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