Sound:
This guitar has a beautiful clear sound and get just about any time of tone you want. It's kind of a darker tone, more like a classical guitar's sound than an acoustic electric or a strat. The sound quality is great, clear and loud or quiet. Without an amp this guitar resonates and sounds great, and it still sounds like it after it's plugged in.
This guitar gets the metal and sweet tones I'm looking for. The guitar is very responsive to my touch and is expressive. I usually record more instrumental and folk and post-rock style music, but I got this guitar to help give me a broader range. I can still do the other styles quite well, dark is my tone color. However, the single coil can really add an upbeat rock element/twang hum. Even though you can pull the volume knob out to switch to three single coil pickups, I would say this guitar is predominantly moderately-dark, clear, and either instrumental or metal distortion friendly, but definitely you can get anything out of it.
The knobs on the guitar are pretty smooth, but at the very bottom of the tone knob, there is a sudden change to a watery sound with gradual attack and decay (I like this sound), but I would prefer the knob to perhaps go further and let me work up to the sound. Everything else works nicely and as one expects from an electric guitar.
This guitar really sounds good, but you have to take the time to find the right settings. This has "massive tonal possibilities," and you might not like the way it happens to be set when you first play it. Play with it.
Feature:
This pretty much has everything. I keep the tremolo arm off the guitar, but it comes with one if you want it. The bridge's height is adjustable, so the action is really easy to change.
This has awesome tuners that self clip off the excess of the ends of the strings. Kind of silly, but good if you use the tremolo bar a lot. I don't use the tremolo arm very much, but I was classically trained a violinist and usually can get the same effects with my left hand. I know one of my friends really loves his tremolo arm, and it can add nice effects... anyways, this guitar has a cap that screws over the tremolo arm port if you don't want to use it, so either way.
Personally, I like the large frets and the neck. My hands feel very comfortable on the neck and are in a natural position. It is my experience that my hand position slides a bit on some electric guitars, but not so much here. Further, it is easy to play because of the large frets. The neck is two full octaves, so I can get up to the good (high) notes.
I also appreciate the easy stringing of the guitar (you just stuff the string through the bridge on the back of the guitar and then through the tuning pegs and turn).
The woods picked are nice, the circuitry is great, no excess noise.
It comes with a set of allen wrenches and a manual (which is very thick due to the japanese french spanish etc), a tremolo arm, a (very nice) case that says Ibanez Prestige on it, and a small clear bag for the small parts.
Ease of Use:
This guitar is very playable. It takes some getting use to make the downward slurs (pull-offs) without getting a full sound out of the adjacent higher string, but the trade-off is super great sound, volume, and diction for fast stuff.
The interface is traditional, the pickup selector works as one would expect, the tone and volume knobs work like one would expect, the volume knob pulls out to switch HSH-->SSS.
It is very easy to get varied tones out of this guitar. This guitar of course works great with other instruments, and of course works great with amps. When you drop to a single coil pickup, you get half the sound, but that's kind of obvious. Just set the volume knob down a ways and adjust the amp's volume for the humbuckers, and then turn the volume knob up to where you want for the single coils.
The manual is pretty lame. It's in a bunch of languages and says obvious things. I prefer length in depth manuals with things I'll never want to know, and this is not one of those. But the manual is ok, and covers the things you need to know.
This is a nice instrument. It's very playable.
Quality:
The product is made very well! It's made in Japan. The frets are all where they're supposed to be (I'm very sensitive and picky about this). There aren't any loose parts or cosmetic blemishes. I made about a millimeter scratch by banging the headstock into my ceiling light, but that was my fault (That's a pretty resilient guitar right there).
I depend on this guitar. I have a skewed sense of what's good for the road, I would never sacrifice sound for durability. I'm very careful with my instruments. This guitar has been pretty sturdy for me, though. I am not one to test even the sturdiest guitar--this guitar sure feels sturdy, though.
The worst aspect of the quality is that it is a bolt on neck :(
This guitar seems like it's a laster. If you're rough, it might not be pristine after some years, but it'll probably still sound great.
Value:
This product is worth the selling price if you're really into tone and resonance. This guitar has huge resonance for a solid electric guitar. The tone is absolutely beautiful. It feels great, the neck is slick and feels right, the body is curved so that is feels so much lighter and easier to hold than any other guitar.
My original budget max was 1000$, but I have absolutely no regrets about paying more.
Manufacturer Support:
I have not dealt with the company that made this guitar. This is always a good thing. I don't know about their support, I've read that it's crappy in itself, but that retailer support is good (which is completely unrelated...) So, no opinion expect that I have not had to deal with them.
The Wow Factor:
This is blue! It's hot! It's got a more dramatic cut away! It looks sensitive and elegant, but the Ibanez aesthetics are still there. The headstock is curved and it's one of the prettiest sexy and sensitive guitars I've seen.
It's a great practical addition to anything--it's versatile, clear, but it's also totally sexy.
Overall:
I do not expect to buy another electric guitar soon. If I do, I'll supplement this guitar. The only reason I can image getting another guitar is if I wanted a strat. Strats don't fit my personality so much, but maybe I'll come to want the poppy quaint feel of a strat. This guitar is smooth and strong.
If this was stolen (I hope it wouldn't be, I wouldn't let that happen), I would buy it again.
I wish I knew how awesome this was before I bought it. I knew it was awesome, but I was just even more pleasantly surprised after owning it.
What I like least is the concept of a bolt on neck, snidely and with purist instinct. This is completely overruled by my favorite thing--no guitar feels and sounds better than this.
12 of 12 people
(100%) found this review helpful. Did you?
Sound:
Sound variation is great. Comes close strats and fairly close Les Pauls. The problem with this guitar is the sustain its virtually non existant on the 3 thinner strings and higher notes. You should research this problem before buying and let me know if there's a definate cure.
Feature:
Love most stuff about this guitar. Auto cutting locking tuners with no locking nut (i can't be bothered with locking nuts), multi combo pickup selection, ZRi bridge with easy adjust tension and swap from floating to non-floating. I also like the inlays which are different but not too flashy.
Value:
I do like this guitar a lot but i feel robbed. but i stiil want to keep it.
2 of 3 people
(66.67%) found this review helpful. Did you?
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