Ibanez S420WK Electric Guitar

Hi everyone,


Just thought I'd start a thread about my Ibanez S420WK Electric Guitar, I'm going to be changing-out the stock Inf1 and Inf2 pickups for some hopefully better ones because I have decided that I don't really like them, they are a bit too much and muddy sounding for my tastes, particularly when a Distortion effect is used, clean sounds aren't as much of an issue as dirty sounds but I still feel the need for improvement, I've decided to give my two Entwistle HDNs a try and see how it pans out, might even record a before/after demo.


Originally I was going to put the HDNs in my PRS SE Custom 24 guitar but a mate suggested trying them in the S420WK instead, I can always order a couple more HDN's anyway.

Here's a pic of the guitar with it's stock pickups, note that the neck is not the original one but an RG 200 series neck:



Attachment 8756

looks cool Doc, the swap out sounds interesting, the HDNs should sound good

Hey Doc, should sound good with the HDN's.
I got a similar Ibanez S series, photos below.
I love how it plays and sounds and the shape of contoured body feels really confortable when playing. The floyd rose even keeps pretty good tune and stays flat. I scored this off a mate for about $450 about 8 years ago maybe, its got EMG active pups and the middle pickup isn't even wired up. Bridge pup is coil splittable.
It needs a good dusting and polish !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Hey Doc, should sound good with the HDN's.
I got a similar Ibanez S series, photos below.
I love how it plays and sounds and the shape of contoured body feels really confortable when playing. The floyd rose even keeps pretty good tune and stays flat. I scored this off a mate for about $450 about 8 years ago maybe, its got EMG active pups and the middle pickup isn't even wired up. Bridge pup is coil splittable.
It needs a good dusting and polish !

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Hi wokka,


That Ibby of yours looks cool too, love the blue finish on the body, my Ibby is finished in what Ibanez describe as Weathered Black, the bridge on my Ibby is Ibanez's ZR Bridge, originally it had a centre-detent function that was supposed to stabilize the bridge and help it return to it's neutral position better but the centre-detent function stopped working properly and I removed it and made it fully floating, I'm thinking of changing out the ZR bridge for a Schaller Lockmeister Floyd Rose since it seems to fit the body routing.


I bought my Ibby from a Music Shop called Cool Bananas, the guitar cost me $899.00 brand new.

nice one Doc sounds good

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

nice one Doc sounds good

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Cheers, my Ibby is Ibanez's S420WK S Series model, I brought it back home from uni on Wednesday with my Squire P-Bass and some other gear, when I got the guitar home it needed a set of new strings so I put a set of new 46-01 gauge Fender Bullets on it, the low E-String kept going out of tune and I traced the cause to the neck shifting in the neck pocket due to some lose neck screws, once I tightened them up the tuning was alot more stable.

think you mean gauges 46-10 Doc ? imagine how often a 1 gauge string would break !

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

think you mean gauges 46-10 Doc ? imagine how often a 1 gauge string would break !

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Hahahaha...my bad wokka, I blame that on my atrociously bad typing skills, yeah I meant 46-10 gauge strings.

Gotta love the Ibbys.

Cheers for the comments everyone, I've done a before demo recording and now I'm in the process of installing the new HDN pickups, the metal pickup ring-mounts are looking a bit cruddy so I'm using some Brasso Metal-Polish to get them looking smikky again.


I have to admit that, from looking at the original wiring of the control cavity, the wiring was a bit of a dog's breakfast, all tangled up, so I'm going to see if I can neaten things up a bit.


Stay tuned for more updates.

Update:


I have finished doing all the re-wiring and everything seems to be working like it's supposed to, I found that out by doing the pickup tap test, all I need to do now is re-string the guitar with a set of new Elixirs in 46-10 gauge, tune the guitar up, and do a play-test of the new HDN pickups.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Update:


My Ibanez S420WK Guitar is back up and running with it's new HDN pickups.

First Impressions:


To my ears, these Entwistle HDN pickups don't sound anywhere as overbearing as the Inf1 and Inf2 pickups did, the guitar sounds more "Rock" than "Extreme Metal", the annoying tone it had before is gone and now the guitar sounds more like a Stratocaster with Hot Pickups, that's unusual because these HDN pickups are supposed to be High Output types, the Neodymium Magnetic Pole Pieces are strong magnets, I have adjusted the pickup heights so that there's about a 1/16th inch gap between the E-Strings and the tops of the pickups when the E-Strings are fretted at the 24th Fret (the guitar has a 24 Fret Neck).


I'lll post links to the before/after sound demos later on so stay tuned.

I always lusted after the olympic white JS1401 http://www.joesatrianiuniverse.com/w...nez-js1401.jpg

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Originally Posted by Nickosaurus

I always lusted after the olympic white JS1401 http://www.joesatrianiuniverse.com/w...nez-js1401.jpg

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Now that....is one cool Ibby, if I had the money to easily afford one of those I'd get the Top End Pro Music shop to order one in for me in a flash.

Update:


I've just finished recording an after demo of my S420WK with it's new HDN pickups installed, here are links to the before and after demos, note that the original pickups and the new ones are high output types so dirty sounds will sound a bit harsh:


Here's the before HDN installation demo:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...K%20Before.wav


Here's the after HDN installation demo:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...WK%20After.wav

Update:


If you're wondering why the HDNs don't sound great, here's why, one of them (the bridge one) had been wired-up incorrectly at the factory and only one of the coils was functional, the other one had been wired so that the short wires coming out of it were soldered together, the wires that should have been soldered to them had also been soldered together, the bridge HDN pickup should have read 16k on my multimeter but was really reading 8k, I have since fixed it so it works properly, I can't believe it had came brand new and incorrectly wired from the factory.