Dave Sloven
Ambassador of DOOM!
I guess we've all got a young person in our lives with non-musical parents who are very proud of their child's musical abilities but have no idea of how to maintain an instrument or the value of new strings.
Way too many young people (and some stupid older people) think you only need to change strings when they break. Not a smart idea with a floating tremolo!
Alex's dad is my best friend and he calls me 'Uncle David' ... I warned his dad not to let him get a guitar with a floating tremolo but I guess with my mate being musically ignorant he forgot this when they took Alex to Taiwan and his mother decided that Alex especially liked this guitar in an Ibanez dealership there she would buy it for him. Of course none of them have the first idea ... The one saving grace is that Alex never worked out how to use the tremolo bar and because you have to take it off to put in its soft case he just left it there and never really used it at all, which was probably the saving grace for the knife edges
I bought him a new set of strings at least a year ago but when I went to look at the tremolo system I didn't have any means of blocking the tremolo and changing them then, and just left the strings with him for another day ... well last week I took my Schecter Omen Extreme there for him to borrow for a week while I took the Ibanez home to work on it. I wasn't happy with the Edge Zero II's stabilisation mechanism and thought I'd have a go at fixing that, together with giving it a much needed clean, fretboard oiling, and fitting those new Hybrid Slinkys.
When it was on the wall in Taiwan for five years it had flouro pink strings on it. The dealer fitted new pink strings apparently on sale and included a spare set of pink ones in the package. Part of Alex's resistance to restringing it was that he thought the pink strings looked cool but even he started to realise that the pink was coming off and they were now pink and brown ... I suggested that he keep the pink strings in case he ever wants to sell it and to fit regular, easy to find Ernie Ball strings instead
Here's the guitar before I started work on it, showing the dry fretboard, rusty strings, and just generally dirty look, together with the tremolo system. I bought Alex that cheesy ClipLock strap with the skulls on it. He loves it but his dad hates it!
Here it is after I finished cleaning it, restringing it, and modifying the tremolo system. It's lot the loudest sounding guitar I've ever played but definitely the loudest colour!
This is the mod that I performed on the tremolo. I left the block as is, I just modified the stoppers using a router bit in my Foredom SR flex-shaft power tool.
Way too many young people (and some stupid older people) think you only need to change strings when they break. Not a smart idea with a floating tremolo!
Alex's dad is my best friend and he calls me 'Uncle David' ... I warned his dad not to let him get a guitar with a floating tremolo but I guess with my mate being musically ignorant he forgot this when they took Alex to Taiwan and his mother decided that Alex especially liked this guitar in an Ibanez dealership there she would buy it for him. Of course none of them have the first idea ... The one saving grace is that Alex never worked out how to use the tremolo bar and because you have to take it off to put in its soft case he just left it there and never really used it at all, which was probably the saving grace for the knife edges
I bought him a new set of strings at least a year ago but when I went to look at the tremolo system I didn't have any means of blocking the tremolo and changing them then, and just left the strings with him for another day ... well last week I took my Schecter Omen Extreme there for him to borrow for a week while I took the Ibanez home to work on it. I wasn't happy with the Edge Zero II's stabilisation mechanism and thought I'd have a go at fixing that, together with giving it a much needed clean, fretboard oiling, and fitting those new Hybrid Slinkys.
When it was on the wall in Taiwan for five years it had flouro pink strings on it. The dealer fitted new pink strings apparently on sale and included a spare set of pink ones in the package. Part of Alex's resistance to restringing it was that he thought the pink strings looked cool but even he started to realise that the pink was coming off and they were now pink and brown ... I suggested that he keep the pink strings in case he ever wants to sell it and to fit regular, easy to find Ernie Ball strings instead
Here's the guitar before I started work on it, showing the dry fretboard, rusty strings, and just generally dirty look, together with the tremolo system. I bought Alex that cheesy ClipLock strap with the skulls on it. He loves it but his dad hates it!
Here it is after I finished cleaning it, restringing it, and modifying the tremolo system. It's lot the loudest sounding guitar I've ever played but definitely the loudest colour!
This is the mod that I performed on the tremolo. I left the block as is, I just modified the stoppers using a router bit in my Foredom SR flex-shaft power tool.