Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Curved goodness


The Ibanez RGA121 was my first Ibanez Prestige. It was the first curved top RG offered by Ibanez together with the RGA321 (flame maple top). As I'm not a fan of elaborate flame tops, I opted for this plain version instead.


From this view, we can see how much maple was used for the instrument. At its thickest part, it is 1.5cm thick. The Prestige line was serious (still is) about having a top wood enhancement for all the guitars featuring a cap top.


Same ol' story... wood drying out but conditioning is the answer. 😀


There's a cloudy build up over at the headstock. No amount of polishing seems to cure the situation. Maybe some car-care product might do the trick. The other guitar suffering from this anomaly is my PRS S2 Singlecut.


Ibanez equipped this model with a pair of V pickups at the factory. It did very little to make me happy when it comes to overdrive/ distortion. These are the deserving Seymour Duncan replacements: JB (b) / Jazz (n). The JB will remain prolific when it comes to single note definition under high gain settings. Some players dislike this citing the extra treble as the cause of poor power chord tones but that happens if you ignore the EQ at your amp. The JB was conceived to be as such. If you wish for a pronounced bottom end thickness with the top end definition in check, the Custom is your best bet. The Jazz sounds good in all the guitars I own. Between the 59 & the Jazz, I prefer the latter as it doesn't mud out at higher volume settings. For woman tone lovers (all ye Clapton-era Cream fans), the 59 does a better job.


I'm in the initial stages of testing the new D'Addario XTs out, more comments when the time comes. 

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