Tod & Krys

A December product announcement is not an Ibanez thing but this seems to be an exception. What's the hurry, we wonder. 

New this month are the pair of guitars for the Polyphia guys. This here is the TOD10, a new one for Tim Henson. Gone are the DiMarzio (Fluence replacements) pickups & alter / dyna MIX9 switching system. Also, it's an HH config this time. Fretboard is ebony with a cheeky tree of death inlay. What you don't see - push-pull voicing switch (tone knob).

The Scott LePage iteration has Fluence pickups on board as well but these are pickguard mounted. Ebony fretboard here has block markers which I find more appealing. Nope, the dynaMIX9 switch is not retained, that's a voicing toggle switch. The Krys features an ash body, Tod is a basswood.

These guitars are not radical changes for Ibanez to deal with. So costs are presumably kept in check when it comes to construction. The Fluence pickups are the major changes. Prices might just be about the same as the previous iterations but factoring in inflation & GST hikes, by the time these get here in 2023, it would cross into the $2K bracket.

Hello December 👋

Pics: Ibanez

EVH: Wolfgang Special

This guitar bears the initials of one of the most (if not the most) iconic guitar slingers of all time. Since his involvements with the Music Man brand name, Van Halen had settled with this rather stable design for his guitars; one which features simple cutaways & a non-6 in a line set of tuners. This is the latest addition to his line up of preferences & it's one not made in the USA; the Special is made in Japan. 

I had the opportunity to try this guitar out recently & was first stirred by the weight of it; it's light. Despite the massive hardware there, the Special is one which would please newbies or senior players concerned with having to lug around a heavy (musical) implement. This was made clear by the manufacturer as the guitar is crafted from a lighter basswood grade & features a laminate top as opposed to the full 1/2" maple which adorns the American counterpart. All in all the guitar was a pleasure to handle, made very desirable by the unfinished neck (& gloss-free). However, the bridge humbucker in the audition model, I'm confident to say, wasn't equipped with an F-spaced humbucker so the E & B strings alignment was clearly off.

Tone-wise, the bridge humbucker is an all-out rocker; very gain friendly without losing definition at high drive settings. Switching to the neck, one would feel the stark difference immediately- it's much deeper sounding & has a steep inclinations to all things vintage in terms of warmth. Due to the lighter build, the guitar did not suffer from any coercion from the bottom end & balances out nicely across the frequencies despite the neck pickup manifesting its boomy pedigree. All in all, the Special succeeded in its enticements for both tonal & playability considerations. In fact, I'd guess that there would be many of us out there expressing a firm preference for the neck's 'balanced' profile- neither too thin nor too overwhelming when serious grip is in order. 

A couple of things to note: 1) The frets in this guitar are not your rocker-grade, tall & wide type, Van Halen prefers a less obnoxious selection & they are, at best, mediums with a hint of vintage. 2) The pickup selector switch was wired to Van Halen's peculiarity- the up position selects the bridge humbucker, the down position gets you the neck humbucker. Annoying, yes, but it's the man's liking & this is his guitar anyway.

EVH: Wolfgang Special

List: $1,890

Availability: Swee Lee Co.

Variety!

Quit whining- we now have a good range of mid-priced Ibanez models with different body wood to choose from. Above pic: (From top to bottom): RG370 (basswood)/ RG470MHZ (mahogany)/ RG470AHZ (ash). They feature the same hardware & bridge type (EZ-II thumbs-up!) so these pretty much give you a fair comparison across models. Price-wise, they are also in the same bracket. The RG470 models are pending price listing but inferring from the tier they're from & the features on board, they shouldn't exceed $800.

I'm expecting this comment: Basswood so there's more bass in there, right? :-/

Word indeed

Grover Jackson made a comeback to the guitar industry recently with his fresh line-up of GJ2 guitars. It's a master's return to say the least but there are already cynics out there challenging his inclusion of basswood in some of his glossed, solid colour finishes, in consideration of the prices these guitars are listing for. It is as if basswood is the ultimate putrid wood in guitardom, any inclusion of it in a master craftsman's consideration would be deemed heretic. Basswood doesn't make a good topic conversation with players either, even rookies dismiss them without further regard. You'd wonder where this impression came from...

I'm not here to champion any wood types when it comes to guitar craftsmanship. The situation is such that certain wood types could conjure magic when they are paired up with the right amplifier/ pickups/ effects; there's no sure formula when it comes to tone. We often failed to acknowledge the circumstances, more engulfed by opinions & unfounded beliefs. I am unofficially documenting words of wisdom by expert builders & Grover Jackson is definitely one for the record. This is his opinion of basswood which reinforced his inclusion of this tone wood for some of his GJ2 models:

Then I found out that basswood has an extremely high strength-to-weight ratio: it's a very stable but lightweight material.

Basswood speaks

Ha! Guthrie Govan's latest signature Suhr guitar features a basswood body- there are many people out there who are very dismissive when it comes to all things basswood; they don't vene want to listen when you mention this wood type.

EVH Wolfgang

June 2006 - March 2008; that's how long it took to manifest the EVH Wolfgang model. The most demanding encounter by Fender's Master Builder, Chip Ellis, was Van Halen's very specific pickup tones. He recommended (Fender) engineer Seiki Goto to chip in when the going got tough...

The interesting thing to note here was the initial use of alder for the guitar body (alder is de riguer for Fender, yes?) but was rejected by Van Halen, instead, he specified basswood... ha!

Suhrly basswood

While the talk about basswood being less favourable, when it comes to guitar-making, is still active, guitarist Guthrie Govan sheds some insights when he talked to the people at Suhr guitars:

"What I've discovered talking to the Suhr guys, who knows a lot about wood voodoo, is that the most balanced sound you can get is a basswood body, a maple top, maple neck, and some kind of dense rosewood fingerboard."

Despite the education, there are still people out there who equate basswood with quasi-trash... tsk, tsk, tsk...

Wood talk: Basswood

Basswood, according to the guitar lay-person, is a pariah wood, often used in cheap guitars & some pretentious high end models so the manufacturer can rake in the most money from unsuspecting people. Oh?

Luthiers often classify basswood as a good tonewood to tool with due to its soft nature. It's more abundant than its other tonewood siblings hence its lower price tag. The uninformed always attribute abundance & the lack of material toughness as 'bad'; just because it doesn't comply to certain expectations doesn't mean it's dud. Fundamentally, basswood gives off a muscular midrange response but we often hear a lack of pronounced manifestation from a particular frequency hence making it one of the most neutral wood to propel guitar acoustics.

In this light, basswood is perhaps the best working material to propel your favourite/ boutique pickups' tones with minimal resonance colouring. However, the situation today is still one of basswood disapproval because it's not used in high-end guitars so it must be bad.

To date, Suhr guitars, one of the most respectable names in grand guitar craftsmanship, cites basswood as a splendid tonewood. Guitar wizards such as Joe Satriani, John Petrucci & Paul Gilbert, among others, chose basswood for their signature guitars- they must be dumb to do so, yes? Something for us to reflect upon...

Fender: ST-72

One of my most enjoyable line-up is plugging in my Fender ST-72 into my Marshall. To many of us, basswood is a pariah wood because it's used in many budget guitars & its inherent softness makes it dent-prone. Basswood for a Fender body is sacrilege to many Fender fanatics but this is a better part of snobbery than anything else. the ST-72 is one of the better sounding Fenders out there (in my books especially) tone-wise, quite evidently out-singing some of the top-end Strats coming from the USA.

But I appreciate the ST-72 as a good guitar per se, regardless of its Fender label.

Ibanez: RG1550 (disct'd)

The basswood rant continues; the above, alien-warded Ibanez RG1550 was discontinued in 2005. I bought it a year before its bow-out from the catalogs, when the retail price was still below SGD1K. It's a definite value-for-money Prestige unit as the feel & tone on offer speak for the exalted series it hails from.

I was itching to buy this guitar simply because back then, I still did not own any maple fretboard Ibanez guitar so the feel was definitely different & appealing. The default V-series pickups made way for Seymour Duncan's Screamin' Demon (B) & Distortion (N), the mid single coil was left stock. Upon this swap, what went missing was that excessive midrange response typical of in-house Ibanez pickups, in place was the grizzly Duncan growl in the bridge which sounds very fitting for black metal stuff. The neck humbucker is hotter in output, with this in mind, I had it set up to such an extent that it sounds louder than the bridge counterpart making it perfect for lead playing- no volume pedal boosting necessary.

Ibanez: RG7620 (disct'd)

Some people have issues with basswood; for me, it's anything that works because it's what ultimately comes out of the amp (speaker) that matters. I've been getting good results with basswood, especially with my RG7620 (disct'd) here.

Touted as a soft, ding-prone & cheap, basswood is often deemed as a second class resident in guitars; many would cite mahogany/ ash as superior tonewood. It's inevitable that basswood's economical nature would entice the manufacturer to make it a favourable working material in terms of production costs, as such, basswood is used in mid-priced guitars which often manifest production inconsistencies. However, select basswood are also used in upper-end guitars as documented in Suhr's catalogues & we have the Ibanez Universe to prove the critics wrong.

I own many basswood guitars across brand names, but many in my collection are Ibanez models. Throughout the years, what I hear from my basswood guitars are great pickup tones; it seems that this tonewood permits the manifestation of the pickups' voicing rather than being a blanket to the sonic delivery. My RG7620 here fortifies the default DiMarzio's lower end frequency focus. I often hear an excessively polished top end from the aforementioned pickup brand, at high gain/ drive settings, but not from this guitar. This is the reason why I choose to keep them in-tact & not swap them for Seymour Duncan units, which I favour.

Rather than being more appreciative of the overall tone on offer, many of the fledgling players today choose to compartmentalize tonewoods into the respectful/ hateful category.