Ibanez JEM Forum banner

Ibanez RG470 Resurrection - Lo-TRS to Floyd Rose Original Retrofit

Tags
lo-trs rg470
4K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  jer3d 
#1 · (Edited)
I just wanted to share my experience in resurrecting my Japanese RG470.

It's a detailed step by step retrofit of the Lo-TRS tremolo with pics. Seemed too big to post here so I have created a standalone web page.

Hope it is not a problem to just post a link to it :
http://www.hammer-software.com/audio/tutorials/RG470Resurrection.html

Please leave a comment if it's useful to you.

Starts like this:
This is the story of my Ibanez RG470. The guitar was made at the Fuji-gen Plant, Japan in 1997. I purchased the guitar the same year from a second-hand shop. It looked new, so I suppose some poor guy fell on hard times and had to sell it. I have treated the guitar well and looked after it, the paint is still in mint condition though it seems to have aged slightly. I played the guitar a lot around the house and live until around 2005. After 2005, because of tuning instability, I tended to leave it in its case.

 
See less See more
1
#3 ·
Interesting project hammer. Did you not have any fret issues? I wore out the frets on my RG470, although admittedly I have a heavy fret hand technique. But the tremolo held up well enough, didn't use the whammy bar too much though. I bought it new about 10 years ago. Recently traded it along with two other guitars toward my Jem 7V.
 
#4 ·
Hi jer3d, yeah the frets were a little worn so I leveled them with a file and polished with some very fine sandpaper. I made a fret-board protector out of cardboard and it worked great.

Wow! Those jumbo frets are pretty... jumbo, I can't see myself wearing them out. You must really work them over :)
 
#7 ·
Hi jer3d, yeah the frets were a little worn so I leveled them with a file and polished with some very fine sandpaper. I made a fret-board protector out of cardboard and it worked great.

Wow! Those jumbo frets are pretty... jumbo, I can't see myself wearing them out. You must really work them over :)
Yeah the fret wear was bad, but it was from being the only guitar I played for many years. I began to miss it after I traded it, so I think you made the right decision in putting the work into resurrecting your RG470! ^ ^
 
#6 ·
I only played the guitar for a couple of days with the new pickups before changing the trem. The pickups had a dramatic effect on the tone but OFR change was hard to hear, but I don't have the best ears for tone :)

I must say I expected a more pronounced difference in tone with the OFR. I used an OFR in the eighties and I remember the tone being very bright. I think they changed the sustain block from steel to brass and that might explain the more subtle difference.

I would say there is improved sustain with the OFR though. Return to pitch stability is spot on, that's the real reason I changed to the OFR. It feels like I can trust the guitar like I could when I first got it.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top