Lazarus! - Ibanez RG350EXZ | Black | Modified HH Configuration

Lazarus is finished in the traditional RG colour palette of black, black, a little more black, and enormous white shark teeth.

Subtlety has once again been successfully avoided.

At his core is the classic Ibanez RG recipe: a basswood body with those familiar sharp contours, bolted to Ibanez’s wonderfully skinny three-piece Wizard III maple neck, topped with a bound rosewood fingerboard, 24 jumbo frets and unmistakable sharktooth inlays.

It’s thin. It’s flat. It’s fast.

Basically, the sort of neck that looks at the first three frets of a pentatonic scale and asks whether we’re planning to do anything else today.

But Lazarus has undergone a little alteration during his previous life.

The RG350EXZ originally left Ibanez with an HSH pickup configuration.

Lazarus has apparently decided that three pickups were showing off.

The middle single coil has been removed, leaving him with a much cleaner HH configuration, accompanied by a replacement black pickguard.

Two humbuckers. No middle pickup getting involved.

Apparently even RGs occasionally discover minimalism.

And then we get to the bridge.

Oh good.

Another one.

Lazarus is equipped with Ibanez’s Edge-Zero II double-locking tremolo with ZPS3Fe stabilising system, designed to help the bridge return to its zero position and generally make living with a floating trem slightly less like negotiating with an angry mechanical octopus.

There is still a locking nut.

There are still fine tuners.

There are still springs around the back.

There is still absolutely no sensible reason to decide you’d quite like to try a different string gauge fifteen minutes before leaving the house.

But once properly set up, the Edge-Zero II is a seriously capable piece of hardware, allowing everything from subtle vibrato to the sort of dive bombs that suggest somebody has dropped a wardrobe down a lift shaft.

And Lazarus has now been properly sorted.

He’s been through our full Stray rehabilitation process, including a thorough clean, fret levelling, crowning and polishing, fret-end attention, hardware and electronics checks and a complete professional setup.

The glossy black is glossy again. The frets are gleaming. The shark teeth are ready to bite.

And that trem has been persuaded into behaving itself.

Pointy. Black. Slightly modified. Mechanically overcomplicated.

Essentially everything an Ibanez RG ought to be.

The name Lazarus came about because this particular guitar was finished immediately after we’d declared our five-day celebration of Ibanez RGs officially over.

Apparently it wasn’t.

RG-eek rose from the dead.

And Lazarus was responsible.

Rescue • Restore • Rehome