Ibanez RGD7UC Prestige

DESCRIPTION

The guitar is made in Japan
26.5 scale
It features 24 frets, a volume knob and a 3-way switch
Equipped with awesome Bare Knuckle Aftermath pickups (neck and bridge)
Set bridge
Neck is a 5-piece Wizard-7 in maple and wenge with titanium reinforcement
Basswood body
Ebony fretboard
Fretboard indicators on the side only
Matte black finish with black chrome hardware
Gotoh auto-locking tuners

USE

I’ve tried this guitar for a month on a PEAVEY VALVEKING 212 tube amp, a MARSHALL MG50 DFX solid-state amp and a sound system using a LINE 6 POD HD500x.
The fretboard is beautiful and very pleasant to play, your fingers slide perfectly on it and I’ve had no problem playing on a longer-scaled guitar.
I’ve played it in standard A, Drop G and Drop G# tunings. Thanks to the tuners, il perfectly stays in tune.
It’s a bit heavy but I believe it to be due to the ebony fingerboard, you can feel a nice resonance when playing unplugged and its curves provide optimum playing comfort – whether you play while sitting or standing up.

SOUND

The Bare Knuckles Aftermaths provide an awesomely rich sound.
Overdriven sounds are sharp and incisive, edgy yet very clear no matter whether you play power chord, legato, chopping.
The clean sound made me discover for the first time a pickup that does the job in both registers, the sounds are great and stellar – provided you know how to set your amp, pedals and so on.
Since the wood involved sounds rather neutral and frequency-balanced, the pickups can express their own tones in the mids and high mids, making it stand out in the mix.

OVERALL

As an owner of the lower-end RGD2127FX, I must admit it’s well worth its price. Forum users here or there claim that you would get the same result by getting the lower-end model and adding Aftermath pickups and the same tuners (and I do have Aftermath pickups on my RGD2127FX, just like the RGD7UC), well… just no. There’s a huge gap in terms of resonance.

The RGD7UC sounds way more punchy in the low mids, and I could hear the difference when playing live with a drummer.
As a consequence, I’m now considering selling my RGD2127FX to get this one, which proves that one should not trust judgements solely based on an instrument’s feature list.

A single cons : the guitar’s matte color quickly degrades if you don’t take care, and i twill have real consequences on its look over time if you never wipe your guitar after using it.