I'm not totally sure I'm understanding the question. Paul Gilbert's Ibanez uses a Tune-O-Matic style bridge. The only way to install that on a guitar with a tremolo would be to completely fill the existing cavity with wood, refinish it & drill new holes for the post anchors. I probably won't be doing such a video...

if you paint it the oils arent used,its painted so they arent needed,its for raw wood only.

Editing right now actually!

I just wouldn't paint the neck. I've had luck in the past with hitting glossy necks with some 0000 steel wool to make them a smooth matte finish. If you do this be sure to tape off the top and bottom of the neck, possibly the fretboard / binding as well to make sure it comes out looking clean.

Yes you can! Check out my first video for installing the KGC brass block. That entire RG used to be blue. I stripped/stained/sealed it with this same Tru Oil / Wax method & it came out great!

Axe Hacks I've read your thread on SS.org and I must say you've done a stellar job on refinishing that rg570, but do you really need to use pre-stain conditioner? Great video btw!

Dat Thanh I certainly wouldn't say that the pre-stain is necessary. However, it certainly contributed to bringing out the reddish color of the basswood.

It depends on what the fretboard wood is. If it's rosewood, just oil it with something like Music Nomad's F-1 oil. If it's maple, you can finish it with Tru-Oil but I would really only do it without any frets installed. I recently did just this on a project with a maple board & there's no way I would want to try removing Tru Oil from around the frets after it's cured. It would be a nightmare.

Axe Hacks are you kidding? I've refinished plenty of maple necks/boards with tru-oil, while the frets are installed. those frets clean up great.

Rob L I'm about to do a finish with tru oil on the fretboard... what do you use to clean up around the frets?

If you leave it sanded at 1200, your thumb will eventually polish it back to a gloss. If you like the feel though, you can always hit it with 1200 again once that happens. The Tru-oil / wax method is a bit more permanent.

Axe Hacks Thank you!

Broadfall Productions check around pawn shops nationwide. I'm sure they won't mind shipping you one. Check ebay and online guitar/music stores as well. I seem to have AMAZING luck at finding decent guitars for stupid cheap. I found my RG270 for somewhere between $75-$90.

Ralph Guerra If it's rosewood or ebony, you can finish the fretboard with teak oil, tung oil or linseed oil. I've been using raw (not boiled) linseed oil, but it needs redoing every few years on guitars I play a lot. Maple fretboards really need to be hard varnished, so spray with several thin coats of polyurethane. 2-part (catalysed) automotive laquer goes really hard and if you have the kit it works well.

Thanks!!!

Jem gets it

That's actually just a little something I cooked up :-)

damn son, awesome!

just fyi

Filip I got my hands off an incredible $1,300 guitar once from a little old man in a tiny pawn shop in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma once because someone did this and it shattered the trem block. The idiot let it go for nothing, and I got it for nothing. Stupid cheap fix. Idk for all I know the pawn shop owner gave it to me for nothing just to be a nice old man and hook a kid up with a nice guitar, who knows. But the story as I know it sounds better to me.

Why, what do you think will happen? And also he didn't.

Filip he's not planning to keep that trem anyway

Neck angle, man. Without shims to increase neck angle, every Ibanez bolt on pretty much plays like garbage with the bridge & pickups sunk down super low. I didn't mention it in this video because I plan on talking about it in a future vid. That being said, I do agree with you on wanting to maximize contact surface in the neck pocket but in this case I feel that shimming is the better of the two options (awful setup vs. slightly decreased resonance).

Axe Hacks Please elaborate on the neck angle you are talking about here. Ibanez guitars do not have a break angle like a Les Paul as the trem is recessed to some degree. I have tried shims before and they always decrease resonance. The point of an Ibanez guitar is to have a low profile with sunken bridge and strings low and close to the body, the opposite of a Les Paul.

Even though it's not "by design", it is absolutely necessary to increase the neck angle of most bolt-on Ibanez. I'd suggest reading through this setup article from Rich over at Ibanez Rules! : www.ibanezrules.com/tech/grunge/grunge_6.htm That dude's set up more high-end Ibanez guitars than, well, anyone and he uses the same shimming method I do. The guitar he's working on in this example is an extremely valuable Universe model, a far cry from the RG270 I'm working on, yet suffering from the same design flaw. If a guitar plays like crap, it plays like crap regardless of it's original design. As Rich illustrates in the above write-up, having an Ibanez trem too low can even impact the functionality of the tremolo bridge.

Axe Hacks That article is about when you have the trem down fully and you still have a high action. With my Ibanez when I bought it had the trem to high and had shims under the nut and heel which gave a high action set up with 11 gauge strings for heavy rhythm ect. This all felt bad so I removed all the shims and dropped the trem down. At this point the profile was still too high so I Routed 1mm out of the pocket and took 1mm of the heel of the neck so the neck sat 2mm deeper in the body and now the guitar when set up felt very comfortable and (doubled) the acoustic resonance of the guitar. If you have played the JP model you will see it has the trem deeply recessed into the guitar which overall feels far more slinky and comfortable. If you say this is incorrect b'cause you like the strings much higher then that is personal preference. You can take wood away under the trem cavity to give clearance for the trem to operate correctly if that is required but for me shimming the pocket is a big no-no as it reduces the transfer of vibration considerably. All my Ibanez guitars have dropped necks and trems which feels and plays far better.

It's all personal preference man. In my experience, in order for a bolt on Ibanez to be set up comfortably, the neck needs to be angled back ever so slightly. I have never experienced a substantial loss of resonance from doing so.