Seeing that I've been lurking here on the Jemsite forums for a while when I'm at work and I decided I might as well share my new toy with everyone (I manage a
guitar shop here in Toronto so I can write off my forum lurking as "research" ;-) ).
Anyway, I just recently managed to get a hold of a NOS
USA Custom Exotic Wood at the original dealer cost!! (It's nice being a dealer with several wholesale contacts). This is the same guitar that was mentioned waaaaaay back in some old post when someone else managed to get a NOS Exotic wood.
The guitar initially had some chips and dents in the finish and most were fixed up(good ol' superglue). The Edge trem had some serious aging due to the fact that this guitar was probably never properly cleaned for a decade or so, but thankfully I managed to swap out the trem with another Edge trem off an old RG570.
The pickups were originally two PAF pro's and some dimarzio single coil, but the PAF's were swapped out for an Air Zone and a Tone Zone. Will probably gut it out again and move the tone zone in the neck and drop an evolution in the bridge. (However, I'm trying to find other suggestions for this guitar since I already have the Tone Zone 7 and Evolution 7 in my Universe)
Ok.. enough babbling.. here's the part you probably want to see (the pics!!)
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa1.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa2.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa3.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa4.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa5.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa6.jpg
http://www.animetor.com/guitars/usa_custom/usa7.jpg
The guitar itself probably has the best feeling neck I've played on in a long time. It's even better now ever since I stripped some of the lacquer off the back of the neck with a razor blade and some sandpaper. However, the finish could be better and since there's still some chips, scratches and dents all over the place, I'd rather refinish the whole thing than try to patch a million little imperfections. (This way I can get a natural binding on this guitar, but would that make it a "USA Custom" Custom?)
Let me know what you think of this one.
