Ibanez GRG project!

 Here is a new Ibanez guitar project. I found a used GRG170dx model on the market and decided to modify it. This model is a decent Ibanez RG style guitar. It's made in Indonesia but the build quality feels quite good. The stock pickups are pretty hot ceramic ones and there is quite a mid bite to its sound. The tremolo system is a 2-point fat-10 bridge made by Ibanez and it's quite stable when not set up for floating use (for dives only).
The GRG1 type neck is a bit thicker than these Wizard necks and to me this is a good thing. It's very playable and I got a very low action with no dead or buzzing notes at all! The intonation was spot on. I have serviced quite a few Prestige and high end RG models and I can say that the humble GRG-170dx sounds and feels like a much more expensive guitar...

Here's more info on the original grg 170dx model specs:
http://ibanez.wikia.com/wiki/GRG170DX

The modification:
At first I though it would be a good idea to repair a few dents and marks of this guitar. Then, I realized the dents were a bit too deep for a quick fix and a touch up so I used some wood putty to cover them up. Then, I had to paint the guitar... But wait a minute! If I 'm gonna paint the guitar, maybe I could modify it a bit!
 I was inspired by a limited edition white Gio RG model that had a single bridge humbucker on it. I like that model so much but it's pretty hard to find... So I decided to make my own version of it!

Preparation and cavities:
 I stripped down the body from its hardware and used 4 different grits of sandpaper to remove the old lacquer glossy top coat. I only remove the top coat on all guitars I paint as the old color and primer coats are pretty hard to remove. The wooden parts are usually protected by the primer and color coats so it's a good idea to leave them on.
 Then, I filled the neck humbucker cavity with a plastic humbucker cover. I know it's a pretty unusual technique but it does work! I also filled the middle pickup cavity with a single-coil pickup cover. I glued the plastic pickup covers in place and then added small plywood and cardboard pieces to fill the rest of the cavity spaces. I also covered up the 5-way switch and tone pot holes. I did all that in order to use just a tiny bit of wood putty. Using large amounts of wet putty and wood filler is not the way to go as it dries up very slowly and it creates all kinds of small surface cracks and holes when it does. So I used a small amount of filler that dried up pretty quick and created a smooth surface after a bit of sanding.

Paint job:
Once the pickup cavities were filled up, I cleaned the body thoroughly and painted the guitar in light blue using a single "Titan" spray color can. The result was good and I could barely see the wood filler traces. My friends could not imagine that there used to be a middle and a neck pickup on that body before I told them what to look for. Finally, I sanded down the back of the maple neck and refinished it in satin clear. The neck feels a bit "quicker" now.

Electronics:
Then I rewired the electronics and bolted the bridge Powersound PSND2 humbucker directly on the body. Having a single humbucker mounted on the body with nothing but a 500K volume pot connected to it, is the recipe for hot pickup output! The lead sound is so amazing!

Hardware and setup:
I decided to use the old hardware that was in mint condition. I could probably place a non recessed licensed Floyd rose tremolo system on this body but I didn't want to mess with the stock configuration and perfect intonation or add a few neck shims and a locking nut. Once I set the guitar up with a fresh set of 0,009" strings, it became quite a shredding machine!

Here are a few pictures of the project:

Cheers,
Thanos