Ibanez PGM700

The Paul Gilbert Ibanez Pgm700wht is a guitar that was on my wish list for a long time.
So I started out to build one my self.
I did this in the days that I had no experience in custom guitar building at all.
I made a few bodies to try-out the routing on the body and for the binding.
To be true, this is my second attempt to build a good PGm700 model.
For my first, I made a calculation mistake on the neck-heal and set bridge.
So the guitar was only in tune up until the 7th fret, from there it was totally un-playable.
Because of this, I waited over 2 years to than again give it a try to make this beautiful guitar myself.

Since I had some more experience in building guitar now, I had some more confident in building my new one.
Because I had this confident, I knew that I would pay again a good price in the paint job, to the same painter that did my Ibanez Jem7vhw.
I started again with a picture copied on a copy machine onto some A3 paper until I had the right size to work with on my template wood.
For this I used the “Hard-board” which I could place on the Maple wood in which I want to make the body from.
Again, I left some more wood at the “out-line” of the shape, since I needed to route the binding in to this body.
So that I could sand it out again, so that the binding on this one would be even with the body shape.


	Neck: Inlay: Body: Fret Neck: Middle: Bridge: Switch: Bridge: Nut:


	Custom Jetking Pearl dot inlay PGM violin shape Medium frets Dimarzio Super Distortion None Dimarzio Super Distortion 5 way Gibraltrar II Black plastic




		For the paint job, I contacted the same company who did the paint job on my custom Ibanez Jem7vwh. I wasn’t sure if they would do the f-hole sticker job of me, and I needed to know if they where able to cover up the black binding so once it was painted, the black binding would still be show able. The neck was something else that needed some attention, since I changed the head and inlay on the neck. I spray painted the neck my self, and on the side of the fret-board there needed to be taped off so the color would stay as it was. The problem was, the paint I used was just 1 or 2 layers of paint. And when the neck was painted, and you would remove the tape which you used to cover up the sides of the neck, you could also remove my layer of paint. Once the neck was done, they installed the black Ibanez decal, and did again a clear coat layer on the skull white color. Only this time, they also clear coated the sides of the fret board, just to be sure, that there would be a even feel between the two colors of the neck side and the fret board side. Again they did a really amazing job, and I all ready asked them to do me two other jobs for me.




			For this I used the same Original Ibanez Jet King neck as I used on my previous attempt on building a PGM700. This time I would go even closer to the original look of the PGM700 guitar. I totally re-shaped the head, re-installed some new pearl dot inlay in a dark brown fret board. For this I needed to tape away the frets, so I could stray-paint the total fret board and nut. From there, once it was dry I could clean up the neck by removing the tape from the frets and I could start with dripping the new inlay holes. This was a bit tricky, because I had to be careful on the depth of the holes and the inlay would no longer fit in. Before all of this, I did some copy machine technique for the head of this guitar. Which I later used for the drawing on the original head, and from there I could fill out the original main tuning holes with a ½cm piece wood and sand it out. And from there the neck was ready to go to the painter.







				The body is a 2 piece maple wood. I did some drawing on the body for the 2 Humbucker pickups and neck. Step by step I got closer to the right depth and size for this, and I had to try over and over again if the neck was still in place. From there I started with the binding on this guitar. I had this binding-routing tool from the Stewart-MacDonald’s site to route the binding into the body. I had never done this before, and because of this I tried some testing routings on a left-over piece of Maple. This work out great, and one I was confident enough, I did the same thing on the body. To install the black plastic binding, I used so PU glue to hold the binding onto the body. Along with 100 rubber bands, I kept the plastic binding in place. And the only thing I had to do was……waiting until this was dry. So I could then again remove the rubber bands. From there I could start to sand it down again, since the PU glue “bubbled out” more then I expected it would be. But this was really helping me out, filling out the “little holes” between the wood and the binding









		As for the parts, I did the same as I did on the neck. I used the same parts that I have used on my previous attempt guitar. I took of all the parts, except for the cover plates. On my first PGM700, I did all the covers made in black, but for this on I wanted to be white. So the body would look like it was just one piece, and this turned out to be amazing. The pickups are 2 Dimarzio® Super Distortions wired up to a 5-way switch. On my first build PGM700, I didn’t know who to install the ground wire to the bridge. And I had to drill a new hole from the neck pickup to the bridge hole. This time I had the change to fix the problem right away, so I started to add the ground wire into the hole of the neck Gibraltrar II tune-o-magic Bridge. Since I drilled out a “lower-ring” to fit for the bridge holding pin, I was able to drop the wire into this hole around the bridge holing pin. And it was tiding up itself once I installed it into the body. This way I had a very good, ground wire connection from the bridge to my pickups and switch.


	I really love the shape and form to the body, and I really think this turned out to be another great successful project. Still I am working on some other Paul Gilbert projects, but for now this is one of my favorite models. This guitar rock’s with a very ‘80/’90 sound of Paul Gilbert. This guitar is set-up with a 0.09, 0.11, 0.16, 0.24, 0.32 and 0.42 set of Dean Markley blue steal strings and of course there is the black Dimarzio Clip-lock Strap.


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