Ibanez M5C

Black strat copy with low cost vintage hardware. I have been play guitar for thirty years...blues, rock, metal jazz and RandB. I have an affinity for strat copies. I have rebuiilt several guitars to 'Fender' standards

Purchased this strat copy from a pawn shop in Jax. Beach, FL in the late 90s for $75. At first just left it as is. It sounded great with a mid 70s look and vibe. A rounf 2003, began having problems with her neck buzzing. Tried adjusting bridge height, refretting higher frets. Decided to rebuilt and founded how poorly constructed it was. Magnets instead of coils in pickups, real cheap tremelo. Body routing looked like a hack job. Stripped the paint and polyeuruthaned and changed to two HH pickguard from GuitatFetish...built up neck slot to stop buzz and slapped on a rosewood tele neck. Action was so high playing it could only be used for slide. Had to salvage neck, loaded pick gard and hardware for new body and the Memphis body was added to the woodpile.

It was for a while a great guitar. I called er my 'Blackie' and it sound great with my setup of Fuzzface, wah and echo, and Marshall 100w Full stack and dual Fender Reverb Twin set up. Actually gigged several shows with her and got compliments for her looks and sound.

Poorly routed body and cheap hardware. The body was actually nice piece of ash...who ever routed her did a crappy job. And pieces of magnets around the polepieces in the pickups...it was amazing. This guitar had the strat look and I was hoping to keep it as is but it was not to be.

Great fake job. It was definitely 'strat look...strat sound...strat feel' with penny pinching construction. OEM black finish looked great and 70s style 'CBS-big' peg head was the cincher for me. However being constructed cheaply was in the end it's downfall.

My Memphis strat copy was made before Fender started to sue companies who made their 'copies' to closely resemble 'Strats' and 'Teles' at half the cost.(i.e. Tokai, Fernandes. But as I have learned from owning original 'Fenders' and refurbished 'strat copies' that the real mccoy is a whole lot better.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I decided I wanted to play guitar, so I saved up my allowance and mowing money to buy one. I purchased it at Twin Rivers Music in Columbus (This place adjusts each guitar that comes in and make sure there are no problems with it) for $200.

I like the transparent red finish. The coil/coil/humbucker set up is nice, and the 5-way switching. It sounds pretty great, too.

The only thing that i don't like about this guitar would be that it kind of goes out of tune pretty often.

The quality of this guitar is great. So far, it has stayed together and I haven't had any problems

If you are looking into playing guitar, you should consider this one.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com