dwenius

It's a 1978 Ibanez MC-400 Musician. It's got a neck through design, with maple and walnut for the neck. The body is walnut top and bottom, with a mahogany core. You can't see it in these pix, but the bridge is mounted on a solid block of brass that is sunk into the body of the guitar, so, sustain = Yes. Plus all manner of nice little "we are a fledgling Japanese company who are trying very, very hard" touches, like gold-plated brass hardware, abalone dot markers, and pearl tuners. It also has whack electronics, including three way toggles for each pickup (serial coil, parallel coil, coils-out-of-phase), an onboard preamp, and a 3 band eq. Instead of a volume/tone knob combo, you get "volume" and "gain" knobs for the pre-amp, then an on/off switch for the EQ. Should ve versatile enough (cough).

I have been looking at these for a while, and bid on several, but the issue got a little more pressing when I discovered that the Kahler locking trem on my old Peavey guitar was on its last legs. It has allen screws, andwhen I went to replace a string I discovered that two of them are stripped. Kahler went out of business a decade ago, killed off by the floyd rose people, so replacement parts are now made of unobtanium. Ebay auctions want upwards of $150 for a replacement Kahler, and I think I paid less than that for the entire guitar in 1990 (note to JMU peeps: yes, from Shannon Dove). So: complicated. Might be time to retire the workhorse. Back on the "wheee!" tip, if I got a guitar made new this year with the same features as the mc-400, it would cost upwards of 3 grand. I got this one for about 1/4 of that. Ergo: score!