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.[/QUOTE]

I own two Ibanez guitars (GRX40 and a GAX75) and an Ibanez bass(GRS200), so you might say that I'm not really impartial. Most of the things that you said are true, except about the GRX40 not still being in production. The GRX40 IS still being made and is sold as part of the Jumpstart package IJX40 that is available everywhere, although I bought mine used on eBay.

I love my GRX40, but the tuners were crappy. I've replaced mine with Schaller locking ones about a month ago and they work GREAT! I still check the tuning of it every time I pick it up, but I rarely need to retune. I like the pickups (S-S-H) that it comes with. My GAX75 is a dual humbuckerand I sometimes wish it had a single pickup.

Also, the paint job on my GRX40 is very nice. Even though I got it used, it still looks like brand new. No waves, no nicks, no errors.