The Lepharian

My thoughts: "A simple pickguard for my guitar should be available from every larger music store around."

Not a bit of it! It is almost impossible to find an original pickguard for a Gio. The one I bought had to be returned because the drillings didn't fit my guitar's body. So after a lot of searching, typing and frustration I came across REDzLINE, an american one man firm building custom guitars and - DAN DAN DAAAANN - Pickguards!

Some e-mails later (Adam is a very friendly, likeable guy by the way), I had all the information I needed to place the appropriate order and could finally take delivery of it yesterday.

A little evaluation: With $54 + shipping it's not very reasonable, on the contrary it seems very robust and valuable. I will have to rasp away a tiny bit of it at the neck, since it's too thick, but that's a minor issue. Thankfully I discovered Redzline, otherwise the whole project would have been in danger.

Next steps (in no particular order):

1. have a new tremolo installed by a nearby guitar shop (expensive)
2. Buy all the electronics and the remaining Pickup (less expensive)
3. Solder the circuit (not expensive, but the hell of a job to do)
4. Apply Spertzel guitar machine heads (little expensive)
5. final touch (mostly round the neck)

anticipated finishing time: Can't tell any more

-L-

I have just received the newly painted body of my fretless guitar-to be. The former puke-color green finish has gone and cleared the way for a simple but beautiful black. Contact to the painter was established by Heiko of Verdant Effect (www.verdanteffect.com).

Next step is installing the new pickups, electronics and pickguard, maybe accompanied with the new tremolo. Due to the costs this will probably take several months.

No more jabbering for today, just look at it (sorry for the poor photo quality).

-L-

Today I have initiated a new mammoth project. Since I have acquired a new guitar recently, I decided to radically modify my old one. This happens to be the first one I ever got and further the only one I still possess, besides the new one of course. It's an Ibanez GRX 40, a really crappy GIO in green which came in a starter's bundle more than ten years ago. Originally it was only planned to make the neck fretless, but things escalated

What I am now going to do is defret the neck, have the body painted black, build in three new Pickups (including a Seymour Duncan P-Rail on the neck which will require a complete makeover of the electronics), apply a fixed, string-through bridge and add security locks and a new pickguard.

At this moment I have removed strings, Pickups, electronics, pickguard and tremolo, so I am working on a bare wood skeleton right now.

Defretting the neck is planned for monday. Hopefull I will be able to take some photos.

-L-