Incoming NGD: I bought something..

[scole]

Good luck with this clue. Found it online this morning and pulled the trigger since I've missed out on a few other sales. It shipped UPS Ground from the Miami area so I won't have it until probably Monday.

[Randy]

Looks like a Warlock or Beast with the Speedloader

[Chris]

This is on point Randy, has to be. That'd be my guess too.

[scole]

Nope!

[Chris]

Washburn RS8V?

[scole]

nope. It’s not a metal guitar..

[Darren]

Ibanez AWD 83T

[Randy]

[scole]

Ibanez AWD 83T

Yeeup, there it is- an Ibanez AWD-83T

I love my AS-93 but I got GAS for these once I discovered they existed in strat body shape. It was only made for only 2 years, and this one has the floating trem. They do pop up semi-frequently but not always with the trem arm included. This one appeared in Guitar Center's used stock this morning for $370- not the best price but not really a bad price either. It had the trem arm so I decided to jump on it and bought it.

I'm expecting to have to do a pickuip swap eventually. Originally I was thinking of some Ibanez Super 58s but I go for Seymour Duncan Seth Lovers instead. We'll see..

[Iron1]

Congrats! Now use that puppy to contribute a SAW entry!

[Budda]

Seth lovers are a nice set of pickups, that eastman 335 I had sounded great.

[Shawn]

Nice.....those are pretty cool. I would love one those. Congrats!

[Darren]

That’s pretty awesome. I forget these existed, and would love to pick one up. It’s kind of checking all the boxes of things I want right now.

[scole]

Definitely getting excited to play it. while I’ve known about these for a few years (I like the fretboard on the AWD82 more- it’s a little fancier), I only discovered last night that there’s an AWD-102 model which actually came with the Super 58s which I’m considering for the pickup swap. The 102 doesn’t have the floating trem but it’s gorgeous.

Anyways, I just ordered some Grover locking tuners which I think will fit without modification (406s) so I think I can knock off at least one upgrade fairly easily.

[Webdood]

That is pretty sweet. I don't think I have ever seen that model before.

[Leah]

Huh. Like an Ibanez version of the Schecter C-1 E/A. Super cool, love the idea of a hollowbody Strat style with a trem.

[Chris]

This might be the most wrong Randy's ever been.

[scole]

So the guitar arrived yesterday. The box had a slight dent or two in it but I'll give credit to Guitar Center for packing it thoroughly enough (there wasn't a case) to survey the drive from Ft Meyers to here in the Seattle area. It's kind of hard to judge condition based on the photos that GC takes but this one looks pretty clean. It's also super light- about 6 lbs 9 oz. It feels like it was made from balsa wood.

These guitars were made in China and that does show as you look at the components. They did detune the guitar for shipping so I got to try the stock tuners while bringing it back up to pitch. They're sloppy and I'm glad I've already got a set of replacement Grover locking tuners on hand for a swap. The pots and wiring are also cheap so my complete re-wire and pickup upgrade are warranted. I also think there's a grounding issue as I have some buzz depending on what I grab and what I don't.

Volume Pot:

Tone Pot:


3-way switch:


Output jack:


I've got a slew of orders inbound so I probably won't tackle the upgrade until next weekend..

[scole]

In addition to reviving my new MP-1, scoring the Digitech Time Bender pedal at a ridiculous price, I also finished the upgrades to this guitar. I started the work on this last weekend but my brand new soldering iron crapped out after a half afternoon I needed a break from of the problems I was having with this makeover so I just decided to wait until I got the replacement iron.

So- everything came out of this except for the bridge ground wire. The pickups going in was a Seth Lover set, the volume/tone pots were 500k CTS, the 3-way was a Switchcraft, and the output jack was a Pure Tone multi-contact jack (these really feel solid when you insert a cable). Before starting all that, I swapped the stock tuners for a set of Grover 406C locking tuners. They were a direct replacement since the holes lined up. The tuning pegs are a little smaller but I don't mind it. The left hand tuners are Grovers and the right hand ones are the original Ibanez tuners:



Now onto the pickups and electronics. I decided to use a jumper wire for the capacitor between the volume & tone pots. I constructed a wiring jig using some 1/4" plywood I had handy I drew up a wiring diagram so that it would match the orientation of what I was looking at while doing the work:



The CTS pots have a wider diameter than the original pots so I used a manual reamer to enlarge the volume/tone pot holes. I just picked one up at Harbor Freight for $3.25 and just cut off the first inch or so of the tip since this is a semi-hollow with not a lot of depth to accomodate the reamer as it works. I just went slow and performed many short rotations to get the right fit with minimal damage. Here's the reamer at work with my Seth Lovers already installed:



Once I knew every component fit, I worked on the wiring harness. It was daunting before I got started but wasn't too bad in the end. I did make a couple mistakes and would change things slightly. Here's the jig with the harness after I wired in the Seth Lover set:



As you can see, I did use a jumper wire from the volume to the tone pot. In hindsight, the only thing I would change is reversing this wiring so that the capacitor was physically at the tone pot instead of at the volume pot. This is where Ibanez placed their tone capacitor originally and it makes sense since there's so much room there at the tone pot. I realized how tight things would be near the volume pot as I was trying to put this into the guitar. Around this location is where the two humbucker wires and bridge wire enter the bottom hollow cavity area.

With the controls and pickups connected (but still outside the body), I connected the guitar to an amp to test things out.Nothing. I get some grounding buzz occasionally but definitely no output from the pickups. This frustrated and stymied me for a while. I eventually discovered that the output wire from the volume pot was somehow grounding itself out on the volume pot as it left the post. Not sure exactly why but I guess I should have clipped back some extra outer braid strands. Once I tweaked that, I finally got volume out of the pickups and all seemed well.

I removed everything from the jig and put it into the guitar, once I had it all in, I tested everything again. A new set of problems- I only had output from the neck pickup and the volume pot wouldn't go to full silence and it operated backwards. Ugh.

I pulled the volume and 3-way switch back out to troubleshoot. As it turned out, my job of grounding the volume pot post to the volume pot body wasn't good. In my frustration of trying to figure out why I wasn't getting any output originally, I ended up soldering a small jumper wire between the pot body & post. I removed this, did a better job, and the volume pot finally went to full silence. The reverse pot operation was also an easy fix was you realize what's going on. Again, I tried so many things trying to debug the zero output that I reversed the wiring of the volume (as shown in the photo above). Swapping it back fixed the issue.

The last thing to fix was the lack of bridge pickup output. Once again, I eventually realized that the incoming pickup wire braiding was somehow grounding out the signal. I cut down the wire to be soldered, cut back the braid more, and slipped on some heat shrink tubing to remedy that. Pretty happy with the finished product and really happy I didn't have to pay a shop to do the work. I'm loving the sound of the Seth Lover set so far.

[Randy]

Thorough work and a great write up. Play the piss out of that thing 👍

[Mike]

Damn. I'm never patient enough to be that thorough - and you're also reminding me why I hate that style of pickup wire.

Good job, though, and I agree with Randy's take.

[scole]

Hah, thanks man! I’m impatient and it’s hard to slow down and be more methodical rather than impulsive but I didn’t want to have to spend $100-150 to have a shop install them (or worse re-do what I attempted). One benefit of getting older is thinking more before acting