RED RAVEN

*Update: I’ve reconfigured this guitar with a different neck and pickups. See the Custom JS in the Ibanez Gallery*

In September 2020 I decided that I really wanted to have a guitar with a Donnie Hunt-style paint job, but unlike my current guitars at the time (and unlike all original Donnies) I wanted a guitar with a fixed bridge. I could have bought a JS6 or similar and painted that, but I also wanted a particular neck profile, so I decided on a custom build. The body was supplied by Perle Guitars in the USA, and I eventually bought the maple neck off a Japanese Ibanez on Ebay. I added the additional hardware, but the challenge was the artwork.

Originally I planned to paint it myself, but after a few practice sessions I concluded that I wasn’t going to get the results I wanted, so I turned to the expert in the field, Raven Neale.

Raven is recognised as the foremost painter of Donnie replicas, but on this occasion I asked him to come up with an original design in a Donnie style and he produced this gorgeous piece with 3D faces.