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Crosspost from Harmony Central. Ibanez RG2550z Prestige  Price paid: 'twas a gift from my wife, but if you aren't a lucky bastard like me, expect to pay between 850 and 900 bucks. Features: 10 2008 model Japanese manufacture (Team J craft) Basswood body in Galaxy white with a sweet brushed black pickguard, 25.5" scale 24 fret Wizard prestige neck with rosewood fretboard and nice big jumbo frets. This is pretty much the neck you want for shred. H/S/H configuration with Dimarzio/IBZ pickups. 1 vol, 1 tone w/ 5 way switch. Brand new Edge Zero double locking tremolo w/ZPS3 zero point system. Gotoh tuning machines. Includes a team J craft hardshell case. Sound : 8 I play a bit of everything with an emphasis on hard rock/punk/metal. I play through a Hughes & Kettner Tube 50 with my pedalboard in front of it that is in this order: Boss tuner->Boss OC-3 octave pedal->Modded Dunlop Cry Baby->Wasabi overdrive->HK with a Boss DD-2 Delay in the Effects loop. I also use a Line6 PodXT for practice and recording. The pickups in the guitar are nice and warm with a medium-high output. The harmonics are much better than I expected, even using the neck pickup. The 5 way switch provides some killer single coil sounds for super glassy clean tones in the 4th position, and some nice twang in the 2nd position, in addition to the standard humbucker tones. This thing is quiet as a tomb in the humbucking positions and seems resistant to any microphonic squealing even at extreme levels of gain. The controls are smooth and free of scratching, and seem to give usable sounds at all parts of their sweeps. A few caveats though- the output isn't super hot and the pickups could be a bit more articulate. Take that with a grain of salt however, as I am used to Dimarzio Evolution pickups in my other guitar. Also the acoustic tone seems a bit anemic, but I'm not finished tweaking my setup just yet. Action, Fit, & Finish : 8 This guitar has a nice crisp finish on it with no flaws- the paint even looks decent inside the cavities. The pickguard is perfectly cut. Frets are seated and dressed immaculately. The neck has the silkiest finish I have ever felt on a brand new guitar. The inlays are pretty well done with minimal filler showing. The hardware however is a slightly different story. The bushings on the tuners were slightly loose and they all required approximately 1/8th of a turn to be completely snug. The new Edge Zero bridge is a beautiful unit, but the height adjustment studs were bottomed out in their ferrules with no more room to lower the action- which was .5-1mm too high. When I removed the studs it appeared that the treble side stud had been ground down by someone at the factory and touched up with a sharpie. (The purple tint is a dead giveaway.) It wasn't enough though-I have since shortened the studs by approximately .20" to allow for proper adjustment. This is a MAJOR issue- most people don't have access to a machine shop. Also- the manufacturer supplies locking screws for the height adjustment posts, but they don't install them at the factory. Other owners less experienced than myself will have difficulties installing them because the entire tremolo unit has to be removed to be able to access the holes on the bottom of the studs. Regarding the tremolo unit- this is a fantastically designed piece of hardware. The Zero point system pretty much assures that the tremolo is always at the proper angle, and is really resistant to tuning issues. The action of the tremolo is smooth and returns to zero every single time-even with ridiculous abuse a la Steve Vai. It is a little on the stiff side however. The thumbwheel for adjusting spring tension is a welcome addition as well. I just wish that the zero point system was adjustable as well. Reliability/Durability : 9 This thing is built like a tank and absolutely will not go out of tune. That said- gigging without a backup is a bad idea because of the Floyd setup. You break a string, it takes several minutes to replace it. I will say that the ZPS system will let you finish the song if you break the b or e string because the trem is not fully floating. Customer Support : No Opinion Never dealt with Hoshino, but I've heard horror stories. Overall Rating : 9 I've been playing for 12 years. I've sold guitars since I was 17 and I've played a million RGs. This one stands up with the best of them. The nice thing about RGs is you can get one off the shelf anywhere and if you know what you're doing you can get it playing perfectly in short order. Get one.
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Apr 1, 2008 19:09
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 21:22 |
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