ITI Project: upgrade plan for my new Ibanez Talman Intermax

This article is part of my ITI project, you can find further articles about this guitar here.

So, what will my ITI (Ibanez Talman Intermax) project involve? First of all, my Intermax is 13 years old and has seen a lot of use as far as I can tell. Some cleaning, polishing and easy replacing is really needed on this guitar now.

1. Nut replacement: the nut has been filed with inappropriate tools and too deep by one of the previous owners

 

2. Saddle replacement: the saddle was sanded previously by someone to improve the action of the guitar. Unfortunately, it was sanded 2-3 millimetres lower than needed, so an extra saddle shim was glued to the original, now too low saddle. The result is terrible, the action is still too low and casuses buzzes here and there. Also, I wonder how the sound transferring capabilities of the original, plastic saddle was affected by gluing a piece of wood to it. Many people claim there is no degradation of sound when you are using a shim extended saddle,but who knows. It certainly looks strange to me.

 

3. Strengthening the bridge: the maple top (which is only a very thin layer over the mahogany body) has a 1cm long crack on both sides of the bridge, which is glued only to the maple top, without any screws. It seems that 13 years of string pulling had it effect on the bridge which slowly  started to move away from the maple top layer. This needs to be fixed urgently.

 

4. Polishing the top: the beautiful guitar top has some scratches from heavy strumming, I would love to see those disappear.

Once the general maintenance is ready, I have a few modifications on my mind, we will see how far my inexperienced luthier hands will go.

1. Installing a midi pickup with a 13-pin output (Roland GK-3 kit)
2. Installing a custom single coil telecaster pickup
3. upgrading electronics with the least amount of modification needed to current setup 
4. installing a battery box for the 9V battery currently located in the electronics cavity
5. do all these without harming the current beautiful style of this Ibanez Intermax

I plan to finish the project by the 1st of January 2013, but we will see, I have very limited free time these days, and I am almost brand new to guitar modifications. I have installed an under saddle piezo pickup with a preamp on one of my acoustics, I have adjusted necks and set up actions a few times, but that was it all. We will soon see whether I am hopeless or I will be able to bring new life into this lovely, old Intermax guitar.

Everything about the Ibanez Talman Intermax guitar

This article is part of my ITI project, you can find further articles about this guitar here.

The Ibanez Talman Intermax is a somewhat rare guitar as it was in production only between 09/1999 and 09/2002. Based on the short lifespan, I would assume that this particular model was not too successful on the sales side, probably because it was too different from anything else. It was a solid body guitar, without chambers in the body, somewhat like an electric guitar with a piezo piezo pickup. It had an electric body, an and an electric style neck (though the radius was 9,5").

Ibanez Urban Acoustics catalogue from 1999 - the Talman Intermax's debut

The IbanezTalman Intermax series had two models on offer. The TMX 20 and the TMX20N, the latter one being nylon stringed.  Let's see what the Ibanez from 2001 had to say about these rare guitars:

"With most acoustic guitars, feedback can be a problem when playing at loud stage volumes. That's why the Intermax guitars are made of solid mahagony, topped with an exquisite quilted maple. This tried and true combination of woods gives the guitar a solid bottom and a bright, airy top end. And best of all, with no sound chamber, you do not have to worry about feedback."

 Also, here is a screenshot of the specifications taken from the same 2001 Ibanez catalogue: 

The Ibanez Talman Intermax guitars were made of quality material (though mahagony is not necessarily the most posh wood type in guitar making). The body shape resembled a telecaster with a bit of an extravagant curve to the left of the neck. The maple top really made this guitar look appealing, along with the rosewood material and the satin chrome tuners and knobs, this guitar looked stellar and definitely different from anything else that was available on the market at that time. 

Probably, its uniqueness also contributed to the short lifetime of the Intermax models. I did not manage to find any information about the pricing of these models, but as they were made in  Korea in the Cort factory,  I am quite sure they were well above the cheap end of the scale. These days, Intermax models are hard to find, but not impossible. Looking at the market today, the buying price of these is  betwen 200-400 EUR.