1. This one, again, is the older style Ibanez® Edge locking trem'. Definitely my choice for a bridge, over anything else. This guitar originally had the Lo-Pro Edge Trem'. I had a white 550 with the "cosmo black" hardware; I sold [that one] to a student of mine, and part of the deal was that he got the newer Lo-Pro trem' and I kept the original older style Edge As far as I know, none of these "DX" models had the older style bridge. As in all my Ibanez bridges, this one has been modified for the retro-fit "collet-style" trem' arm. The only real flaw in the Edge-Trem' design was that sTooPiD plug-in socket arm!
   (This pickguard is also from that white550 I sold. I usually have them made custom for each guitar, but I already had this one, it fit, and the color makes this virtually the opposite of my "yellow550".)

2. "Another Handle". Woo-Hoo!!! Here's where I really have some fun! Probably the only thing I actually copied from the JEM models. When I saw the first 'root-beer' model it was all over for me! Had to have it! Not only my 550's get this handle. A few other guitars (including two Charvels have had this done. I don't like the look of the standard finger hole "monkey-grip" as much. The orginal design Steve Vai put in his own guitars also looked more like the oval handle. The monkey-grip style wasn't developed until Ibanez® made Vai's guitars.

3. I've been scalloping my necks for many years. Virtually every neck I have is scalloped. The maple fretboards get the total neck scalloped, and my rosewood fretboards are scalloped from the 12th fret-up. THIS neck has also had the back radius re-shaped by hand. It's a little different take on the profile of my Yellow 550. A bit less rounded, a little thinner, and the scalloping on this one's just a bit more shallow. My special tung-oil finish hasn't aged on this one yet, but in a couple-few years it'll have that warm tone! People freak over the shape I got on this neck. They like it even better than my '87.

4. I've already described my pickup config', but I'm adding an extra note on this to share a little secret... Without telling HOW I do it, a couple of my guitars have a minor-experimental modification to the magnetic field. It was a totally on-tha'-fly whimsical experiment I tried one time. I was recording with a guitar that didn't have this mod', and something felt like it was missing?? Then... I remembered... I had tried my new magnetic-field trick. From then on, I've done it to a few to see what kind of results I get from the tone, and DeRr... I'm adding [this note] because it's been done on this one too.

5. This is my most common switching set-up: The one closest to the selector turns the neck pickup on regardless of the 5-way position (this gives me 7 positions instead of 5). The next one down is the on/off switch. The lowest one sets the coil-tap option for the bridge pickup (this only functions when the 5-way is set between the bridge & middle pickups). The 5-way is wired like a standard 550 (or JEM) 1-bridge humbucking, 2-bridge/middle (outer switch options coil-tap), 3-middle stacked single-coil, 4-middle & neck, 5-neck single humbucking.
...and Yes, that IS a Barbie sticker next to the pickup!