The Story of B.O.B. Part 2

Ok, so in Part 1 I left off with my misguided idea that I would rewire this Ibanez like a Gibson Explorer. Still, I think, not a bad idea, just maybe not practicle.

So, after letting the project sit for well over a year, I finally decided that I wanted to play around with it again.

One of the contributing factors was finding a brand new, still in the box, Gibson Burstbucker Pro neck pick-up at a garage sale for $4. Yep $4, I love garage sales. Having always loved the way the Ibanez played, but never really liking the sound, I decided that that is where the new pick-up needed to live. So, it was off to storage to dig it out.

In going through the parts, one look at Mt. St. Solder on the volume pot convinced me that I needed to just replace the electrical components. Luckily I had, on hand, an old ESP M-100 that had many issues of it's own, so I robbed what I needed from it. Volume and tone pots, capacitor, three way blade toggle, and wiring. Since it was all factory done soldering on these parts, I just left it all together and put it in. Unfortunatly, when I did this project I wasn't thinking about doing this blog, so I didn't take pics of this part of the process.

Here's B.O.B.'s Gibson pick-up, in place.



I decided to leave the middle pick-up out because it never really served much of a purpose to me. The bridge pick-up is the stock Ibanez. I have just recently gotten a replacement for it in a batch of guitar parts that I picked up off of Craigslist. I don't have a clue who made this replacement, but it looks well made and I figure it's worth putting in to try out. I can always take it back out if it sucks and I've been thinking about a Seymour Duncan JB anyway.

The last step in getting B.O.B. playable again was the tuning machines. I had a set of Sperzel locking tuners on hand. They're kind of a funny fit, but with the theme of scrounged items already in place I figured, why not?





With that final step taken care of, I put on a set of strings and went to playing. I was kind of surprised. I figured the holes in the body from my idea of rewiring to be more like my Explorer would have messed up the tone of the body somewhat, but if anything it has a little more sustain than I remember. The Gibson pick-up is HOT. It just screams on leads and is perfect for rhythms as well, so I actually rarely use that bridge pick-up.

Through the process I fell in love with this guitar, and it has become my favorite, at least for the time being. But you're probably wondering "Why B.O.B.?".

Old B.O.B. was named after the little robot from Disney's The Black Hole, and like the B.O.B of the movie, my B.O.B. is a beat to hell, obsolete model with an inexplicable Drawl, but he still kicks the asses of newer, more sophisticated models.

And that's the story of B.O.B. Next up, I'm going to go over the Strat that I built from Official Fender parts a few years ago.

The Story of B.O.B. Part 1

Well, since I'm still working on getting the shop in order so I can start working on new projects, let me start out with posting some of my past projects.

I'm going to start out with my most recently built friend. This is Old B.O.B. or my Duct Tape Masterpiece #1.



B.O.B. started life as a somewhat stock Ibanez EX370 that I bought several years ago because I had never had a guitar with a Floyd Rose.

I quickly found out that someone had been jacking around with the wiring and there where a lot of "interesting" examples of soldering. It wasn't but a couple of weeks into having it that the tone pot just stopped working, and within a month two of the tuning machines broke.

After buying my Gibson Explorer I decided that I'd really like to rewire the Ibanez to the same configuration the Explorer has. It was pretty much trashed anyway, so I didn't see any reason not to experiment. : )

My first plan was to route out a cavity for a 3-way toggle and drill holes for the extra volume pot.





Somewhere during the process I lost interest and let it set for a couple of years and as you can see by the wounds in the body I never ended up going that route.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Story of B.O.B.

My Goals for This Blog

It's my plan to use this blog to chronicle my exploits in building, repairing, moding, and fabricating all things guitar.

I called it My Duct Tape Masterpieces, because that's what my first few projects have been.

Always a fan of renowned luthier, Eddie Van Halen, (insert knowing wink here) I started as a kid with modifying my guitars with whatever parts I could scrounge up. My very first project was to rattlecan paint my Harmony Strat copy my folks bought me for Christmas when I was fifteen. I mean, come on, what fifteen year old aspiring Metalhead wants a sunburst Strat copy? : )

Electrical mods, pick-up upgrades, neck swaps, you name it and I've done it over the years.

While I still like to piece things together from parts nobody ever intended to go together, I'm also finally in a postition to start designing and building my very own guitars from scratch.

So, in that spirit, I've started this blog to keep track of that journey and maybe there are folks out there in Cyberspace that are interested in what I'm doing. That'd be cool. : )