Mid Range Ibanez Recommendations Part 1

RG370DX


Whenever I am being presented with questions from eager guitar players or potential rock stars in training on which mid range Ibanez I will recommend to them that would last them a long while, without a shout of a doubt, The RG350/370 is the first thing that comes to my mind. Take note that I will only recommend those that are equipped with the Edge Zero II bridge but not those that comes with the Edge III. The ones with Edge Zero II bridge are the ones that are made from 2011 onwards. For the uninitiated, Ibanez created a bridge that has a lot of tuning stability problems known as the Edge III(There are more which I shall not mention). For a list of the Ibanez Tremolo Vibrato bridges, click here to find out more about the different types of Ibanez Tremolo Vibrato bridges.

RG350EX


The Ibanez RG350/370 features a Wizard III neck, sporting a thin profile of 19mm on the first fret while 21mm on the 21 fret. The difference between the Wizard III and the previous non Japan made Wizard II will be the extra meat at the sides of the neck, giving it a chunkier feel. Now, even though it feels chunkier compared to the previous incarnation, it does also however feels "thinner" than the Wizard II. Think of it in terms of a Thin U shape vs a Thin D shape profile. However, this is by no means a baseball bat neck of the Gibson and is by all means very shred-able.

It also features a 400mm radius (16") which is in my opinion the perfect balance for easy chording and scaling. 43mm nut width (the others being 42mm) provides a wider width for the neck giving sufficient string spacing for fast scale runs.

Often favored by shredders, the rosewood or maple fretboard also comes slotted with Jumbo frets which allows easier note fretting.

RG350M YE


The guitar comes equipped with a Basswood body which is being used by many famous guitar virtuosos as their main choice of wood such as Paul Gilbert, Joe Satrani and John Pettrucci. Basswood is deemed as a neutral sounding wood giving a lot of potential to the voicing of the pick ups. Additionally, Basswood is lightweight and is perfect for Floyd Rose tremolo equipped guitars, allowing the player to withstand hours performing on stage with the guitar strap on.

Lastly, what differentiates this model from it's previous incarnations is the more than decent Ibanez designed Edge Zero II bridge comes equipped with this Guitar. Not only does it provides tuning stability, it also provides the player the option of taking out the Zero system turning the bridge into a full floating tremolo. The bridge also has the advantage of buttery smooth action of pulling up and whamming down while locking studs, which are once again being introduced with this new bridge, providing superior tuning stability.

The only downside of this model is the pick ups that it comes installed with. The Ibanez INFs are pick ups with high output but gets really muddy and thin with high gain. As bad as I think they are, they aren't actually totally unusable. Still much better compared to a lot of mid range pick ups out there. However with a pick up swap, this will turn the story around making this guitar scream with high playability.

I personally believe that even though the guitar is made in Indonesia, the quality control of the Indonesia Ibanez plant is good and in fact superior to most Korean and Chinese plant. This guitar has very well the potential to be the new Holy grail of the mid range Ibanez guitars, like the RG550 which has rock the planet of our yesteryear.