Technical Talk - Ibanez Pickups
Most Ibanez JEM guitars have name brand Dimarzio pickups. The RGs are suspected to have no name pickups that are still made by DiMarzio. For Swirl painted guitars, I like to do a direct mount for the pickups. Here are some pictures of how I do the install. For this particular install, I had a set of Seymour Duncan pickups that I traded for.
The bridge pickup is a SH-6b. The neck pickup is a SH-6n.
The metal frame on the Seymour Duncan pickups makes it so they don't slide in nicely. A quick touch on the belt sander took the edge off, then they fit nicely. The screws I use are a bit bigger than the holes in the pickups. I usually drill those out a little so the screw twists firmly. When it gets to the end, a slight bit of muscle twists the screw so that it spins freely in the pickup. When I drill into the body, I mark the drill bit with a piece of tape about so the hole is .5 inches. There is enough room so the screws shown don't poke through.
There is only room for a small spring. I cut the end off a longer spring like this:
I used a Duncan Performer for the middle pickup. Then I used a DiMarzio Yellow top. The top doesn't fit perfectly, but it is close enough.
The two red pickups and the middle yellow look pretty good with this Jupiter color scheme. Yellow/Black looks good too. We have a Dimarzio account, so we can get good deals on pickups. It's fun to match them to the colors of the body.
This one plays nicely. I'll post pictures soon.