Hoshino (U.S.A.) Inc. is the exclusive US distributor of Ibanez® Guitars and Tama ®Drums, and services requests from notable musicians such as Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, George Benson, and Pat Metheny. Ibanez guitars are produced in Japan, china, and Indonesia, and shipped to Hoshino by vessel. When the products are received by the company, each is inspected and set-up by their Quality Control Department prior to shipping to authorized retailers.
The Hoshino Repair Department features specialists in guitar, bass, electronics, and drum repair, and deals with customer returns. "Returned items tend to vary in terms of repair difficulty," says Mike Arellano, Hoshino's Warehouse Repair Supervisor. "Often it is more economical to replace, rather than repair a guitar [or other equipment] based on the price point of the item. However, sometimes we receive older models that have been long discontinued and require parts that we no longer have on hand, or cannot be provided by our factories."
This was the case for the Ibanez 'S' Series, 470 Model guitar, produced from 2003-2006, recently send to Mike for repairs. The instrument had been used heavily over the years, and the fretboard had begun to separate from the neck. In order to resolve the issue, the fretboard needed to be completely removed, then re-glued to the neck using Superbond®, a two-part epoxy.
Unfortunately, working with epoxy is messy, and in this case resulted in the original Ibanez silkscreen logo being partially smeared with the glue. The only way to remove the epoxy was to remove the entire logo. While luckily there were old silkscreens of the Ibanez logo in storage, an ink was needed to transfer properly to the headstock and have a similar "look" of the original silkscreen. After trial and error with one ink with unsatisfactory results, Mike contacted Nazdar for assistance.
With technical support and from Nazdar technicians, Mike received
Nazdar 59135 Gloss Varnish (part of the 59000 Series) and
SIPM571 Non-Leafing Aluminum Paste
(a Nazdar Metallic Pigment), and was able to apply the logo onto the headstock. "The result was perfect," he notes, "I should have contacted [Nazdar] in the first place."
Learn more about Nazdar 59000 Series and Nazdar Metallic Pigments.
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