Late night guitar work ... Ernie Ball, you disappoint me!

Sunday morning, 9:23 a.m. -- OK, waiting to get into the bathroom to get ready for church later this morning, figured I would post an update regarding my early morning work on my Ibanez Gio GAX30.

The pair of Ibanez guitar strap buttons arrived in yesterday's mail, so I installed the missing on on the Ibanez last night. I realized then that all I needed was to put some new strings on the beast and I could play her, so that's what I did.

I have had a spare set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings on my desk for quite a long time. I have thinking of putting them on my main guitar, my Peavey Raptor, but the Peavey has played OK with the strings it has. I'm sure it would benefit from a fresh set of strings, but I'm not playing gigs, and I'm happy with it as-is for now. So I opened the sealed set of brand new Ernie Balls to re-string the

Ibanez.

I love handling new guitar strings ... so crisp and responsive. Wha- what's this crap?? There's some sort of rust or corrosion on the G, B and E strings. WTF?? These were sealed, new in the package?! I put them on anyway ... I just bought some Fender string sets, but this is a project guitar, the Ernie's will do.

BTW, I love the Ibanez oversize strap buttons ... I have periodically had problems with straps and the traditional guitar strap buttons, and there's nothing scarier -- even with a cheap guitar -- than having one end of the strap come loose on you unexpectedly. I know strap locks are the real solution, but for my money, the Ibanez oversized buttons are the next best -- and cheaper -- solution.

Once it was restrung, next on to trying to get sound of the Ibanez. The volume pot on the guitar is screwed up -- it has not stop, the shaft pulls in and out about 1/8 inch, and there's no signal to the output jack unless you hold your mouth just right and find the sweet spot were the fucked up part of the volume pot makes contact with the other part. I fiddled with the volume pot for five minutes before I found a place that passed guitar audio to the output jack.

THIS JUST IN. I found this really interesting review of the Ibanez Gio GAX30 on Youtube. Its a later version of the guitar, but identical to mine save for the truss rod cover. It speaks well about the guitar for the money.

BACK TO THE IBANEZ ... Once tuned -- and I'm really, REALLY grateful to have my Behringer tuner, as well as the VAMP with its built-in tuner capability -- how did she sound?

The action was low and easy. I didn't bother to check intonation yet, but it felt good. The neck pickup was way, way low, the bridge pickup was much higher. As you might imagine, the neck pickup volume was down ... just for kicks, I raised it quite a bit, which brought up the low strings nicely. The pickup isn't level in its opening, but I can take care of that I guess.

I didn't adjust the bridge pup, but made a couple of rough adjustments to the neck pup, lowering the wound string end so those strings wouldn't be so dominate.

I'm not sure about the quality of these humbucker pickups, though I'm pretty sure they're stock Ibanez what-have-you's. I like the jangle of my SSH "fast strat" Peavey; I seldom use the bridge humbucker, but maybe that's just my lack of playing skill and knowing when to use employ it.

I miss the sonic choices the SSH pups and the five-way switch give you with my Peavey, but with

My Peavey Raptor with SSH
pickup combination.

one fewer pickups, what else would one expect. I have replacement 500k pots coming from the Far East, and once those arrive I'll replace the volume pot on the Ibanez. Once I add the speed knobs and the switch knob, she'll be basically complete.

I'm going to have to do more research on pickups ... my Oscar Schmidt OE-30 has dual humbuckers, and they sound a lot better than those on the Ibanez. Yeah, I know, we're talking solid vs hollowbody, but the OE-30 has much greater clarity than the Ibanez. The Ibanez is "OK" as-is, don't get me wrong. I'm just thinking of it as  a project and its improvement potential.

Once I get the pot replaced, I'll do more adjusting on the pickups ... for whatever reason, I thought the humbuckers would have a sound more similar to my hollowbody ... maybe that's just what I get for making assumptions. One thing for sure is that I do NOT plan to load it up with high-dollar pups!

SPECTRUM UPDATE.  My Spectrum strat awaits the arrival of the new nut, and wiring the electronics to the output jack, as well as screwing it all back together. The body's naked wood front and back beg to be painted prior to assembly, and I'm not at all sure what to do with it. I would love to do flames ... or make it Surf Green.

Part of me wants to do something unusual with it, but not sure what defines "unusual." I'm not really interested in a sunburst finish or a solid color that isn't either Surf Green or perhaps Sonic Blue. I've thought about a distressed finish, but something about that just seems ... wrong, you know? It goes against my nature to WANT to beat the shit out of a guitar to ad faux "character" to it ... its my nature to keep my guitars in the best condition I can, though if you check my office you wouldn't think so, lol.

The nut will arrive next week, then its onward and upward with the Spectrum, which was voted one of the worst Chinese strat copies of all time. We'll see.

Rock on!