Iceman Gets a Bigsby | Part Two

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Part One | Part Two | Part Three

This post is the second of three on a made-in-Korea Ibanez Iceman; more specifically an IC300DM. The guitar was sent in to have a Bigsby B5-style vibrato tailpiece and brass nut installed; and some electronics modifications carried out. In Part One, we looked at the features of the guitar as received. Now, in this post; let's take a look at what was actually done to fulfil the owner's wishes.

One of the first tasks carried out was deepening the pre-routed switch cavity to the proper depth for a toggle switch to be installed. This was carried out with a Forstner bit on my drill press. Following this, the hole for the switch was drilled with a suitably-sized bit. 

Thankfully, a test fit confirmed that the job had been successful. Following this, a hand-held drill was used to create a wiring channel connecting neck pickup and switch cavities. The neck heel tenon was also carved a wee bit to make way for the wiring that was to come.

Meanwhile, the string-through holes needed to be filled and leveled as they would serve no purpose once the new vibrato bridge had been installed. The holes were first plugged with glued-in wooden dowels from both sides. Once the glue had dried, the plugs were trimmed flush and a sealing mixture of wood dust, black dye and super glue applied. 

Once the top and bottom sealing layers had hardened, they were wet-sanded to make them as flush as possible with the surrounding finish. Now, a refinish was not on the cards as it would be too expensive and time consuming. As such, the sealed holes were visible after the job had been done.  

The pickups that were to be installed in this guitar were an Epiphone humbucker in the neck position, and a Seymour Duncan STK-S10 YJM Fury in the bridge. Obviously, the YJM would require some sort of humbucker to single coil conversion ring. Eventually, after lots of careful measuring, both pickups were installed. The conversion ring for the YJM was fashioned out of a piece of black SSS pickguard glued on to a flat-bottomed bridge humbucking ring.

Now it was time to install the Bigsby B5 (clone) vibrato unit. The general rule of thumb was "measure twice, cut once," as there was absolutely no room for error. The three major factors determining correct bridge placement are:

Correct scale length to ensure accurate intonation

In this case, the scale length was 24.75" and as the bridge post studs were already in place; there wasn't really much to do.

String/fretboard edge alignment

Get this wrong and you might have the high E string slipping off the fretboard edge when you play.

String/pickup polepiece alignment

You want each string to pass over the center of its corresponding pickup polepiece for optimum and balanced output across all six strings. Although it's not always possible to achieve this, I try to make sure that none of the strings miss their mark completely. It's always been a matter of compromise, see.

Yet another issue to be taken care of was the new controls layout and related wiring job. Now, as the toggle switch had been relocated to the top bout, that left a large unsightly hole that needed to be filled. We decided to kill two birds with one stone and relocate the output jack to the former toggle switch hole. 

Trouble was, neither an NYS229 nor Switchcraft #11 could fill the void, they were just too small. As luck would have it, I had an input jack from a Marshall amp lying around; and it fit perfectly. With that, the pre-existing output jack cavity on the butt end of the body became redundant. The cavity was plugged with a large wooden dowel; and sealed with a mixture of black dye, wood dust and super glue.

Once the electronics had been wired in place and tested, it was time to tackle nut setup. As I'd predicted, the brass nut was way too tall; so the top was filed down and new string slots cut. Once I'd gotten the string action at the nut just right, the whole nut was reprofiled, sanded; and polished. 

I'm glad I used a set of cheap "stunt" strings for this procedure; as they were totally trashed by this point. Next, the whole guitar was vacuumed clean, and a fresh set of 10s installed. After a proper setup, this Ibanez IC300DM Iceman was rarin' to go :) 

Acknowledgement

BIGSBY is a registered trademark of Fender Musical Instruments Corp (FMIC)