that would have issues all the time or would just close up shop one day. I think we had two separate "Armageddon" events where the ISP closed shop and the entire database was lost :lol:

When did Jemsite become something similar to what it is today?
 
#18 ·
Awesome stories, Rich!
I think my story goes back to the days of high school and when I started playing guitar. I remember getting catalogs in the mail from Musician's Friend and American Musical and would just stare at them, notably the Jems, for hours on end. There was also much staring at the Bill Reim ads in the magazines; with all the Jem's and RG's and neck profile cutaways and all the great specs amidst amazing graphics and pics of Vai, Satch, and Gilbert.
This is what existed before the net.
I stopped playing altogether from 2001-2005 but when I came back I happened to Google "Ibanez RG" and found all these amazing sites. There was much looking at eBay at not only cool current models but of custom work from fans as well as models from the past that I never knew existed.
I started on the original site forums from links to a lot of those pictures. After being there for a while I came here. This seems like one of the better sites for accurate information and had lots of awesome informative people; and still does!
But as to what keeps me coming back? It's really the same thing as gawking at those ads and catalogs from back in the day, only in a digital format.

IMO, if you really love Ibanez guitars, particularly superstrats, then this site and Rich's are the absolute best!
 
#21 ·
@ Glen - Thank you very much for creating an excellent resource and for keeping the flamers/pissing contest idiots away. In a way this site being regarded as populated by "cork sniffers" tends to keep those who only type in l33t sp3@k away, sentences are just too much of a struggle for them.

@ Rich - Thank you for the scriptures of setup on your site, have read and re-read them many times, you deserve to have a bunch of robed disciples following your every move scattering petals in your path for creating such a fine guide to enlightment and wholeness.

@ Fire - Wow, I had a Video Toaster they were amazing for the time. A friend worked for an animation studio that was closing down in 1989 and sold me an Amiga 2000 with a Video Toaster for £150. I was still at high school and used to have a stream of guys who made wedding videos arrive at my parents house and pay me to edit and stick titles on their creations. They all had big bushy beards which made my dad enquire if I was editing videos or running a polar explorers club. Always wondered what kind of mind was behind this device, it was truly revolutionary.

@ Kyle - I'd love to tell you that when you buy your first Jem the itch goes away, but I'd be lying. It does for a while and you become monoguitargamous for a while. Then you log in here and see that Matias has got the JB guitar or someone else has a 10th, 20th etc., and the itch starts all over again. Apart from Will's great advice about studying hard while your young to avoid future uncertainty, I have my own: Don't get married or into something that looks permanent until you have a large collection of axes. That way the collection is already there and you can use it to fund other purchases without too many objections from your life boss. Believe me this is second only to Will's life advice, many of the guys on this site (including me) did this the other way around and have to resort to wife proof bunkers or high cupboards to disguise our acquisitions.
 
#24 ·
Not a lot, these days. ;)
Well; it's more the people I don't care about....
As I get older I'm becoming quite the misanthrope.
My friends keep asking me to go clubbing with them, and as much as I love to dance, I'm tired of getting groped and having lewd things said to me by total strangers, and more than half of them my parents' dog wouldn't want to be near.
At least comb your hair, you freaking hillbilly....and coming from a girl that was born here and talks just like you, that's saying something! :x
But you're right, rose petals it is. :D
 
#27 ·
Found Jemsite a few years back when I found a USA Custom Cosmic Swirl for sale in a local pawn shop. While researching it before I bought it, I came across Jemsite. It was like a ray of God-like sunshine coming down on www.jemsite.com. Started with Ibanez guitars back in the late '80s after my 1st new guitar purchase of a Fender Squier Katana. Added a red EX series Ibanez. Shortly after, I traded that in for a '90 RG760 JB. Been an Ibanez lover ever since. Took a break from playing when my son was born for about 8 years. Jemsite has been a go to for all things about quality Ibanez guitars. Bought a number of parts from Ibanezrules which was through Jemsite. Now own some of the best guitars I've ever played that were purchased from the classifieds here including RG770FM, RG750 and my '93 JEM VWH and '02 VSBL. A lot of very knowlegable people here. Anything you want to know, someone will help. will always be here daily and will always be a contributer just to help out the powers that keep this afloat. A big thanks goes out to all who run this site a all the cool members here. You never know who is lurking online as well. Herman, Steve, Joe, Nita ...
 
#29 ·
Great stories in this thread!

I was a teenager in the late 80s and I really wanted to play guitar (I liked Ibanez back then, too) but I couldn't afford one. I bought a harmonica instead . . . cheapest way to play the blues, folk, and rock 'n' roll music I loved.

A few times in my life I would pick up a guitar and strum C-G-Em for a couple of months and then give up. Finally I reached a point where I had the desire, the income, and the stability in my life to properly begin playing. My local music store (Strait Music in Port Angeles, WA) is an Ibanez dealer and I was impressed by the quality and value of the Artcore and Artist line. As part of my online research, I found the official Ibanez forum and learned a lot.

Through that forum, I heard about Jemsite and eventually made my way over here!

Peace

Mike
 
#30 ·
Back in 1987 when the RG550s started flooding GC, I bought one.
I was in high school at the time.

I really wanted a JEM777LNG but I was just a kid with barley enough money to get my RG550 for $550 bucks.

For the next few years I drooled over JEMs and UVs; the PWH most of all.

I officially joined Jemsite in December 2000.
I had been viewing the site for about a year before that.

Seeing all those pics of JEMs and UVs made me want them BAD!
So in 1999 I started down the long road to JEM and UV addiction.
Now I have over 30 JEMs and UVs and it’s your entire fault Jemsite!
 
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