This guitar sounds amazing. People seem to be against these pickups, but I think they sound incredible. They are so clear and articulate. You can hear every note with clarity on the low strings, and it brings out a nice growl. Playing leads is great, because the sustain is amazing, and the tone is balanced, so no matter where you're playing, there's no harshness and it's all in focus. Clean, they shimmer, especially in the middle position. Though it's a metal guitar, it's so easy to get any kind of tone out of this. Aggressive or lighter playing, the tone shines through with any playing style. It's fantastic.

The bridge is one of the most impressive things about this guitar. It's got a small curve on the top, which matches the radius of the fretboard, making it that much easier to set up. I think that's genius. It's also very solid, and holds notes perfectly. The saddles have a lot of room to move for intonation, which is great, especially on the lower strings. The killswitch is an added, fun bonus.

The neck on this guitar is wonderful. It's very sturdy and very comfortable. The fret edges are nice and smooth, and the nitro finish on the neck makes playing fast very easy. The fretboard is nice and smooth, making playability that much easier and comfortable. The bridge is also very comfortable to play on, along with bringing sustain to the notes. It stays in tune nicely on every string.

The overall quality is great. It's a solidly built guitar. For guitars in this price range, if you're nit-picky, there's sometimes little things here or there with the finish (especially the polyurethane being uniform all the way around pickups) and with this guitar, as well as other Iron Labels I've seen, it's very minimalistic. I was very very impressed with the setup out of the box from the factory. Perfectly matched to the radius, the action was perfect, and even with the stock strings, it was phenomenal to play.

The value is great. It exceeds guitars in this price range for sure.

Ibanez is pretty easy to get a hold of, and I had a couple of questions when ordering this guitar, and they were very helpful about it all.

The overall guitar as a whole, especially with the features is the wow factor. The finish is magnificent, and everything about this guitar is great.

Been playing for 11 years, been a studio musician for 6.

Metal, Hard-Rock, Alternative Metal, Rock, with the occasional '90's popular music.

Several bands extended range guitars protools cubase

Progressive Groove Metal