Ibanez AX120

This one was pretty funny - I picked it up on Craigslist.

When I got it, I noticed that playing it, it would 'clunk' -

That's because the humbucker screws were missing, and the pickups would 'flop' out onto the strings if you tilted it just so! The method they were using to maintain the pickup height was....amusing, as I later discovered.

The strings were also wound wrong on the tuners so it was binding badly in the nut, and the action was predictably pretty crummy, with a lot of relief in the neck.

One of the tuners was missing the plastic compression ring that keeps it tight, so it was flopping all over the place, and the bridge pickup appeared to be dead.

The neck was also just super, super filthy - gross with finger cheese.

The bridge pickup was an easy fix - just a loose wire.

I stole the compression ring from a cheap Squier tuner to replace the missing one.

Looking at the pickups themselves, I discovered the previous owner's height adjustment method - balls of paper shoved under the pickups! What people will do to avoid buying a few screws...

I put a full set of pickup screws in, and while I was at it, added chrome pickup covers which looked really nice and also warmed up the tone a little (or at least, I think so).

I cleaned the neck - repeatedly - until it finally didn't leave gunk on the rag, then polished the frets and oiled it up.

Strung it up (properly this time!), adjusted the neck relief, action, and intonation, and she was ready to go!

This one went to a friend from work. I really liked the way it played! (Although the visual change wasn't that dramatic)

Done-