I bought this guitar in 2010. I was in the shop looking for a smaller-than-dreadnought guitar, and immediately noticed this beauty winking at me. Love at first touch.

Finding information on this was not easy – it would seem these were only available to the East-Of-Greenwich world, not in the USA. Opinions on it thus varied form junk to OK, with most junk opinions coming form West-Of-Greenwich posters, who did not have access to one. (Well, seems all non-J-Custom/-Fujigen/-Made in Japan Ibanez guitars are deemed to be junk. But, I had the chance look at, fettle, handle and play a “Prestige” recently, I still like my cheap Indonesian JEM Jr a lot, thanks. I cannot (yet?) afford a “real” JEM, and I would probably swop pickups in that as well, if I ever get one.) I think this is the JEM333. If so, Wizard II neck (nice), Edge 3 tremolo (apparently not nice – I do not dive and pull, so no problems yet), INF1, INFS1, INF2 pickups, medium warm (DCR reported as 8.4 KOHm, 8.15 KOhm, 16.4 KOhm respectively). Much more output (and darker) than I was used to, much more guitar than what I could do justice to. Can do justice to.

I played it for a few years before dressing a few frets. Machined the locking nut flat on the bottom, and then shimmed it for nice action at the nut end of the neck. The barrel type output socket soon failed (it made intermittent contact with every lead except the supplied, short “Ibanez” lead, trying to fix that ruined it). I merely fitted a normal socket on a plate covering the rear routing for the original socket wire access. Might someday fit a new barrel output, if I can find a quality item. The original was quite flimsy.

I eventually lowered the pickups (when I learned about that on the ever-helpful internet), and it is quite nice now. Even so, I debated for years about fitting “better” pickups, eventually setting my sights on Alnico Pro II’s. The “Slash” set would be better for this guitar, I think, but they are not four conductor pickups. I do not do the distorty metal thing, I prefer clear, clean, defined, responsive, bright without icepick tones. I cannot yet seem to successfully obtain smooth, sweet distortion/overdrive. I eventually bit the bullet and bought DiMarzio PAF 36 Anniversaries, with a Red Velvet for the middle. Specs on the Red Velvet is bottom-heavy, or maybe high-frequency poor, but I will be running it with a 500 KOhm pot, so should work out well. I did order a True Velvet as well, just in case.

The Ibanez pickups are close to F-spaced at the bridge (52.5 mm), but 50 mm spaced for the single coil and neck pickup. The guitar needs a F-spaced single, but the standard INF1 neck lines up quite well with the strings. Unfortunately the PAF 36 neck I bought is Normal spaced (48 mm), and thus narrower spacing than the INF1 pickup. Many opinions say this will not really matter. A ruler shows that a F-Spaced pickup in the neck will line up slightly better with the strings. About 1.5 mm better? The standard pickup was off-set to the bass side anyway, with the high E running close to the outside edge of it’s pickup pole. Going from that, the normal spaced PAF 36 should work OK.

Interesting, these PAF 36’s are of the “Air bucker” type. Looking at this, while DiMarzio markets this as a good thing, lower magnet effect from Alnico 5, smoother vintage-ier tone, etc., in reality it saves them money with spacer plates and stuff. The screw poles screw into the plastic bobbin only (5-40 screws), and is a free fit through the bottom plate. The slug poles press against the bottom plate. The gaps between the poles and the magnet is taken up with plastic washers.

Good, if I ever feel like experimenting, I can reduce the air gap by fitting bigger screws, tapped into the bottom plate, thus increasing the magnetic field at the strings on that side (less treble?), stagger the slug heights (temptation), fit steel rings as spacers, either contacting the magnet, or with a thin spacer to tune the air gap, or, vary the air gap offset between the coils. I can also replace the slugs with screws, with threaded inserts in the bobbin, if I suspect I need more high-frequency response. This should all be interesting. Not now. Not ever, seeing as one has to remove the pickguard to access the pickups. Time for a “Prestige” model – directly mounted pickups, easy to take out and work on. The standard shiny “filister head” screw poles will have to be replaced by black allen cap screws. I can chemically black the slugs if need be. I will not normally touch them, so paint or koki-pen should work fine too. If I do not like the cap screws, well, I can black the standard slotted heads.

The Red Velvet single coil comes with a modern-type polepiece stagger, maybe too much “radius” on the wound strings side for this flat neck, but about what I would have started with anyway. This stagger seems to be close to the “Kinman FLAT stagger”, flat referring to balanced output, not equal pole heights.

Measured DCR readings for the pickups are:

Neck (DP103): Slug coil (North) 3.95 KOhm
Screw coil (South) 3.91 KOhm
Series 7.86 KOhm
Bridge (DP223): Slug coil 4.68 KOhm
Screw coil 4.69 KOhm
Series 9.37 KOhm
Red Velvet (DP174): 8.85 KOhm
(Magnet polarity North to strings)
True Velvet (DP175): 6.22 KOhm
(Magnet polarity North to strings)

The DP103, DP223 and DP174 measure hotter than factory specs (DP103 - 7.31KOhm, DP223 – 8.6 KOhm, DP174 – 8.52 KOhm). Shucks. Mud and compressed sound coming up… Ha ha, compared to the INF specs, the bridge should be bright and transparent. If the INF set is not “airbuckered”, the overall effect should be brighter.

As for the wiring side of things, I never liked the Ibanez volume and tone pot response curve. The volume pot does have a treble bleed cap, though. The plan is to use 500 KOhm Audio pots, a Kinman-type Treble bleed, with 0.001nF capacitor and 120 kOhm resistor, and a 0.01 nF tone capacitor.