(old) ibanez rg series?

[Fragle]

hi everybody,

i'm in the need for another live guitar. i'm increasingly starting to use floyd rose stuff in my leads, and my only two floyd guitars are tuned to D as i need them for my main band, which leaves me with only fixed bridges for my other band (tuned to B).
what i'm looking for:
- floyd rose tremolo, which needs to be super stable
- 24 frets
- easy neck access, bolt on/neck through i don't care as long as the high frets are really well playable
- 2 Humbuckers
- price range up to 400€ used i think. don't have too much cash right now....
- obviously, it will have to take B standard tuning well, obviously it will have to sound good for fast heavy death/thrash stuff, and reliability needs to be great.

i was thinking about the older ibanez rg series.....they tend to frequently pop up at the bay for around that kind of money, and i've heard good things about them.
other options would be ltd 400 series, which are great players imho but i'm not too keen of the sound - ltd stuff tends to be too sharp sounding, lacking balls.
i'm a HUGE jackson fan, but the mid priced stuff is rather meh.....i'm in love with my dkmgt which i got used for little money, but other than that, jacksons seem to only be good past the (at least) 900€+ barrier.

i wonder if anyone could give me the rundown on what ibanez guitars are actually good for the money? does it have to be a 500 series, or will a 400 or 300 be fine too? maybe with a pickup change? will i have to change the stock V series pickups in the 550rg e.g. or are they just fine? if so, the 500 will probably be out of my budget.
last but not least, any other recommendations?

 

[Tercero]

The stock pickups in the older 400 and 500 series stuff aren't mind blowing, but they're usable. I would recommend at some point down the road though swapping them out. The guitars themselves though are awesome. I picked up an old 570 for $200USD a few years ago and still kick myself for selling it. I ended up throwing some EMG's in it, and it ripped.

Another one, that really surprised me, was an older Korean LTD KH202. I picked this up for a $100, and the neck SLAYED. I was floored. I ended up throwing a Crunch Lab and a '59 in it (had the '59 laying around) and it was a great bolt on super strat for the money. The newer ones blow, but the Korean one was surprisingly awesome

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Buy my used rg570!
It's one of the good ones from the first series (square heel)

 

[Fragle]

thanks for the input!

well, as far as the ltd stuff goes, it's not the emgs that are bothering me.....they sound totally fine in my jacksons for example. and don't get me wrong, the ltds are great sounding guitars - we actually tracked our album with one of these. it's just that for my personal taste, they're not beefy enough.

@lasse: how much? pics?
the first series doesn't have the all access neck joint, right? that would be pretty important to me.....i hate high fret access with most bolt ons (the dkmgt is a rare exception here), but when i tried a few current ibanez models the fret access is actually pretty damn good for a bolt on.

 

[kylendm]

hi everybody,

i'm in the need for another live guitar. i'm increasingly starting to use floyd rose stuff in my leads, and my only two floyd guitars are tuned to D as i need them for my main band, which leaves me with only fixed bridges for my other band (tuned to B).
what i'm looking for:
- floyd rose tremolo, which needs to be super stable
- 24 frets
- easy neck access, bolt on/neck through i don't care as long as the high frets are really well playable
- 2 Humbuckers
- price range up to 400€ used i think. don't have too much cash right now....
- obviously, it will have to take B standard tuning well, obviously it will have to sound good for fast heavy death/thrash stuff, and reliability needs to be great.

i was thinking about the older ibanez rg series.....they tend to frequently pop up at the bay for around that kind of money, and i've heard good things about them.
other options would be ltd 400 series, which are great players imho but i'm not too keen of the sound - ltd stuff tends to be too sharp sounding, lacking balls.
i'm a HUGE jackson fan, but the mid priced stuff is rather meh.....i'm in love with my dkmgt which i got used for little money, but other than that, jacksons seem to only be good past the (at least) 900€+ barrier.

i wonder if anyone could give me the rundown on what ibanez guitars are actually good for the money? does it have to be a 500 series, or will a 400 or 300 be fine too? maybe with a pickup change? will i have to change the stock V series pickups in the 550rg e.g. or are they just fine? if so, the 500 will probably be out of my budget.
last but not least, any other recommendations?

I am huge with Ibanez and know just about every model haha. Anyway as far as stability goes for the bridge here's the top 3 to look for.

Edge
Lo-pro Edge
ZR Edge (Zero Resistance which is in newer models)

If you can find a guitar with any of these bridges you'll be set for stability.

As far as pickups go I always changed pickups in a guitar when I got it. Stock pickups just aren't the best sounding. Ibanez Dimarzio Designed are actually good sounding though. IBZ pickups aren't especially for low tuning; stay away.

Newer RG550s have the AANJ (1994-) But the anniversary models have the tilt block joint.

RG570s have AANJs from (1995-2002) before that it was the block.

After looking I'd get this and throw new pups in later on.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/ibanez_s420_bbs_b_stock.htm