Acquired from Andy’s in Denmark Street, London, in a moment of madness after a very long, liquid lunch with my old boss in about ’78. Like the Gibson L5S folly of which it is a copy, it’s very, very heavy, but is generally well built. A nice touch is the sunburst running over the rear control cavity cover.
The exception is the pickups, which are gold foil over plastic and sound really thin. I never liked it, so thought I’d ask Kevin Aram to convert it to fretless after hearing a Phil Catherine & Larry Coryell album with some great fretless guitar work on it. The result is a useful instrument with a beautiful ebony board, but also one that these days gets the Ibanez collectors’ backs up. Hey ho.
Out vile frets!
It’s quite common for people to report a big improvement in an instrument after removing the frets.
As for collectors, surely this is now unique?
I have a 2399DX from 1973 but the pickups have been chopped and changed and I am struggling to find anything near what would have originally been in it. Any help would be much appreciated in what I need.
Pat Brown
London
Like the Gibson L5S of which this lawsuit Ibanez is a copy, I’ve seen exmaples with both the early ‘low impedance’ pups and the later regular humbuckers. If it’s the latter, you’re in luck because they’re a standard size so you can insert whatever design you like and it will look original. If it’s the earlier long, rounded low impedance knockoffs, it’s much harder. If you have the original pups, you could get a pickup specialist to insert new innnards to the tone of your choice. But if you don’t I have no idea where you would find such rare things. Maybe Guitar Parts Classified on Facebook or the Ibanez collectors page? Good luck! ps I’d like to see a pic or two if you have them…
Probably nasty, low-quality replicas of Gibson low impedance pups like mine. If so, I’d imagine impossible to find. Or perhaps humbuckers as on the later Gibson models. You’ll be able to tell by the routs in the top. The low impedance ones are narrower but very wide, whereas humbuckers are self-explanatory. Good luck!