Ibanez S420WK Electric Guitar

[DrNomis_44]

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:

[stan]

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

[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 !

[DrNomis_44]

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 !

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.

[wokkaboy]

nice one Doc sounds good

[DrNomis_44]

nice one Doc sounds good

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.

[wokkaboy]

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

[DrNomis_44]

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

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

[dingobass]

Gotta love the Ibbys.

[DrNomis_44]

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.