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I have been playing with my new Ibanez G10 for about six weeks now and my appreciation for this instrument has grown week by week. It is really an astonishingly good classical guitar, comparing favorably to a $500 Spanish-made student guitar I have owned for seven years. Both have laminated mahogany back & sides; the Ibanez has a solid spruce top while my Spanish guitar has solid cedar. I specifically bought the Ibanez to compare solid-top spruce & cedar in modestly built guitars. While the Ibanez G10 is not comparable to my all-solid spruce/rosewood Cordoba C10, it *does* produce wonderfully clear, deeply resonant tones with each note well articulated and distinctly heard. There is no muddyness with this guitar. It is very responsive & expressive, with a wide palette of tone colors easily available. Intonation with the stock Savarez Cantiga normal-tension strings is very good. The action is quite low at 3.0 mm but the neck relief is set perfectly (it has a dbl-action truss rod) and the playability is excellent. The 4th string (D) broke tonight at the nut, where I suspected there was a burr or sharp edge. After a minor clean-up of the groove I restrung the guitar with a set of spare D'Addario EJ46 hard-tension strings that I had on hand for the Spanish student model. Now they both have the same strings and it will be even more interesting to compare their sound & character. The new strings are still stretching but my first impressions of the Ibanez with the EJ46's -- Wow! It just went to 150%. To sum up: I think this Ibanez is a genuine bargain. Don't expect a miracle, but you may be astonished how good this inexpensive guitar is. I can certainly recommend it.

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