Another Refinishing! Ibanez S Series, NGD

[Brandon Breeze]

So, I've wanted an S Series with a mahogany body in natural finish for quite awhile now. Had to be Korean/Japanese for decent quality. They are pretty hard to come by at reasonable prices in comparison to the non oiled finish equivalents. As a result I started looking around for which models of S Series had Mahogany bodies. I found an S370DX for an extremely reasonably price locally and proceeded to refinish it myself and come up with my own oiled mahogany s series!

Heres an extremely quick break down of the work involved:

Take the guitar apart, as you can see it was a horrible pewter color



After a ton of sanding, not sure what sealer they use, but man was it thick!



Now for the oil! A welcomed sight after so much sanding



Clean up and reinstall everything, bam bam boom, much better looking guitar at a reasonable price

 

[Anonymous]

Damn dude - that came out awesome! Well worth all the sanding effort...

Steve

 

[jkdsteve]

Ibanez S series are great sounding guitars, looks much better au natural!

 

[mudf00t]

Nice refinish

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Thanks guys! It sounds as good as, if not better than it looks too, came with a Duncan JB, & a Dimarzio. I have no idea which dimarzio it is, but I think it's too hot/bright for the neck position, so I may wind up swapping it out for another duncan. I just got done jamming, definitely digging it a lot!

 

[JackBootedThug]

sound any different after refinishing?

 

[Brandon Breeze]

sound any different after refinishing?

Couldn't tell unfortunately, whomever wired it previously did a horrible job, so it sounded really bad when I first got it

 

[Kelly]

Very cool. I had a RG550 that I chipped years ago. The paint had to be at least 1/16" thick.

 

[lukeburke1]

Looks great!

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Very cool. I had a RG550 that I chipped years ago. The paint had to be at least 1/16" thick.

Yup, that's about how thick this one was, although it felt thicker after having to sand it forever. There was a few dings through the paint which I was able to sand off because they weren't that deep into the wood fortunately.

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Very cool. I had a RG550 that I chipped years ago. The paint had to be at least 1/16" thick.

Yup, that's about how thick this one was, although it felt thicker after having to sand it forever. There was a few dings through the paint which I was able to sand off because they weren't that deep into the wood fortunately.

Looks great!

Thanks!

 

[squealie]

I had an old Ibanez R (became the JS model) and had it refinished. The poor guy soaked it in stripper for a week and it barely touched the stuff.

I saw someone make short work of one with a heat gun once. I'll try that if I ever do it again.

 

[Brandon Breeze]

I had an old Ibanez R (became the JS model) and had it refinished. The poor guy soaked it in stripper for a week and it barely touched the stuff.

I saw someone make short work of one with a heat gun once. I'll try that if I ever do it again.

Yeah the heat gun and scraper would probably work well. I used my angle grinder with a sanding disc on this one, it made short work of the finish, but still took several hours of sanding. I did try using Jasco paint/epoxy remover which usually works like magic on the curved part of the horns, it did nothing, I really gobbled it on there and let it set for about an hour, just amounted to wasted time.

 

[Kelly]

Which oil did you use in the refinish?

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Which oil did you use in the refinish?

Minwax Tung Oil

 

[SDMF38]

Looks great!