Why do people use these guitars??

[Joe Dorcia]

Setting the scene: My band are doing a favour for a friend and being a backing band for this talent competition (a serious one though, not some cr@ppy school one) and as a rsult have to play evanescence (Bring me to life and my immortal) - easy songs. Since we have to look that part (and me and my bro play strats and teles) we wen down to a music shop (cant disclose which) to borrow 2 Ibanez/Jackson style guitars so we would fit in. They had a Ibanez RG550 and RG262 QM with DiMazio/Ibz pups. I decided to test them through an amp similar to mine - so i used a tsl. Low mids, lots of gain and presence for that smooth, cutting metal sound they have.

As we all know, a marshall TSL has relatively a lot of gain and can punch out the pinch harmonics. However, when i sat down with the first Ibanez (RG550) i was horrified. This guitaris lifeless and dull. There's no weight to the guitar making it feel thin. The pups were rubbish and the neck was thin and hard to play. The strings felt too close together (for me) and i couldnt hit a pinch harmonic at all.

Next, the RG262 w/ DiMazios. This sounded promising, but, guess what? It was probably worse! So lifeless and flat. With little thin .9's on it that i good bend off the guitar and put my head through the gap.

Overall they were terrible guitars. We're still gonna borrow them, and are very thankful of the shop for letting us do so as they dont hire out gear.

Has anyone owned or still does own one of these? I can see why you put BKPs in them too, lol.

As a strat played I could still get a good tone out of both my sets of stock pups and could get good pinch harmonics. I use .11's so that could be a factor, and now, using my BKPs in both of my strats, my standards will have been raised lol, but still, I ibanez's shouldnt sound that cr@p should they??

I mite just be picky.

Joe

[maliciousteve]

It's all a matter of taste really. I have an RG1550 and i love it to death. I might change the pups to BKP but right now i'm pretty happy with the sound it has. The neck is perfect for my style of playing and i just love the feel of the whole guitar. The guitar you played might of just had bad action and personaly i don't like the TSL series, i think they are too thin and raspy for what they are surposed to do.

[Rainmaker]

My mates got an Ibanez RG, and I can't say I dig it that much. Joe, what feature do you think gives these Ibanez guitars such lifeless tones?

[HJM]

I've got to chime in as I've got two old original RG550s

IMHO Ibanez don't make guitars as good as they did in the later half of the '80s up to about '94/5

About 1999 I went out to buy an RG550, they were all horrible, not a patch on my mates early RG550. Rg550s can be dull if they don't have a maple fingerboard, you can't buy one now and the stock pickups aren't as good now as they were back then. RG550s are bright sounding guitars, and should feel responsive, resonant and dynamic, with the maple board they're the perfect 80s rock axe - they scream. I did have a RG565 with a rosewood board - not as good a tone as the maple boards.

Here's part of the theory - 1990 an RG550 was about £500, about the price of a good top line US Strat plus. I don't buy into any excuse about modern manufacturing lowering the cost, they're built cheaper and feel cheaper.

Prestige models are a little better, but not a patch on the old custom shop axes. The JS and JEM range feel like toys, they used to feel, well, expensive, like a US Jackson or top line ESP. Oh and I prefer the original Edge trem and Lo Pro edge over the newer trems.

Try an old one, I'll drag mine to Music Live, try that, everybody who does offers to buy it, and I got it for £50 in bits! Proof enough for me that they don't make 'em like they used to.

[chrisola]

to be honest my Gibbo LP was poor aswell, it was new and after playing it in, i found a few dead spots on the neck, and it kept going out of tune when left overnight...

quality on production guitars is hit and miss in my experience, i played a cheap Yamaha RG something or other which smoked a £600 RG550...

The 80s guitars seemed so much better, guy in my local shop used to have a mid 80s  Kramer American, it was as new and awesome! He then got a modern ESP MII in a trade for some stuff, and it was shite (and it wasnt an LTD model!) and promptly sold on!

And i had a late 80s Model 4a charvel AND a 2000ish one (when they started them up again, with the SD live wire hbs)... there was no contest, the older one was good!

[Bob Johnson]

HJM has it again; the old RG550 was an awesome guitar. I think that the price point pressure brought about by so many guitars coming out of the far east has made the major manufacturers make sacrifices to stay competitive on price. Another point to consider is that if you are a habitual strat user the Ibanez neck will feel very slim and very alien. There's a considerable "acclimatisation period" required to make this kind of shift in neck profile but most people find the Ibanez neck faster once they've used it for a while. I'm an old git brought up on necks that are like half a telegraph pole but I use a neck that is close, in profile, to the original ibanez wizard now. Another factor is that factory built guitars use body blanks made up out of 3, 4, or 5 pieces of stuff I would throw in the bin. This kills tonal qualities that can only be offset by using a "bright" neck, as HJM says and/or really good quality hardware.

[wixomwhat]

I <3 Ibanez. Currently I dont own any but I have and really liked them.

I agree that the newer RG's arent as good as the old ones i've played but the New S series and SA guitar always play and sound wonderful.

[The amazing Phil]

I can't recall having ever played an Ibanes, but I'm suprised to hear that they've gone downhill.

[FELINEGUITARS]

It is a sad fact that most new production guitars we see all seem to need a fret dress within a pretty short period of time. This can radically improve their playability . It may only be the lightest of skims across the frets and a LOT of careful attention to bringing the frets back to a smooth beautiful dome shape and ensuring that the fret ends are nicely smoothed and don't foul the hand.

In particular we see a lot of new Gibson's for this treatment.

We recently had an awesome Ibanez J Custom in and THAT was a nice guitar .
Some of the recent Jems just haven't seemed so special, and I DO feel that HJM is right and that RG550s before 1990 are a damn sight better.

Sure - good pickups can improve things but if the guitar doesn't sound good acoustically then it stands less chance of being awesome when amped up.

I always tell friends to play guitars without plugging them in when chosing them in a store or secondhand. Choser the one that feels good and sounds good unplugged.
Add good pickups to that guitar and it will sing like a bird.

Sometimes guitars don't sound good because of poor hardware, or on floyd equipped guitars because the knife edges are blunt or the floyd is a cheap one made from a poor type of metal.

When  I build guitars for players I wont skimp on hardware where there is a choice - it is not worth it and it WILL lessen the tone

[Ratrod]

I must have tried dozens of Ibanez guitars and I've seen too many bands to list using them. I always found them cararacterless, no soul in them. Maybe it's the pickups?

Any way, this band was playing. No one responded. He swapped his Ibanez for a custom or homebuilt Les Paul and the (dance)floor was full within 2 minutes.

The Ibanez was dull and lifeless....clinical. The LP sounded great.

[Bainzy]

kids nowadays overrate ibanez's so much, but if I'm gonna get a superstrat I'll get the real thing - a Jackson

[HJM]

kids nowadays overrate ibanez's so much, but if I'm gonna get a superstrat I'll get the real thing - a Jackson

Yeah but even they aren't what they used to be

[Elliot]

So who are the sinners and saints of production guitar quality control?

I hear alot of bad things against Gibson but Fender (which were notorious for being c**p in QC in the early 80s) seem to get off lightly these days.  Is it that the big F have improved or do people just expect their guitars to buzz and rattle at all actions?

[willo]

Gibson have been shite for me - they seem to set the saddles not for intonation, but so they look good in a nice diagonal line. I mean, WTF? I'm spending £1000 a guitar, i think intonation is important to me! :twisted:

[Bainzy]

So who are the sinners and saints of production guitar quality control?

I hear alot of bad things against Gibson but Fender (which were notorious for being c**p in QC in the early 80s) seem to get off lightly these days.  Is it that the big F have improved or do people just expect their guitars to buzz and rattle at all actions?

When I got my Am series strat it was ordered so it hadn't been taken out of the case at all when it was in the shop, and it was set up absolutely perfect - intonation, action etc - played fantastic. This is also bearing in mind it came from America and I got it sent here to the UK, you hear stories about Gibsons that are made in the US and bought in the US (so didn't fly across the ocean) and played like cr@p.