Dom's Rambles

I bought my first proper (i.e. from a name manufacturer and expensive) electric guitar in 1981. I originally meant to get a PS-10 Ibanez Iceman, an example of which was hanging up in Rose Music (as was) on Tentercroft Street in Lincoln. Unfortunately by the time I’d got enough money together for the deposit they’d sold the thing and, for reasons I can’t remember, couldn’t get hold of another (although I have a feeling it might have been something to do with the production run coming to an end).

After an afternoon’s twanging about on some other models I opted for a Washburn A-20V. In 1984 when I was living at a flophouse on Arboretum Avenue I accidentally ran over the guitar on my flatmate’s moped which I had ridden through the front room while I was ripped to the tits on magic mushrooms (what rock ‘n’ roll decadence eh?). This put an eight inch crack down the back of the neck which properly buggered the thing up and resulted in it being unable to stay in tune for longer than five minutes.

I then had to fall back on a 1981 Ibanez Strat copy which I’d picked up for a song a couple of years previously (I don’t remember the exact model although I’m pretty sure it was one of the old Blazer line).

In late 1985, while my embryonic Lovechild was developing, I saw, had a play on and fell instantly in love with a none-more-black Ibanez Destroyer DT-350 X-Series.

This was my workhorse axe throughout the lifetime of the band and beyond. In early 1987 I modified the guitar by removing the front pick up, which I never played on, as well as the associated selector switch and volume and tone controls and had a mate who worked in a car body shop fill and paint over the resultant holes.
In 1990 this guitar was stolen by a mentally ill and sexually dysfunctional ex-flatmate who was famed for having an IQ in minus figures as well as a willy of such infinitesimal size that it has baffled medical experts the world over and I have absolutely no idea what became of it (the guitar I mean, not his willy). Suffice it to say that I have been trying – and thus far failing – to locate another example ever since.
If anyone in Sheffield has knowledge of this guitar’s whereabouts then let me know and I’ll make it more than worth your while. It’s a pretty distinctive looking instrument to start with and there can’t be many single pickup models kicking around.

In early 1993 I bought a Washburn MG-40 as replacement for my beloved Destroyer and this was what I played until I happened across a Jackson Performance Series superstrat in the 2001 sale at Sound Control in Sheffield.

Guitars like this one are a little like Japanese motorbikes in that although the performance and engineering are always impressive they are designed with short term fashion rather than longevity of appeal in mind. This means that they go out of style and after a few years can be picked up for a fraction of their original cost. Had I wanted to buy a comparable Jackson in 1986 I wouldn’t have got much change out of a grand and a half. Fifteen years later I paid a little over three hundred quid. Also, am I the only one to have noticed that the upturned pointy headstocks so popular on heavy metal guitars of the Eighties are at exactly the same angle to the horizontal as a hard-on (believe me, I’ve done a side-by-side comparison and have had a protractor out to confirm this)?

In early 2005, and in an irresponsible fit of profligacy, I shelled out for the Alpine White Les Paul Custom I’d lusted after for as long as I have been able to form a bar chord. It takes a while to get used to the slightly shorter scale on this guitar but once you have done and have heard the sound it makes when plugged into an overdriven Marshall Amp (or rather an indistinguishable simulation of one courtesy of the phenomenally splendid Line 6 POD) then believe me, you won’t ever want to play anything else.
That said, I’ve recently found myself pining for my first love, the Ibanez Iceman.

Unfortunately, the only contemporary production model is the IC-400 which retails somewhere between £300 and £400 and, to my eyes at least, looks really naff with that tacky bridge set up. Consequently I have been doing a weekly trawl of e-Bay looking for a reasonably priced vintage example - so far without any luck. I’ve also been doing a little online research.

One interesting titbit I turned up was the story of how Paul Stanley’s classic mirror ball Iceman came into being.

I also discovered that in 1995 Ibanez released the IC-350 which was exactly the same as the PS-10 except that it sported a Floyd Rose licensed locking tremolo (the model was discontinued shortly afterwards as 1995 was the height of the house music scene and not the best time to be trying to sell a guitar aimed at the moribund heavy metal market).

Now this beastie looks the absolute bollocks and I must have one!
So far the only example I’ve managed to turn up has been on the American e-Bay site – and the guy refused to ship to the UK.
Still, I live in hope of finding one closer to home