Hi Everyone!

Here are the results of the refurbish of the Ibanez® JEM7V! It took roughly two days to get this cool guitar looking good and playing healthily again!

To get the bridge looking as best as we could we had to start by disassembling it and cleaning each individual component.

It takes a good amount of time to de-burr and polish these up without going through the gold coating. It's not perfect and there is still some pitting and corrosion but on the whole it looks a lot better than it did previously and saves on buying a entirely new bridge or sending it away to be re-coated.

The fretboard took a good amount of work to remove all the dirt and grime but we're quite happy with the results. After scraping with a razor blade and cleaning solution we went over the board with 3000 grit wet/dry paper and then again with a Dremel® polishing wheel and wood treatment compound. Once the board was nice and clean, smooth and free from debris we hand polished with polishing paper and a final lemon oil treatment.

The fretwire was also treated to a light levelling, re-crowning and polishing. Luckily none of the frets were bad enough to warrant changing completely.

The machine-heads look so much better after a good clean out and polish. Thankfully the pitting was very minor so we were able to bring them back to an almost new standard.

The knobs came back to their natural white with a good going over with a nylon brush and some cleaning fluid.

We even got the nut clamps looking great with a bit of elbow grease and time!

Here's the headstock all assembled again and looking a lot better with the finish polished and free or grime!

We replaced all of the gold fixing screws with brand new ones and made sure all the pots were firmly secured to the body and all the electrics were working well. We cleaned all the solder contacts and got rid of all the irritating buzzes and crackles when plugged in.

All in all this guitar just needed a bit of TLC and time spent and it's come back to it's former glory quite nicely!

Hope you enjoyed reading about this job and stay tuned for more updates and posts as they come! Happy shredding!

Best regards,
Mike & Martin

Hi Everyone!

Here we have another refurbish job! This time on a a good ole' Ibanez JEM7V!

Pretty legendary guitars in their own right the JEMs were Steve Vai's Signature guitar series and came in all different models and some very interesting colour schemes. This one was a pretty standard white and gold affair but had been laid up for a while and was showing noticeable wear & tear and some bad metal pitting in places.   

Here you can see that the trem has some fairly bad pitting and tarnishing of the gold finish. This kind of wear is pretty difficult to tackle as the gold is only a thin coating and any abrasives will rub through and expose the metal underneath. Without buying a brand new trem or re-coating the old one you can use a razor blade you can gently scrape some of the pitting off and using a hard nylon brush remove the worst of the corrosion. It's then a case of lightly polishing the good areas back to decent shine. It's not a perfect restoration but it does make a noticeable difference. See upcoming Part 2 for the results!

The Ebony fretboard had seen much better days and you can clearly see how bad the skin, grease and salt build up is here. The fretwire was also quite tarnished and in need of a good spruce up.

This is an example of how around 80% of the, previously gold, screw fittings looked like.

You can see that there was a lot of built up dirt on the finish, the body was the same story and it was more grey than white. You can also see the state of the machine-heads. Quite tarnished and a lot of built up dirt!

Here you can the dirt build up and discolouration of the knobs and pickup plastics. 

There was also a great deal of crackling when played plugged in and one of the tone knobs was very loose and rattling around on the scratch-plate.

All in all not too bad of a condition and mostly just wanting a good clean up and fettling! Upcoming will be part 2 where you can see the results of our work.

Best regards!

Mike & Martin

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk

Hi Everyone!

So after a good week or so of cleaning and refurbishing the Gibson® LP has been restored to its former glory! We managed to keep everything original apart from the saddles for which we changed out for Graphtec® replacements.

This is after the bridge had been disassembled and cleaned throughout. A lot of elbow grease and metal polish was used in the process but the results are plain to see!

The Graphtec® saddles add a nice contrast to the chrome bridge as well and really help with keeping a stable tuning!

A nice shot showing the the Tune-O-Matic stop bar after another deep clean. Luckily the chroming hadn't pitted too much and we were able to bring it back to looking almost new!

As you can see the output jack has polished up very nicely! We weren't able to bring it back to perfection as the chrome pitting was too deep to bring back to a flawless finish. We were able to polish the mounting screws quite effectively as well which meant keeping more of this lovely guitar original!

The machine heads cleaned up very well with some metal polish and a thorough going over with a Dremel® polishing wheel. The turn a lot more freely and they hold tuning with a lot more stability!

Here you can see the machine head mounting washers before and after cleaning! We went over each individual component with metal polish and a Dremel® polishing wheel. Time consuming but it does give very good results!

The fretboard took a lot of work but ended up coming back to a decent condition. We first had to rub the wood down with a cleaning solution to free up the deeply ingrained dirt. The next step was to gently scrape the fretboard with a razor blade to clear the free'd dirt and get the worst off. It was then a case of rubbing the wood down with 3000 grit sandpaper and then rehydrating with lemon oil. The fretwire was cleaned, levelled, re-crowned and then polished back up to a mirror finish! Luckily we didn't have to replace any frets and were able to salvage the originals!

We tackled the guitar's fading finish by using progressively less abrasive rubbing compounds until all of the fading and swirl scratches had disappeared. It came back up to a beautiful deep gloss and has regained it's shine! As you can see the chrome pickup covers also were able to be returned to high lustre.










After all the cosmetic refurbishing the last thing to do was to replace all the broken solder joints, dismantle the electrical components, clean them and make sure there were no crackling or buzzing once it was plugged in!







A final set up and minor adjustments and it was looking and sounding as good as it did coming off the hook in 1976!

Hope you enjoyed reading about this job! It was a pleasure to work on this model and we hope it has many good years of playing ahead of it! 

Any questions or comments please feel free to email us!

Best regards,

Mike & Martin 

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk

Hi Everyone!

Over the last couple of weeks we've been working on a beautiful 1976 Gibson® LP Standard! Over the years it had been heavily played and put away without being cleaned or maintained. The state we received it in was quite impressive! Click the images to enlarge! We tried our best to keep as much of it original as possible and got away with only changing the saddles in the end!

As you can see the bridge is in a pretty bad way with a lot of built up dust, grease and corrosion. The chrome has almost completely become matte with tarnish and the bridge saddles would not move on their adjusters.

The strings were like elastic bands and felt as if they'd been living in the sea for the last 10 years. Machine heads were gummed up with a lot of corrosion and dust. The chroming had completely tarnished and the plastic pegs were encrusted in a thick layer of dust and grease.

As you can see the chrome plate for the output jack was completely tarnished and the screws were completely rusted and hard to turn.

The pictures don't really do it justice but the fretboard looked as if it had the full 38 years of sweat and skin build up on it! The frets themselves had tarnished badly and had visible lumps of crud underneath them.

The electrics were crackling and buzzing when plugged into an amp. After investigations we found many of the solder joints were on the verge of breaking entirely and many of the components were badly corroded.

The guitar's finish was very dusty and was on the way to becoming matte. running your hand over the body the lacquer felt rough to the touch and was covered in grease spots and built up crud.







It's taken a good week of work to get this guitar looking and playing well again! Tune in for part two where we'll go through what work we did and how it looks & plays now!

Best regards,
Mike & Martin

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk

Hi Everyone!

Just to show off our artistic side, our luthier was feeling adventurous one day and decided to design and engrave this image onto the bodies of one of our very old stock guitars.

Best Regards!

Mike & Martin

Hi everyone!

Nice quick job we did the other day to kick things off with! We had a great looking LTD® H-1001 come in for a pickup & hardware change and a general set-up.

We fitted a beautiful set of Bare Knuckle Aftermaths with Tyger stripe covers and a couple of satin silver Telecaster style knobs. It really makes the guitar stand out more and it plays & sounds fantastic!

If you have any questions or comments please leave them here or feel free to email us!

Best regards!

Mike & Martin

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk

Hi Everyone!

Here is a quick run down of what kind of services we offer here at SWG. Use these as a guideline but please bear in mind we are very flexible and any fine details you might wish to discuss can be done so via emailing or calling us.

Full Custom Builds

We offer two main options when it comes to custom builds:

1. You can choose one of our existing designs and then we will build your custom guitar using that as a base.

2. You can come to us with a design of your own and we will work closely with you to bring that design to life.

Pricing For Option 1

With so many variables in every guitar build it's hard to pin down a standardised pricing system. With that in mind be aware that all prices listed below are subject to a slight change depending on availability and customer requests.

For a build using one of our designs the base price will be £850. This includes the choice of selected woods, hardware, electrics and pickups. The standard finish we offer is a natural wood with a satin cellulose finish to protect and seal the wood.

We then offer a selection of additional options and extras, should you wish to modify the build further. These extras can be things such as:

• Minor shape modifications
• Exotic woods & Tops
• Any hardware or electrics / pickups not included in the base selections.
• Custom paints or finishes
• Custom decals
• Custom inlay
• Binding options

All of the above would be on a "price on request" basis and discussed while we work through the build with you. We are very flexible and will make every attempt to bring everything within your budget without sacrificing your vision for the build.

Pricing For Option 2

Due to it being almost impossible to account for the variety of designs and options you could come to us with to build, we cannot offer any kind of base price here. If you wish to discuss a design of your own you would like us to build then please get in touch and we'll be happy to help!

Mike (Luthier) - 07923388193

Martin (Sales) - 07896663914

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk

Servicing / Repairs & Modifications

Alongside our custom builds we also offer servicing for your existing instruments. This can be anything from a simple string change to full restorations.

As with the custom builds this is a very much a "price of request" area. Please get in touch with us if you have any work you would like carried out and we can give you a quote!

Please feel free to comment or ask questions about the various services we can provide at the below email address or our Facebook page!

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk
www.facebook.com/stonewolfguitars

Best regards!
Mike & Martin

           Welcome to the Stone Wolf Guitars blog!

Stone Wolf Guitars is a two-man team of dedicated and passionate guitar & music lovers. The company was founded on the idea of providing solid, reliable and beautiful custom guitars to professional and non-professional musicians alike.

All of our guitars are 100% hand made, using no CNC machines or automation. We love making these instruments and want to keep the build process as "hands on" as possible.

We're not afraid to experiment with build materials and our resin/wood hybrid series is a perfect example of this. While we believe wood should still be at the heart of a guitar, we don't shy away from adding synthetic or otherwise non-traditional elements to our instruments.

Our customers are encouraged to be as involved as they wish, and we'll keep you updated at every stage of the build. Customers are also more than welcome to visit our workshop to see the build as it progresses.

We hope you love our guitars as much as we do and we're always willing to take on your dream guitar and make it a reality.

Best regards!

Mike & Martin

swguitars@hotmail.co.uk
www.facebook.com/stonewolfguitars