Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Andy Martin
I meet with the vice pres and head of R&D next month at Messe show in germany and we will discuss many subjects and I want to bring all of these suggestions to the table when we meet.
Then run this up his flagpole
There seens to be a split in your endorcer family which has given the factory an argument and no reason to spend the extra dime to further machine the studs into lockers.
Half find the new non locking studs more stable, half won't have anything but the lockers. My opinion is the guys that think the non-lockers are more stable is because they never had good lockers. The groove profile on the non-lockers is as good as the best new lockers so they actually offer better return from pull-up and performance than the pinched lockers Gotoh put out for years. Add to this Gotoh is grinding the knives on the EP's to an acceptible thickness which also aids in performance. Bottom line, the new studs are ***Not*** as stable or do they perform as well as lockers with the same open groove profile!! They took one step forward and two backwards.
In my personal experience 25% of MIJ neck thru guitars have bad to horrid string alignment that requires repositioning the curved knife to get a proper alignment. Unacceptable. [OK, this one needs to be run by the production manager but pass it along anyway]
I grind down the nuts on a full 50% of everything MIJ with a locker. Rediculous. Guitars with 1mm++ first fret action with no shims don't even surprise me anymore they're so common [although most are in the .5mm+ range]. This needs immediate correction. [OK, OK, just make sure it's run up the production managers flagpole **again**.] And while it's on the table, the string height on their vintage style nuts is absolutely no better. I actually [finally] broke down and bought a full set of nut files in preperation for incoming PG301's.
There is word that Ibanez is not going to design or have an intonation tool manufactured for the EP. Stupid. You tout a professional grade bridge in which the professional has to set his intonation by slack string, guess the move, repeat until correct, times 6 [or 7]. At this time there are NO intonation tools available for any Ibanez bridge. The Edge and Lo Pro tools are no longer being manufactured. Not a big ticket item, just a necessity that's no longer available. Factory intonation is much much closer to good out of the box thanks to the new jig JD fought for years over. If they think it's perfect, they're wrong. They all need adjusting out of the box, or 10 years from now. No tool. Stupid.
If it's going to make it in front of a VP of J I have to take the opportunity to rant about more important things than color or body shape.