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6strngs_2hmbkrs
Proud Celica Enthusiast
Joined: 08/14/04
Posts: 3,837
6strngs_2hmbkrs
Proud Celica Enthusiast
Joined: 08/14/04
Posts: 3,837
03/20/2005 11:06 pm

Pricing: well, I got mine for about $140 as a blemished guitar, they run on www.music123.com for about $225. mine however did not come with a tremolo arm.

Pros: light weight, long scale neck, stays in tune pretty well, very good guitar for the price

Cons: well, mine has a very wavy paint job that scrathes very easily, the straplocks aren't so great either, crappy trem springs

Review: ok, I like this guitar! this is my first and only guitar. but I have a few complaints to get out of the way. First of all, I put on a pretty high gauge string after breaking the high-e of the stock ones, and the high e on 2 sets of ernie ball 9's all within about 4 months. and this was when I was just learning to play! there shouldn't have been much stress on them. so I put on 12's, and broke the high e once, but replaced with a b-string I had leftover from the ernie balls, which was an 11, and haven't broken any strings since. but the tremolo lifted out when I put on the higher gauge strings. apparently after browsing this site for a while I concluded that ibanez stock springs are naturally just not very strong, I replaced the 3 stock springs with 4 others that I bought, fixed the problem immideatly. another thing is the paint job, it's very wavy, rather than a smooth paint job, perhaps that's because my guitar was a blem, or maybe they just come that way, but hey, the looks aren't that important I guess... on other problem I've had is with the straplocks, the screw that hold the strap lock in place I guess became stripped, because it hangs out halfway, and when I screw it back in, the screw isn't hitting any wood, so it keeps spinning without going anywhere, I have not yet had it fall off completely (thank God), but I don't think I can say that it won't ever fall off. other than that this is a great guitar! it plays and sounds very nice for the price (hey that rhymes!). the alder body is very light weight so you don't need to worry about an aching back after a gig. and the neck is a longer scale than most guitars, which is what I prefer. it has a 22-fret rosewood fretboard. and I'm not sure what the neck is made out of, but I read somewhere it was made out of GRX(?) I didn't even know that GRX was a type of wood. if I had to guess based on the color of the neck, I'd say it's maple. this guitar comes with a tremolo, but it is not a locking trem, so changing strings is pretty easy. when I got mine it did not come with the arm for the trem though. but again, this could be because I bought mine blemished. I've had other people who are more experienced play my guitar, and they all say that they like it. I did have a problem with buzzing at high gain levels, but my multi effects pedal (korg ax10G) has a noise reduction option, which quickly reduced the hum down to something unnoticable.

Summary: This is a great guitar and I would recommend it to beginners as well as advanced players looking for a change, although I would recommend the GRX20Z instead because I think it is the exact same guitar but with 2 humbuckers instead of 2 single and one humbucker.

oh, as one final note, I don't think these guitars are in production anymore because they are not posted on the ibanez website. but if it helps, I think I have the 2002 model.
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