Ibanez RG550 LTD BK

Neck pickup: Fender American Standard Stratocaster

Middle pickup: Fender USA Yosemite Aln. IV, RWRP 
Bridge Pickup: Dimarzio PAF Pro, DP151F BK
Switch: Fender 5-way selector
Neck: Wizard
Bridge: Lo-Pro Edge
Obs.: HSS configuration

Let's start by the relic'd one :)

If you have seen other pages, I do buy and sell some guitars, here and there, mostly Ibanez. For me, after all these years, Ibanez means "you get what you pay". And this RG550 LTD was bought to set on sale, like other RG550s I've sold. The thing is, although the finish is (naturally) cracked, the playing is just wonderful.

This is my fastest guitar; not only is the original Super Wizard neck very thin, as you may know, but the action is LOW, and it could go lower still, but the strings would be basically glued to the fretboard. I never saw anything like it!

So, since I already had several humbucker-equipped RGs, I took an F-spaced Dimarzio PAF Pro that I've finished in white nitro for the bridge position, bought a Fender USA Yosemite Alnico IV RWRP middle pickup (that I barely use), and a client of mine gave me an American Fender Stratocaster Standard neck pickup he wasn't using. The HSS pickguard is chinese and it fits wonderfully.

The PAF Pro works very, very well with single-coil output, position 2 is very Tele-like sounding and I love it, position 3 is not my cup of tea, as I said (I never use it on any 5-way switch guitar anyway), position 4 is unusable, kind of microphonic, low output and bizarre sounding (was my biggest expectation...), and the 5th position sounds like a perfect Stratocaster would, absolutely love it!

The Allparts CTS 500k started not working when in full 10 after a couple of months (go figure why we pay more for it) and the Allparts CTS No-load 500k tone pot is OK, but nothing out of this world. Still, I love to play it, it's fantastic!