Like I said before, I am a big KISS fan from an early age.
From the days that Paul Stanley was still an endorsement guitarist for Ibanez, he designed some very beautiful Iceman guitars.
One of those guitars was called the cracked mirror iceman, which was used on many songs and live gigs.
On the “Sure knows something” clip you could see the real beauty of this guitar.
And because of my love for KISS and Ibanez Guitars, I wanted to try to make a Paul Stanley Ibanez iceman.

The first iceman body I have made ended up using for the Ibanez PGM600 custom that I made.

Because I had still some problems with finding some of the parts that was needed for the cracked mirror, especially the mirror plate.
Once the Ibanez PGM600 was done, I was working on another Iceman body and started to look again for this mirror plate.

I contacted Christopher Woods again, asking if he had some contact for me, when I could buy this plate.
At first I was planning to use a real glass mirror, break it and glue it into the body.
But by using a real glass mirror, the body got way to heavy, so I was looking for some plastic acryl mirror plate.
Chris had some contact, but those people told me that it was easier for me to order it in my own country to save my self allot of shipping fee.

I found a computer customizing store in the internet here in Holland, and they where selling those acryl mirror plates, of 50x50cm and 3mm thick.
Once I ordered the plate, I could continue with Ibanez PS II cracked mirror project.

For the body I used 2 pieces of Maple wood glued together, which I left for about 4 days to dry.
Once this was done, I took the same routing template as I used for the Ibanez PGM600 iceman, since this guitar had the same shape and form.
The only difference on this guitar is the wholes for the pickup switch selector, the volume and the two tone knobs.
The cavity hole at the back of the Iceman body is the same as I did originally on my custom Ibanez PGM600 iceman body.
So to find the right spots to add the volume and tone pots, I used 3 sample pot’s and placed them in the space of the cavity, keeping in mind that I needed some free space for the EMG Jack, and the added 9volt battery for the EMG81 and EMG85 Zakk Wylde set.
From here, I started to round the pickup holes into the body.
Like always, I do this by free hand and I don’t need to use a template for this.

Before I did the routing for the binding I routed the neck pocket first.
So I had the right size for the binding to end and begin on the body.
Once the neck pocket was done, I did the binding by using the Dremel binding router guide, the same way like I did on the Ibanez PGM700 and Ibanez PGM600.
When this was all set on the body, I could start to clean up that whole thing so I could start on the Humbucker spaces.
Still I had to keep in mind, that later on the 3mm thick mirror plate would be added.
Drilled all the wire holes in the body to the cavity hole and from here I could start on the mirror plate.

Custom Gibson SG neck
Pearl block inlay
cracked mirror top
Medium frets
EMG 81 Zakk Wylde set
None
EMG 85 Zakk Wylde set
3 way toggle switch
Chrome Gibraltar III Chrome
Cream plastic

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

At first I wanted to use same neck that I had in mind using for the custom Ibanez PGM600 iceman.
It was already with a re-shaped head, and fitted perfect on this body.
This was/is an original Ibanez Reb Beach RMB10 neck.
On that neck I did some head re-shaping, I used the same technique for this as I always do on my re-shape projects.
This whole re-shaping was already done, but the neck was put away because I started to use an original Ibanez iceman neck on the Ibanez PGM600 guitar.

On the original Ibanez PS II cracked mirror guitar there was a different neck inlay than this Original Reb Beach neck had.
In the past I did some inlay re-shaping, but those where all dot inlays, and the inlay that I needed for this cracked mirror Iceman was a pearl blocked inlay.
And to save me allot of trouble on doing this my self, I started to look on eBay for some other neck that I could use for this.

I found one in a Les Paul kind of setting.
Meaning, the inlay was what I was looking for, and even better this on had some cream neck binding and a all ready installed nut.
The only thing on this neck was, I needed to re-shape the head on that neck, since this had a les paul shape head.

I contacted them, and closed the deal.
Once I had the neck, I started to re-shape the head into an Iceman shape.
For this I used a 2cm thick piece maple wood, routed out the Les Paul head shape in this so I could fit in and glue them together.

For the pick-up wiring, I used a variation on the original Zakk Wylde EMG diagram.
On the original set, there where 2 volume and 2 tone pots which mastered each there own pickup.
For my configuration I used a diagram of the Kirk Hammer KH-21 set, which are 1 volume and 2 tone knobs.
At first a wired it up with 2 volume pots over 1 tone pot but this was very confusing while I was playing.
I use the volume knob a lot when I am playing, and now I had to pay attention to 2 knobs to kill my sound after I had played a lick.
Standard, each volume pot controls a pickup, which are both connected to the tone pot.

Now I have it the other way around, now there are 2 tone knobs controlling undependably each pickup.
Since this is an Active EMG set, you don’t need to wire a ground wire from your electronics to your bridge.
Which could save me a lot of trouble, but I did use a wire from the bridge but I didn’t wire it to the electronics ground wire.
I did this, because if I ever wanted to change the Active pickups into some passive set, I could never get the bridge pocket open to wire this up, or else I would damage the mirror plate.
So this is done for future use only, and I left the wire under the bridge pickup.

The pickups are hocked up to a 9volt battery, which is hidden in a clip in my cavity hole-pocket.
This cavity pocket was totally shielded.
I am not sure if it would have any impact on the pickups system if I didn’t used the shielding tape, since this is an Active set.
But again, if I would add a passive set in the future I would had to shield it.
So I guess that this is also for future use, and what difference does it make if this has no reaction on the active set at all, better save that sorry.

To be sure that I would have the right shape and pieces, I made a paper cut out on the Iceman body.
After a while, I had the right pieces and I used this “template” to do the drawing on the back of this mirror plate, which I needed to cut out by hand.
For this, I draw the lines on the back-end of the mirror plate and routed on those lines.
Once all the pieces where cut out, I tried to fit them back into the body.
For the fillings, I used pearl-white mosaic filler which I found on a Dutch store on the internet.

This needed to be a filler that could be cleaned from the mirror plate without scratching the glass.
This filler helps keeps the edges of the routed mirror clean, and protects your hands while playing this guitar.
Once the entire mirror parts were glued on the body filled with the pearl filling, I could clean out all the “left-over-mirror parts”.
Starting on the pick-up pockets, for this I took again the Dremel Power tool with an Ø 5mm sandpaper-well and I slowly sanded down all the edges up-close to the wood.
I did the same for the tune-o-magic, Stop Tail Bridge, volume, tone knows, pick-up switch selector hole.
Once this was all cleaned out, I found out that the mirror had some little scratches on top.
I cleaned this up with silver polish, but once this was done I continued with the neck.

For the paint I called the same painter who did my last 4 previous projects.
I wanted to body and neck in some pearl black metallic paint; because the chrome and cracked mirror plate would really jump out once the total guitar was painted.
I handed them all the parts and some Ibanez decal that needed to be added on the Ibanez head before they would coat the whole project.
The mirror plate needed to be covered up before painting and coating.
I was thinking about to coat the mirror plate if self just as a protection on it front end.
But they told me, that the mirror would turn into some blurry mirror plate, which wasn’t really nice.
So I left it the way it was.

Most of the parts are found on eBay, but first I started to look at the Ibanez website if I could find most of the part numbers which was used on the original Ibanez Iceman guitars.
Still I wasn't really sure what kind of pickups I would use on this guitar, so I started with the parts I did know, starting with the bridge, tailpiece and tuners.

Once I found those, I started to look around for the volume and tone knob's, switch and pickups rings.
In that time I was doing a project on a Ibanez RG model for Jan Vermeulen, where I had to change the original pickups in the a set of EMG's.
Those sounded so wild, that I also searched for a set my self for this guitar, it was the EMG Zakk Wylde set, which is an Active EMG81 & EMG85.
For all the missing and remaining parts I went to the Music Maniacs.