Ibanez: RG521 (3)

I seldom get positive encounters when it comes to Ibanez's in-house pickups. The branded, third party ones fared better in terms of my expectations. These are namely Seymour Duncan & DiMarzio models. The ones you see here in my RG521 are the V7 (N)/ V8 (B) humbuckers, the former being a ceramic unit & the latter, alnico.

I have no idea what the intention was by putting a ceramic core model in the neck position but the Ibanez people have let me down in this aspect yet again. If there's a hope of getting people to utilize the neck pickup for distortion inclined tones per se, then it might appeal to the solo purists. Many of us rely on the neck for smoother tones & immaculate cleans, generally, us solo geeks included. We like our bridge pickup to handle a more aggressive take for riffs instead. It would be a splendid idea to swap the magnet cores in time to come; have a ceramic-based pickup in the bridge, an alnico in the neck. I'm not writing off the V8 here entirely but it fell short on most occasions when a stinging, aggressive distortion is dialled up. No issues with the neck pickup in this aspect, even the cleans sound very appealing for a strong magnet type. 

Ibanez: RGD2120 (Part 2)

I had some spare time before the FA Cup kicked off last night so I gave my RGD2120 a fresh set of strings. Before the news strings came on, I managed to snap a pic of the in-house V7/V8 Custom pickups. I find them perfectly acceptable for now; maybe I'm too overwhelmed by the tone of Seymour Duncans, I failed to appreciate those non-Duncans which sound equally appealing. Anyway, I find the RGD2120 absolutely top notch when it comes to QC but you know how the small things elude the careless eyes- take a look at the bridge V8 on the right. That's not quite a quality assembly there; note the gap between the coil bobbins. A minor niggle in an otherwise superb assembly.