Am I the only guy who hates Ibanez?

[LSD-Studio]

haha, what a retard!

+1

 

[greyskull]

REALLY MATE shut up.
I've played a top of the line jem and it looked, sounded and played like shit.

 

[462studio]

I've had an S540LTD for years that I absolutely adore. It's very very comfortable to play and for leads and cleans it sounds incredible, but for rhythm is just doesn't have the tightness I like and it almost resonates too much.

So from just scanning this thread it sounds like my experience is very similar to some of yours.

I've toyed with the idea of selling it off, but I've had it so long and it's so beat up, it's not really worth it. I keep it around for times when I need some really thick stoner type solo sounds and mix the middle position SC and bridge HB together with the tone knob rolled all the way off. For that setup it can't be beat.

 

[Josh Burgess]

I've had an S540LTD for years that I absolutely adore. It's very very comfortable to play and for leads and cleans it sounds incredible, but for rhythm is just doesn't have the tightness I like and it almost resonates too much.

So from just scanning this thread it sounds like my experience is very similar to some of yours.

I've toyed with the idea of selling it off, but I've had it so long and it's so beat up, it's not really worth it. I keep it around for times when I need some really thick stoner type solo sounds and mix the middle position SC and bridge HB together with the tone knob rolled all the way off. For that setup it can't be beat.

What pickups are in it? Makes a huge difference when it comes to tightness.

 

[LydonB]

+1

:zombie::Smokin:

 

[462studio]

What pickups are in it? Makes a huge difference when it comes to tightness.

The standard USA humbuckers and single coils that came with it. I've always loved the lead and clean tones so much, I've fought the urge to change them out for something more suitable for rhythm tones.

 

[Josh Burgess]

The standard USA humbuckers and single coils that came with it. I've always loved the lead and clean tones so much, I've fought the urge to change them out for something more suitable for rhythm tones.

well, that's kinda the problem, don't you think? I've never touched any guitar with stock pickups that excells at tight metal rhythms unless it comes loaded with emg's... toss in a high output ceramic pickup and boom, there's your tightness. good examples of super tight playing with passive pickups: bulb, meshuggah, sikth, etc.

 

[462studio]

well, that's kinda the problem, don't you think? I've never touched any guitar with stock pickups that excells at tight metal rhythms unless it comes loaded with emg's... toss in a high output ceramic pickup and boom, there's your tightness. good examples of super tight playing with passive pickups: bulb, meshuggah, sikth, etc.

Yup I entirely agree it's the problem. But like I said I liked the other tones so much I haven't wanted to change 'em out and instead have been using my other guitars for rhythm tones.

I wasn't necessarily looking for a solution, just sharing my opinion on Ibanez guitars from my perspective.

 

[Metaltastic]

especially when you're using EMG's which are so compressed that they sound very similar in nearly every guitar they're put into. It shouldn't take much EQing to get a thick sounding rhythm tone.

Holy shit, it all makes sense now! If something is compressed, then of course that means it makes the quality of the tone extremely similar in every guitar! And if you want to restore the things lost with compression (what do they call it? DYNAMICS, perhaps?), you could eq? JP22, it's good to see you again buddy!

The "EMG's sound the same in every guitar" argument is horse-shit; compression has nothing to do with the quality of the sound, and I can speak from first-hand experience that the guitar any pickup is in still makes a huge fucking difference.

 

[JBroll]

Perhaps you should stick to drums and not talk about guitars then? I couldn't care less if a few of you guys got offended. The simple truth is that a ton of posts in this thread are completely fucking ignorant. So, you've seen a lot of low end Ibanez RG's that didn't sound that great? Big deal. Check out a made in Japan mahogany RG or S that has been properly setup and had good pickups put in and get back to me.

I own an RG550 with an aftermarket mahogany body, a DiMarzio D Sonic in the neck, stock middle single coil, and PAF Pro in the neck. That 550 was hardly lower-end... and it still doesn't sound as thick as my Schecter.

Oh wait, judging by a ton of the posts in this thread, there must be a lot of people here that don't know how to change pickups?

HAHA UR SO FUENNY! You're also forgetting that other people here have a sense of humor. What's more, not all stock pickups suck - I've seen people pay DiMarzio prices for old Dean stocks, and some companies - including those awful shit Korean Schecters - just put proper Seymour Duncans and DiMarzios in their axes. Ibanez has started to do this, but on the lower-end models - which you'll notice a lot of us were talking about - they could have hamsters on wheels powering their winders, with one loose little bugger randomly biting wires as he pleased, and get better pickups.

the little the cheapo $300 RG for beginners a few rows down plays better than 90% of them, whether you like the sound of them or not.

Going to go ahead and disagree on this one, being the guy who does tech work for dozens of people at any given time. American Strats are going to be sexy beasts, and a lot of Gibson models just need a little TLC to be on their way. On top of that, there are still older Gibsons that slay.

Anyways, my point remains. A nice Ibanez with a mahogany body and good pickups can sound as good as anything else if you know what you're doing, and there are plenty of world class players of various genres of music who can back that up.

I'm trying to figure out why you're so insistent on making the argument that "My favoriet brand ruulz!"... simply by saying so over and over in slightly different ways. Bashing people who have gotten better guitar tones than you ever will... slamming products in exactly the same way that your 'misinformed n00b' opponents did with the only changes being that you are only making general statements about Ibanez, using more personal attacks ('you're misinformed' does not count when talking about personal experience - hard for people to be misinformed about guitars they've played when their observations speak as clearly as they did), and slamming other brands with broad, sweeping generalizations even less qualified than the attacks that have pissed you off so much.

I personally own a Schecter and have been recommending those guitars so strongly that I've told at least a hundred people in my area, who I still talk to regularly, that if anything ever went wrong I would personally come and take care of it. How many calls have I gotten? One, when someone literally dropped an axe on its input jack... and all I had to do was bend the metal cover back into shape. Guess what a Schecter is? A mahogany guitar with Seymour Duncan or EMG pickups... like your Ibanez, but thicker and with a set neck. But these guitars are Korean-made trash because... they are. Oops.

Look, you have a lot of ego and not a lot to back it up. If something can be made to sound good, the guys you're slamming senselessly can pull it off. There's already one Harmony Central for stupid shit like this, so speak intelligently or not at all.

Jeff

 

[AdamWathan]

Hey JBroll, why'd you buy that Ibanez if they all sound like horrid weak thin pieces of shit? This argument isn't about "Ibanez are the best guitars ever! Everything else sucks!", it's about basing your opinions on a guitar on a guitar to guitar basis, not slagging off an entire company because of a few shitty players with shitty low end guitars who can't make them sound good which is basically what this thread started off as.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Oz you're a really good producer, but I have to agree with Josh.

Lol. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, & I appreciate yours. At least you didn't resort to name calling.

 

[JBroll]

Hey JBroll, why'd you buy that Ibanez if they all sound like horrid weak thin pieces of shit? This argument isn't about "Ibanez are the best guitars ever! Everything else sucks!", it's about basing your opinions on a guitar on a guitar to guitar basis, not slagging off an entire company because of a few shitty players with shitty low end guitars who can't make them sound good which is basically what this thread started off as.

Looking for the part where I said that... whoops, it doesn't exist. You'll notice I was attacking the obnoxiously thin basswood axes, whereas mine is not an obnoxiously thin basswood axe. I know perfectly well what the argument is, and it simply seems that you don't know what my argument is.

I'm going against our new friend's inability to actually argue, especially against people who can back their abilities and claims up, and tendency to just slam things and make blanket statements for no apparent reason. Not only is he completely failing to back up a number of personal attacks and blanket statements, some of the things he said - especially the bit concerning EMGs and compression - were just downright stupid.

This forum is typically above such bullshit. JBroll disapproves.

Jeff

 

[grywolf627]

...Holy shit, it all makes sense now! If something is compressed, then of course that means it makes the quality of the tone extremely similar in every guitar! And if you want to restore the things lost with compression (what do they call it? DYNAMICS, perhaps?), you could eq? JP22, it's good to see you again buddy!...

LMAO Was just thinking the same thing.

 

[greyskull]

jeff you are a legend

 

[AdamWathan]

Fair enough, I just think that this argument is developing beyond the original topic in a completely unnecessary direction... This thread should have been called "Am I the only guy who hates Indian and Korean Ibanez RGs with basswood bodies, bolt on necks, licensed Floyds and stock Ibanez pickups?"

I'm willing to bet Oz would hate a Schecter C-1 Hellraiser if I snapped the neck off, built an aftermarket body that was like 50% basswood and 50% wood filler, tore out the fixed bridge and routed it for the cheapest Floyd knock off I could find, replaced the pickups with Duncan Designed HB103s and bolted the neck back on.

Ibanez makes set neck mahogany bodied guitars with fixed bridges too, I guess nobody has heard of the SZ series?
http://www.ibanez.com/eg/guitar.aspx?m=SZR720

 

[JBroll]

Have to say, though, that I don't care much for JEMs either...

This is just getting nitpicky. I really just want to see JoshuaLogan try to pull himself out of his own asshole, he's really in pretty deep and he doesn't even seem to realize it at all.

Jeff

 

[Glenn Fricker]

You're right. Arguing with someone who likes B.C. Rich acrylic guitars (lol),

I grabbed that one used for a unique tone in the palette. The extreme mass of the body lends to a very interesting tone. I'd never walk on stage with it, though. Probably fall over from exhaustion after 3 songs.

I never once said that you're not a good producer, and although I've never heard of you or any band on your website except for Say Anything (*cringe*), the quality of the recordings is very good, but that doesn't mean you have any idea what you're talking about when it comes to guitars or pickups. You are a producer (and probably have an ego like most) with a bias for cheap guitars with EMG's.

Yeah, I'm an indie producer, so you might not heard of much that I do... no problems there, I have a lot of fun with it. But I've also played guitar for 23 years. I'm not a shredder, I'm a rhythm player.

I have a problem with you stating your opinions as fact, when they often don't make any sense or come from inexperience. (Saying guitars with trems aren't good for tracking rhythms?! Come on, give me a break!)

Anything I state is my opinion, that's my prerogative.... if you want to take it as fact, you're the one with the issue, not me.
In my experience, trems work against the guitar player when tracking heavy rhythms. Every time you palm mute on a Floyd, it knocks the guitar out of tune ever so slightly...and returns to neutral. Ask anyone who's worked with me, I'm a total asshole when it comes to tuning. I can freely admit that.
Not to mention the great big built in "spring reverb" carved into the back of the guitar where there should be wood, causing all manner of nasty overtones. That is why I don't like trems for rhythms. You yourself said you are a musician, not a producer, so why argue the point when you yourself don't have the experience in recording heavy rhythms? At least I can back up my statements with actual sounds.

No one is contesting Ibanez has shitty stock pickups, and I'm aware that the upper end models are usually quite a bit more expensive than LTD's and Schecters, but I don't even think either of those brands of guitars are on the same level of quality, let alone superior, as you seem to think.

That was my point exactly. I don't care for the low end ones one bit... and I do believe you can get a much better guitar for the money with a Schecter or an LTD. Difference in opinion, but based on my own personal experiences in recording the instrument. Most of my clients don't have the money for a hi-end Ibanez. But they can afford a very nice Schecter vs. the cheap thin-sounding Ibanez guitars. This is essentially what this thread is about. Sorry I had to spell it out so blatantly.

I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't spent much time with a nice Ibanez or even one comparable to your guitar, so I honestly think some of the opinions you've stated are a total joke

Actually, I do recall setting up & working with an Ibanez Jem 777 signed by Vai himself. The guitar played beautiful, no question there. So smooth. But I didn't' care for the rhythm tone off of it. Then again, I don't care for Vai's rhythm tone, either.

It shouldn't take much EQing to get a thick sounding rhythm tone.

If you're using post mic EQ to thicken up your rhythm tone, you're doing something wrong.

You also seem to think there's something inherently wrong with passive pickups.

Actually, I had a Tele come in with a Seymour Hot Rail a while back that was the unholiest thing I'd ever heard. Amazing sounding instrument. Come to think of it, I just had a Dimebag guitar come in the other day with a Hotrail that sounded great too. That & a Schecter Blackjack that sounded very nice too.
Never assume anything!

-0z-

 

[AdamWathan]

Have to say, though, that I don't care much for JEMs either...

This is just getting nitpicky. I really just want to see JoshuaLogan try to pull himself out of his own asshole, he's really in pretty deep and he doesn't even seem to realize it at all.

Jeff

I don't like JEMs either, in fact I don't like any guitars with trems period. But it's unfair to slag off an entire company because of one style of guitar they make that you don't like (you in the general sense, not directed specifically towards you JBroll.) I think anybody who likes the sound and feel of a Schecter would love those Ibanez SZRs, they are damn near the same thing aside from the pickups.

It's ignorant to slag off the brand name because of one model. That's like if I started a topic called "Am I the only guy who hates Digidesign?" and the body was "M-Box pre's are crappy and sound bad."

 

[AdamWathan]

I do think Ibanez are overhyped, overpriced guitars and that you are paying for the name more than anything though... I'm a Jackson guy myself, but even their prices have skyrocketed recently.

You guys should all try a Carvin and forget about every other guitar brand and we can finally get along. I guarantee this bad boy sounds HUGE.
http://www.carvinguitars.com/images/guitars-in-stock/large/93721b.jpg