Accomplishment

So I’m making it a point to actually start finishing some of the projects I’ve had in progress for several years now. Enough screwing around and delaying things, it’s time to get stuff done!

I’m taking this weekend to get moving on some things. First up to bat was an easy one, finishing the headstock on the DNA. I put the neck from a JEM7VWH on long ago, but the headstock was in really bad shape. It was all dinged up and badly painted. Looked terrible for a $50 guitar, forget about something that costs 100 times that.

So I sanded the headstock down, glued a piece of veneer over the top, painted it black, put a clear on the top and slapped on a new Ibanez logo made at work (the “JEM” logo has “23/300” for the DNA number, if you can’t see in the pics below). It’s not a professional job by any means, but it looks a ton better than it did and I’m happy with it right now.

To kind of recap, here’s what’s been done to the DNA:
– Bridge pickup replaced w/ Seymour Duncan JB
– Neck pickup replaced w/ Seymour Duncan Jazz
– Middle pickup removed
– Knobs replaced to match bridge/tuner
– Neck from Ibanez JEM7VWH circa 1999
– Tremol-No with Deep-C
– 5-way switch with coil splitting

So what’s next? I’ve really got two major guitar related projects to complete.

1) Gibson Les Paul Smartwood – I need to finish refretting it, replace all the hardware with chrome, replace the electronics and get it repainted (notice I imply that I will not do the painting! that’s one thing I’m not capable of doing). I will update with progress of that, but I’m hoping that by Monday it will be pretty much ready to be painted. I think I have everything needed to get to that step.

2) Ibanez RG770 – this is a project that went way too far. It got a scalloped fretboard, new frets, some crazy experimental onboard preamp, etc, etc, etc. I’m going to strip it for parts and just scrap the thing.

That will do it for the time being. There are other projects out there, but those are the ones that I started and gave up on midway. It will be great to get them finished so I can move on to the next goals.


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One response to “Accomplishment”

  1. G. Edward Jones Avatar

    Dude, you’re the only guy I know who would use two guitars worth more than a Kia for projects…That being said.

    Scrapping the 770? That project was going to be your crowning achievement. You’ve been working on it for a decade. I was going to tell my grandchildren to check out the progress on that thing.