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.