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Firstly, here's the feature that appeared in Guitarist magazine, 2006

A Unique swirl finish for your pride and joy is closer than you’d think.

Most famously used on various Ibanez Universe models and Tyler guitars, the swirl finish is a most sought-after customisation. Risk your money and patience on Ebay if you will, but we strongly suggest you get in touch with Richard Fay Guitars, who applied this red, white and blue Patriot swirl to one of our bitsa guitars. It’s beautifully done, mirror smooth and, due to the method in which Richard works his magic, unique too.

“I don’t want to go too much into how I actually do a swirl,” he says, “ But, in a nutshell, I float a specific type of paint on to the surface of a water tank, swirl the skin around with a piece of dowel, which causes small eddies in the liquid, and gently lower the guitar in. Because the actual paint layer is so thin, it dries immediately and, needless to say, this stops any drips.”

Up close, the swirl is flawless and, from more of a distance, it’s eye-poppingly attractive. Visit www.richardfayguitars.co.uk for further contact details, a multitude of Swirl and LiquiFay options, and price guides.

Here are some comments from previous customers

Hi Richard. Came home today to find the guitar was waiting for me lol. It looks really really good and looks better in real life.
I just need to get the pickups and a new pickguard and it will be ready to play (can't wait). Thanks a lot for the help and the amazing job. Cheers

 

Hello there, I got the guitar on Monday & it’s sensational. I’ve been gigging like mad this week so I’m going to put all together over the weekend & gig it on Tuesday. Many, many thanks for your excellent work. If I get any decent pictures I’ll send them to you, Take care,

Hi Richard - received the guitar and I just want to say thank you for doing such an amazing job. The guitar looks fantastic, I've just finished reassembling it! I'll spread the word for you and hopefully send another one down to you before too long if a nice JS appears on ebay. Best regards

Fantastic..Fantastic Richard It got here OK BIG THANKS  MATE ....will u do me another when I found a guitar [pink black and white] will send u some pic's when I have put it together. best

 

Hi Richard,
Body arrived today and is absolutely fantastic. I think it’s going to be a pretty top-class instrument when its all put together. Thanks very much for doing an excellent job and for being so accommodating. I shall send you some photos of the finished guitar, which your welcome to use for your site or whatever. All the best for now,

 

Hi there Richard. Well it has arrived just 5 minutes ago. What a stunner it’s a work of art!!! You are right, it does look a lot better in the flesh. You are a master of this technique and it is going to be quite a beast when I have finished making it.

Nice One Rich! Looks the Business, will do with the pics when all assembled, am ok with the wiring so will sus it out! Hope the scratchplate 'fit' didn't cause you too many probs! Will be in Touch. Regards

Hi Rich, Just got the body - absolutely amazing - I can't thank you enough for great service and a top quality finish. I'm sure at some point in the future I will get back to you about a custom swirl or project. Thanks,

Hi Richard. Well now that I have got the neck in my hands I can really appreciate the care and attention to detail that you have put into this for me. You have really made one of my dreams come true. It fits like a glove into the neck pocket of the RG570 body and it really looks a stunner. The whole thing is amazing, I love the way the dot inlays reflect and give off those iridescent colours. The mirror inlays also reflect wonderfully and the whole contrast supported on the background of the beautiful birds-eye maple is totally unique. Well, I am now going to take my time putting this beauty together and I will extend your care and attention to it whilst doing so. Many thanks again Richard, you have another extremely happy customer. Until later

Some Ebay feedback from swirl customers

Excellent Seller, prompt shipment. The finish is superb. Many thanks.

Great Guitar, amazing swirl finish. Thanks

Top ebayer, Guitar is first class, Well packaged, Many thanks. AAAA+++++

What a Craftman/Artist!!! Item is absolutely stunning. See his Website!!! A+++

Universe Swirled Body: Unique and special item, arrived quickly and well packed.

Even better than the pics - Rich, you're an artist!

Swirled body looks fantastic, very professional finish, highly recommended A++

This is a customer review of a custom Ibanez Jem

So my Jem arrived yesterday.

First off I'll just say it looks absolutely stunning, I’m finding it hard not to just stare at it all the time! But more importantly, it plays incredible well, Rich's setup was fantastic, the action was just where I like it, and the neck bow was perfect too.

Ok, so I should probably write a few sentences to review the guitar in various aspects. Here goes! I’ve basically taken various bits apart to check they’re ok, and:

Paintwork and finish
I have to start with this as its the most obvious when its a swirl.
The swirl itself looked great in the photos, but it’s so much better in person. Its darker, it looks so deep and flows incredibly well. I haven’t spotted any blemishes at all, its been very well done

The clearcoat looks really thick and shiny, I thought it was poly, but Rich put a note in mentioning it was laquer (which he'd baked to speed up the curing/drying process) and to be a bit careful with it for a few months - I think ill be careful with this guitar for a lot longer than that. I’ve read in many places that laquer is thinner and gives a better tone than a poly finish. I can’t do a direct comparison, but this guitar sounds huge! More on that later though...

Being really picky, there are some light surface marks from the buffing process, but you really have to look in the right light at the right angle to see them.

Fretboard and Inlays
Looking at the fretboard and the neck, you'd never guess it’s been changed, it feels smooth and even all the way along the neck. I think the fretboard itself is slightly thicker (maybe 1 or 2 mm) than normal Ibanez fretboards, and I really like the feel of it. The rosewood is very dark and well polished.

The fretwork itself is flawless. The edges are all smooth, and I haven’t found any dead spots. I don’t like my action too low (but not too high), but I’m not getting any buzzing at all. The fretboard edges are rolled well, no jaggy edges like on my RG1527, they're all even and look good, definitely on par with the fretwork on my 7VWH and EBMM JP.

The inlays are a mirror finish which you can’t really see in the photos, but they really reflect the light well! The wood around them has been cut very well, and they themselves have been cut well to fit the gaps. Definitely no complaints there! There are some light polishing marks again that if you look close you can see (with the right light), but nothing major.

Last point about the neck, the neck pocket is just right, it’s got enough space each side and doesn’t creek at all (a problem I had with my EBMM. It looked like the neck had just been jammed into that body). No finish cracks from the postage either!

Electronics
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, this guitar is equipped with a Sustainiac, which I’ve never had the chance to play with before. I was really shocked at how much power it has, when its on, you can really feel the strings all vibrating, it feels like someone has hit a chord really hard and just let it ring. Combined with the Breed bridge pickup it sounds very smooth with plenty of mids and not too much treble. By turning the harmonic drive on, you note smoothly turns into a harmonic, and by adjusting the pot, that harmonic gets even higher, great fun!

The Evo single coil sounds just as it does on the other Jem, and there's plenty of into about that on here so I wont go into details. The neck pickup sounds (using the sustainiac as a pickup) are pretty decent. It’s not quite as bright as the Air Norton and Evo (Neck) pickups that I’m used to, but its got loads of midrange, and by increasing the treble a bit it sounded great.

I don’t know how much of an effect the laquer had on the tone, but its certainly one of my best sounding guitars. The tone is very thick and deep, even more so than my RG570EX (and that doesn’t even have a clear coat).

Rich managed to avoid routing an extra hole into the body by placing the battery case in the main electronics cavity. I’ve had a quick look inside and it’s a huge mass of wires (courtesy of the Sustainiac), but they're all laid out well even though there’s lots of them. Hopefully I won’t have to do any troubleshooting in there for a long time though!

Overall finishing and construction
As soon as the guitar arrives the first thing I did was plug it in just to test it worked, and after getting it tuned the setup itself was pretty much as I like it. Obviously shipping does mess with these things so I did make a small adjustment to the trem springs.

Unfortunately being an idiot, the first thing I did was rip the volume knob off because I thought it was the push pull pot for the sustainiac (which I knew it wasn’t from Rich's emails!). Because of the thickness of the pickguard the pot has a little trouble staying attached. I’ve swapped it for a white strat style one, and I’m leaving the others as chrome. It shows they’ve all got different uses then, and I like using the strat knobs for volume control, I know how far I’ve got to go then.

Other than that little incident the whole thing was great, I had a clean a little dust from underneath the clear pickguard (which was probably moved around from the pickup cavities), but that was only a few specs. I’ve looked around the whole thing and there were no bits of rubbing compound left in view at all, except for a little bit in the trem cavity (out of view, but I took the trem out just to have a look!).

So as you can guess I’m a very happy puppy at the moment.

I would definitely recommend Rich Fay to anyone who's looking for a custom Jem or any other custom guitar (including his own models which he's working on). If I’ve failed to mention anything, just ask about it.