Ibanez JEM Forum banner

New (old) guitar day!

2K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  720Guitars 
#1 ·
I've wanted an old '86 RG440 with the dark wine burst finish for a long time and finally got the chance to buy one. Kind of chanced upon it when looking at a PL650 a guy was selling on Reverb. It had sold but he mentioned the RG440 with the same wine burst finish and his price was right. A dude named Frank Falbo in southern Cal... he said he could make a custom pickguard in H-S pickup configuration, so we had a deal. All he had on hand was flat black pickguard material and at first I wasn't super thrilled about it, but I must say it has grown on me and looks great.



I ordered new DiMarzio pickups for it, a D-Activator bridge and Air Norton S neck. Finally got them wired in with a 3-way blade switch, plus push-pull pots for high pass filter on the volume pot and coil tap on the tone pot w/.470uF cap. After getting some time to really play with it today I am thrilled with the sound! Lots of tone options and amazing clean sound, overdrive is a little on the hot side for most of my presets I normally use on my multi-fx pedal. I may have to adjust a few for it, but rolling back the volume knob or coil tapping simmers it down a little. The tremolo has pretty significant wear on the low E knife edge so I'm experiencing some tuning issues at the moment, but I'll try to deal with that by some filing (saw a little tutorial on Rich's site). Should I replace the studs with locking ones too? I saw something on Rich's tech section about a slightly different cut on the studs that is better for tuning stability?



A long awaited addition to the family!!

 
See less See more
3
#5 ·
Tasteful mods indeed. As for that dude Frank Falbo, he knows a thing or two about guitars, especially old Ibanez ones :D.

Regarding the studs, the inserts on the 1986 spec Edge are hollow, unlike later ones, so you'd have to do a mod like Rich shows in the Edge Pro locking stud mod page of his Tech tutorials. Whether there will be a benefit, you'd have to do it and find out, every guitar behaves differently. I have an RG410 and PL1770 and never saw the need to make any locking stud conversion on either of them.
 
#6 ·
Tasteful mods indeed. As for that dude Frank Falbo, he knows a thing or two about guitars, especially old Ibanez ones :D.

Regarding the studs, the inserts on the 1986 spec Edge are hollow, unlike later ones, so you'd have to do a mod like Rich shows in the Edge Pro locking stud mod page of his Tech tutorials. Whether there will be a benefit, you'd have to do it and find out, every guitar behaves differently. I have an RG410 and PL1770 and never saw the need to make any locking stud conversion on either of them.
Thanks for the pointers... Great guitar, just needs some setup changes to be more playable. Trem is super unstable so it is pretty much locked down right now, but I hope to get the knife edges dressed up soon. Also it is just sitting on the guitar body, so I may try to shim the neck just enough that I can get the trem floating a little bit. If I can get the guitar stable and playable then I won't mess with the locking stud mod, as I don't really use the trem too heavily.
 
#9 ·
I think they're meant to float a tiny bit, certainly the all the ones I've seen do. I've set both of mine up so the spring plate for the fine tuners clears the body a bit. This also gives me an upbend of about A/Bb on the G string.

Good luck with the rest of the fixes. I really dig what you've done with the guitar, and makes you wish they actually offered a HS model!
 
#10 ·
I think they're meant to float a tiny bit, certainly the all the ones I've seen do. I've set both of mine up so the spring plate for the fine tuners clears the body a bit. This also gives me an upbend of about A/Bb on the G string.

Good luck with the rest of the fixes. I really dig what you've done with the guitar, and makes you wish they actually offered a HS model!
Thanks for the info... I thought they should float a bit, but this is the first Roadstar II I ever owned with an Edge tremolo. I like the action, but can't quite get it level without it bottoming out on the body.

When I ran into Frank I was looking for an old Charvel Fusion with HS. So when he offered to make me an HS pickguard for an RG-440 in my favorite finish I couldn't resist!! He really did a great job on the neck and pickguard. Very cool guitar!
 
#11 ·
Yes, I suspect a lot of them need shimming because of this. I haven't had to shim mine, but can see why it would be necessary; maybe some of them had a slightly deeper cut neck pocket, I don't know. In the end, I don't think they're meant to be decked like a non-recessed OFR, also because the Edge's baseplate isn't flat.

It's been a while since I did any measuring but from memory the back of the trem 'wings' on both of mine is about 2-3mm off the body.

I contemplated getting a 440, but a 410 husk came along at the right price and I couldn't turn it down.
 
#13 ·
Yes, I suspect a lot of them need shimming because of this. I haven't had to shim mine, but can see why it would be necessary; maybe some of them had a slightly deeper cut neck pocket, I don't know. In the end, I don't think they're meant to be decked like a non-recessed OFR, also because the Edge's baseplate isn't flat.

It's been a while since I did any measuring but from memory the back of the trem 'wings' on both of mine is about 2-3mm off the body.

I contemplated getting a 440, but a 410 husk came along at the right price and I couldn't turn it down.
Only about 3/8" deep and it was plenty. Used a layer of painters tape and a plexiglas routing template firmly clamped down, so no edge chipping. After the routing was done, rounded the edge off just a bit with some fine sand paper and painted the cavity black. Worked a treat and looked cool :)
Thank you both for the information and ideas... I'll probably try shimming the neck a bit first, but I don't want the bridge too high if I can help it. Nice to know it can be routed a bit and how to do it right. Hope to get some extra time this weekend to work on it.

Thanks again!!
 
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