Ibanez: RG350DXZ

                                                        Ibanez: RG350DXZ 

Price paid: $ 370
Purchased from: Guitar Center
Features: My Ibanez RG350DXZ (white model) was made in Indonesia 2010.
- 24 jumbo frets
- Ibanez Wizard Neck (very thin and fast)
- Basswood Body with a super-strat shape
- Equipped with a floyd rose trem and locking tuners. It is tedious to tune, string and intonate, but the strings can stay win tune for a week or two, and will not go out when bending or dive bombing. One thing to keep in mine is you have to tune through each string a few times because the floating bridge needs to adjust to the new string tension.
- The pickups are configured HSH with a 5 way pickup selector,
- Neck
- Bottom coil neck, single coil
- Single coil
- Single coil, top coil bridge
- Bridge. // 9
Sound: I play music from blues to metal, and occasionally dabble in jazz and classical.
- The neck pickup is quite creamy, and can give a very thick bluesy or distorted sound. It is a bit too bassy imo to play low open chords like Em or G but sounds great with almost anything else.
- The single coil gives a great clean sound but from factory set up it was too low to compare to the volume of the humbuckers. After raising it a bit, it soubnds very good apart from the infamous 60 cycle hum.
- The bridge pickup has some bite but it is very trebly so be careful with your tone knobs on distortion pedals. Imo it is the worst stock pickup on this guitar.
I play through a Jekyll And Hyde (Visual Sound) and a Line 6 Spider IV 30 and it sounds pretty good. I have also played through my friends' Deluxe Reverb and Egnators and there is a huge sound quality difference. This guitar sounds great but make sure you are playing through a decent tube amp. All in all the sound quality is good, but the bridge pickup is too treble oriented with barley any mids or bass. // 8
Action, Fit & Finish: The guitar had a great, low action with no fret buzz, however I was very disappointed with the tuning stability IT was set up with .09s. Through experimentation I found out that divebombing will shake it out of tune unless you use 10s or heavier, so use your discretion. Other than that, as I said the single coil was a bit too low, but it was other ise perfect with no cosmetic flaws. // 8
Reliability & Durability: This guitar is guitar durable, after being dropped many times. The paint is starting to chip after a year but that is to be expected. I would gig without a backup only if I was playing in multiple tuning, because as I said, tuning this thing is very time consuming and I would not want to have to add that pressure while on stage. // 9
Impression: This guitar has a very easy to play neck, which is a great appeal, and a stable locking nut, making it a cheap platform to upgrade if you are dissatisfied with only one or two of the pickup's tone. If this guitar was stolen, I would probably get a different one, only because tuning is tedious. // 8
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