Ibanez 2618 Black (1977)

A very rare black Ibanez 2618 came up for sale locally. The seller said he had bought it second hand in 1983 in very good condition. He then played it for one year and in 1984 it went into its (original) case, never to be played again.

So forty years later (2024) it came out of its case and into my hands. It had suffered a little from corrosion on the gold hardware but nothing excessive. The most problematic issue was that it produced no sound at all… all four pots had ‘frozen’ up and were all showing open circuit on the multi-meter.

After copious amounts of contact cleaner over a couple of days, the pots behaved normally again and showed full, normal operation over their 500 kilo-Ohm range.

Only then I observed another problem in that when the bridge pickup was selected, the neck pickup potentiometer was still active (should be out of circuit with the pickup switch set to bridge) and could ‘short out’ the bridge sound completely. This was a real puzzle as the pickup cavity looked completely original and all the soldering looked original too. Turned out that the neck pickup wire and the switch pickup wire were swapped. I believe this was accidentally done in the factory and never fixed. After swapping it back as it should have been, all worked fine.

Next step up was cleaning the guitar, frets and fretboard. This was followed by a good polish which included the frets and the gold coated, metal back plates.

I now have a stunning, completely original, Ibanez 2618. Check it out below – click on the image to enlarge it.

Fretboard and strings after 40 years in case
Nicely aged dirt
Fretboard and frets cleaned, polished and oiled
Cavity after pots cleaned and wiring fixed
Ibanez 2618 – back to its former glory
Ibanez 2618 – all original
Note the Deluxe tailpiece instead of the Gibraltar one (which came later)
Ibanez 2618 Headstock – note the nut has not changed to yet to include the brass bit
Ibanez Super80 pickup, also known as Flying Fingers pickup.
Ibanez Super80 pickup, also known as Flying Fingers pickup.
Note the gold plated metal back plates
Ibanez 2618 from February 1977