This year, is a good year for Ibanez lovers. This is a year of change. This is a year where players get choices which they normally don't on previous years. This is a year of Ibanez willingness to break out of it's norm shell and try something different. Lastly, this is the year which Ibanez offer to players out there, a choice of different tone wood, without causing a big hole in out pocket.
Part of this year's brilliance, I present to you the Ibanez RG470AH, a mid range Ibanez that isn't made with Basswood. Instead, this model sports a Swamp Ash body in beautiful natural satin finish. What makes this change so enticing then? Well, Ibanez has long been making RG from Basswood for it's mid range guitars which includes the famous RG550. There is nothing wrong with the mid range dominant Basswood and neither is it a bad tone wood for a guitar. However, not everyone of us likes Basswood or rather, few of us would like to have the option of some tonal differences. Swamp Ash offers more resonance across all frequency and might appear punchy to some. This is the exact difference compared to mid range dominant Basswood.
Coupled with this year's innovation is the introduction of the new mid range Ibanez Vibrato Tremolo bridge, the Edge Zero II.The new design provides tuning stability and gives 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 the locking studs, which are once again being introduced with this new bridge, providing superior tuning stability.
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.
Ibanez also did a slight revamp on their Wizard II neck shape and equipped with this guitar is the Wizard III neck. It feels similar to the Wizard II however, with the exception of the extra meat at the sides, giving it a chunkier feel. Even though it is chunkier at the side compared to the Wizard II, it does also however feels "thinner" than the Wizard II due to the flatter back. 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. Coupled with the maple neck is the rosewood fretboard which are slotted with Jumbo frets which allows almost effortless note fretting.
As usual with all the mid range Ibanez RG line are the pickups. The Ibanez INFs are pick ups with high output but gets really muddy and thin with high gain. As bad as I deemed them to be, they aren't totally unusable. Compared to guitars of similar price bracket, the pickups do sound way better. However with a pickup swap, this guitar will be a decent workhorse for professionals or professionals wannabes.
Generally, the production line from Ibanez's Indonesia plant has proved the test of time and is still producing great quality instruments of the price bracket. If you are in for a change, for something different from the typical Basswood Ibanez, do try one of these at your local Ibanez distributor today. You might just bring home a new member for the family.
