This lady is as mysterious as she is beautiful. I have seen about four of these with a metal Ibanez logo before, but never one in such great shape and with a ‘paint-on’ logo like Ibanez did in the transition year of 1967.
These pickups look like bass-humbuckers, and can be controlled separately. Operating this requires quite a manual:
The black switch on the left manipulates the two left oblong magnetic pickups; the black switch on the right manipulates the other two pickups on the right.
So… left switch for bass strings; right switch for treble strings.
If you put the left black switch in the upward position, then the upper left pickup comes to life. Put the left black switch in the downward position; then the lower left pickup works. Switch in the middle position and both left pickups are on.
The right black switch works the same way, but for the right pickups only.
The little white switch on the bottom turns it from mono into stereo. And yes – she even still has her original stereo plug!
That’s about all I know. Please add or contact me if you have any information.
11/18/2020 at 10:36
Greetings from South Africa, I picked up this same model about 18 years ago and have had her since, though she’s not in quite as good a shape as yours. The tremolo arm is missing and a lot of the screws have been stripped, pickup springs are shot and there is a ton of rattling. I hope to get her restored soon though!
Does anyone have any more information on this guitar? I’ve searched Ibanez back catalogues and every place I can think of but this post is the most detail I could find.
11/19/2020 at 12:11
Hi Nic,
Welcome to Ibanez-Vintage.net!
Ah – great to hear you’ve got one of these beauties, too. Cool! Good luck on restoring her to her original condition. A lot of ‘trem arms’ were taken off and lost over the years. Pity. Hope you can find a replacement. And I especially hope you will get the electronics right.
South Africa? It does not surprise me to hear you’re from South Africa, because almost all of the examples of this type of guitars seem to come from there. I’ve seen 4 specimens of this guitar on a South African ad-site. And I know of one other, that was found in Scandinavia. And that’s about it… She’s a rare and mysterious bird.
I bought my guitar from a UK seller… and he got it in South Africa, too.
Mine is the only one (so far) I’ve seen with a ‘painted-on’ logo (gold sparkle paint). They did that because they ran out of metal logos in 1967, and they didn’t know how to make an inlay logo yet.
All of the others I’ve seen had a metal logo on the headstock.
What more can I tell you about this guitar? Not a lot, I’m afraid.
This guitar was not shown in any known Ibanez catalog. First of all: we don’t have all the catalogs.
Two fantastic resources:
https://www.ibanez.com/usa/support/catalogs/
(scroll down to see the old catalogs)
Or
https://www.vintagejapanguitars.com.br/catalogos-ibanez-guitars/
But unfortunately… there are no Ibanez catalogs for 1967 to 1970. And that’s the period in which this guitar was built.
The second thing what makes it difficult is this:
In the 1960s, lots of Japanese guitar plants made guitars for lots of different brands. In the book “History of Japanese Electric Guitars” (by Frank Meyers), about 20 different guitar plants are shown in the Ibanez chapter. All of them made guitars branded Ibanez. And they also made (the same) guitars for other brands.
And to make it even more difficult: some plants made the exact same guitar.
A friend of mine has the same guitar, branded “Mark Twain”.
What about your guitar? Could we see a few pictures, please? I’m very curious!
Cheers from Amsterdam, Netherlands
Leo