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I saw that on Ebay too! Very nice. I would love to hear some sound clips of that thing. The buy it now price is kind of high. Seems even higher now that I know how to build these things! Best Regards, Mike.

Give this link a shot: Dating your Ibanez by Rich Harris at Ibanezrules.com Good luck! Best Regards, Mike

I found this article just now when I searched the net to find out what "stickered" meant: Storing Lumber I can't vouch for the validity of the article, but it does seem to touch on a few of the points made by others in this thread. Best Regards, Mike.

What a great idea. For my tastes, I would have limited it to two different types of veneer. Maybe a light and a dark. A+ for creative and inovative idea. Best Regards, Mike.

RGGR, The plane on the stand is called a Dazzler made by Great Planes. It does in fact have a very large airfoil surface area which make for some killer acrobatics (think 3D). In a couple of the pictures you might see the remains of an Extra 300 which met a rather untimely and spectacular end when the wing mount broke loose mid flight. However, I have a direct replacement which I have yet to build which you can see in one of the pictures if you look closely. Yes, the neck will be the standard 22 frets. I'm trying to decide between rosewood and ebony for the fretboard. I'll be putting a graphtech nut and Planet Waves Autotrim tuners on it and a Hipshot hardtail bridge. Here is a close up of the Birdseye blank: The dimensions of the blank are 73.5 in long by 4 in wide by 15/16 in thick. Should be enough for two necks easily. Best Regards, Mike.

Well done! Wow, that's three JS projects in a row now! I like the color. Very nice. Best Regards, Mike.

Thanks Darren. I know you're a big Ibanez fan since I'm pretty sure I see you over at JEMSITE all the time! Kamsahamnida! Thank you Hyunsu! Compared to the woods you get, mine is merely pedestrian! I will do my best. RGGR Wrote: I know exactly what you mean. My first project took almost five months! This one so far has taken me two Saturdays worth of effort. I have a very nice piece of Birdseye Maple for the neck. This weekend I ordered three fretboards from warmoth (Birdseye Maple, Indian Rosewood and Ebony - probably go with the Rosewood, although the Ebony might look nice too) and a truss rod from Stew Mac so I can get started on the neck as soon as everything arrives. Shouldn't be more that a week or so. I'll try and take more progress photos for this project. By the way, I like the way your neck looks. I think for my next project I will try a laminate neck. They look so cool. Not for sale! Too much fun! Actually, the experience of building R/C models came in handy when I started building guitars. It gave me experience working with CA and Epoxies, sanding and even finishing skills. Best Regards, Mike.

Great job as usual Setch. I'm particularly impressed with the work you did on the binding and the burst. Good stuff. Best Regards, Mike.

Well, that's two votes for black! Honestly, that's the direction I was leaning as well. I played around with the Virtual Guitar online program and decided I liked the black hardware best. I'll try and post screen captures of the Virtual Guitars in the next day or two. RGGR: Thanks! I'm watching your thread to see how yours is going. Any more progress? You're doing the body shaping now I think. Man, that sure is a lot of work, right? On mine I think I am going to thin down the horns a little bit and deepen the lower cutaway some more and then I'll be done with the shaping. Would love to see some more pics of your guitar! Best Regards, Mike.

Thanks Scott! Go for it! I'm sure you could knock one out pretty fast. Best Regards, Mike.

Hi all, I've always loved my JS series Ibanez guitars (I have two JS1000's - a Black Pearl and a Brunt Transparent Blue). One of my favorite JS guitars in terms of looks is the JS6 which can be viewed at Rick Beatty's site here: http://www.excaliberstudio.com/js6.html Unfortunately, this guitar is no longer being produced. Therefore, I thought it would be a great second project for me. I finished a JEM replica not too long ago and I thought this would offer additional challenge with the radiused edges. I already had a glued up blank composed of two pieces of authentic Honduran Mahogany. I used the readily available plans for the Ibanez Radius. Here is a sample picture of my progress so far: Here is a link to a couple of other progress pictures: Additional Progress Pictures The outline was of course done with a bandsaw. The radiusing was done with a spokeshave and two surforms (rat tail and plane) followed by 100 grit on a rubber block. Like the Ibanez JS6, it will be a hard tail. It will also be tung oiled like the JS6. However, I'm not sure if I'll go with the chrome hardware or perhaps gold or black cosmo. What do you guys think? Thanks for looking! Best Regards, Mike.

Dave, Is there any way we can see where your awesome vine ended up? I'd love to see that neck on a finished guitar. Great work. You too Alex! Best Regards, Mike.

Love it Dave. Awesome work as usual. That's a 1/4 maple top right? Did you have much trouble bending it? How did you do it? Great work. Best Regards, Mike.

Thanks for your comments everyone. You're the second person that offered to buy it from me. I took it in for my guitar lesson this week and couldn't get it out of my instructor's hands! He wanted to buy it as well. Also, funny you should make that comment about factory JEMs because that is why I decided to make my own in the first place (a large part of the reason anyway). It's getting hard to justify spending the $1800 or so that they want for your limited choice of a blue or white JEM. Not to say that those aren't nice guitars, but they do tend toward the mundane and are relatively expensive for guitars with opaque finishes. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a guitar I want some serious eye candy in return. I may go all the way with my next guitar and add in the monkey grip, pyramid inlays and lions claw. Now that I have some experience I feel more confident that I could pull it off. Again, thanks for you kind words. Best Regards, Mike.

It suprised me too. In fact, I wasn't even sure I should stain it. I was going to leave it natural, but in the end I said what the hell. I think Drak's Solar Lux Black technique really helped to bring out what little figure there was. I literally pulled the maple out of the bargain bin at the local hardwood store. Who knew? Best Regards, Mike.

Thanks for you kind words. I agree. On this guitar, the contrast between the deep blue and the white maple looks really nice. The deep blue and the greens and blues in the abalone reinforce each other nicely as well. ASM answered your question regarding natural binding. It's not easy to do. Next time I will clear coat the binding edge first and then tape and stain to make cleaning up the line easier. Thanks Setch. Coming from you that means a lot. I respect your work enormously. Oh wait...I forgot to thank my sponsors! I'd like to thank Delta power tools for providing the inexpensive, but workable band saw used in the making of this guitar. I'd like to thank.... Thanks again everyone. Best Regards, Mike.

Hey All, Well, I finally finished my Jem Tribute guitar. Well, really more of a USA Custom as it turned out. See my original progress thread here: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...=0entry120854 Here is a teaser pic: See the rest of the pics here (scroll down for the finished pics): http://www.pariah-now.com/Guitar%20Build%2...uild%20Page.htm It is really quite pretty in person with a high WAF factor (wife acceptance factor). The specs are as follow: One piece alder body with a 1/4 in maple top (bargain bin) and natural binding. Quarter sawn maple neck with maple fret board with abalone inlays and abalone side dots. Satin finish on fretboard and headstock and tung oil on the back of the neck. Grover 18:1 mini locking tuners with graphite nut. Dimarzio Evolution neck and bridge pickups. Gotoh Wilkinson Bridge. Gold 3-way switch gold abalone topped dome knobs. Jem style output. Flame maple trem and control cavity covers. Special thanks to Wes for suggesting adding the maple top when I overplaned my alder blank. Special thanks to Drak for the stain black - sand back - stain desired color technique (I even used Solar Lux black!). Special thanks to Brian for the Jem style output tutorial. Special thanks to whoever it was that posted a bass or guitar with wood control and trem covers. I forget who you were, but thanks for the idea whoever you are! And thanks to everyone who posts in general (and of course thanks to Brian for hosting Project Guitar) because I really don't think this project would have come off as well as it did without you. Thanks! The guitar plays and sounds like a dream and sets up better than any of the production guitars I own. I did the fret level myself using a sharpening stone. Right now the action is at 1.0 mm and no buzzing or fretting out. Thats pretty low. I may actually raise it a bit. Thanks for taking a look and let me know what you think or if you have any questions or comments. Best Regards, Mike.

Wow...looks great Mike! Think you'll ever try a "from scratch" guitar? I think you'd be really good at it. Best Regards, Mike.

Mike, Just run down to the local hardware store and get some #0000 steel wool. I know it sounds brutal, but trust me it works great. It will take some of the shine out of the tung oil finish, however. When I did my neck this way it left it with a sort of semi gloss or maybe even satin like finish. Felt great. You're doing a great job! Can't wait to see the finished product. Best Regards, Mike.

Looks like you did a great job stripping the black Mike. I've had great success with tung oil and think it looks really good on both maple and mahogany. Just my 2 cents (Canadian).

Hey Mike, I could of sworn there was a special tool for this, but a quick internet search did show anything. Has anyone else heard of this tool? Anyway, good to see getting started on your next project. Your strat came out nice. Makes me want to redo mine. Best Regards, Mike.

No big deal to me, I'm just glad to help. Every online community has its "forum police" (even this one although this forum seems to have fewer of them and the members are much more willing to be helpful), but I'm not one of them. If I see a post that I know has been addressed before, I realize I'm in a unique position to help and I'm perfectly happy to do so. I hope you found the information useful! Best Regards, Mike.

Howdy, Check out this link for a bunch of advice from lots of the knowledgable people on this forum. Advice Thread My most recent contribution would be to be careful when you shape your neck near the back of the headstock. I accidently took a little bit too much off of one side and now it looks ever so slightly lopsided. Nothing fatal. Best Regards, Mike.

Hi Southpa, I think this link will answer a lot of your questions: Trans Blue Dye on Maple link As for depth, Drak has gotten some amazing depth on his figured tops by using black dye first, sanding back to the grain and then going back over with the main color. Very cool. Read through this thread Hope that helps. Best Regards, Mike.

I think a picture would help immensely. I read Brian's response carefully (I had to think about it a bit) I think he might be correct. A picture is worth a thousand words, eh? Best Regards, Mike.