SeriesIbanez Signature

Made in the United States. UTILIZATION The JEM GeneralThe Ibanez JEM series was designed by Steve VAI (www.vai.com). This is professional instruments, which are far from the reach of all budgets (Ibanez offers a model derived, the RG series, which has characteristics of JEM imitated, but build quality obviously less high range, and with different microphones). Channel 24 cases, fully accessible: no gene for play on the 24th box, is the absolute anti Les Paul! The button is very wide, and it takes getting used to, nothing to do with the narrow neck of Fender. JEM is a real highway, which allows for maximum speed and cleanliness. Listen to Steve Vai ... The neck is very stiff, and does not work at all. Perfect tuning stability. Touche very flat, very thin neck. Comfort. Start body style, much improved. Great ergonomic and beautiful. The guitar is very light - nothing to do, either, with a Les Paul. Disadvantage: the JEM is relatively fragile, it does not refrain from dropping ... Ibanez signed floating tremolo, perfect - much better than the Floyd Rose. Microphones differ depending on the model, see www.ibanez.com for apprécialtion sound, see www.harmony-central.com. These are in any case never V7, S1, V8, unlike writes Jo Gaston Melmef https://fr.audiofanzine.com/guitare-sc/ibanez/jem-10th/-these, we only found on the RG, and are not recommended (the RG is an excellent guitar, as far as to replace the pickups). The JEM, the microphone is emblematic Di Marzio EVOLUTION (www.dimarzio.com - a micro to very high output, super punch, acute clarissimi. The JEM in particular 10 This is a particular model of JEM, Ibanez has produced to celebrate the 10th anniversary of manufacturing. Black body, picture of very high-end aluminum pickguard, etc.. : http://www.jemsite.com/axes/model/jem10.htm see - one of the finest guitars ever made. There are only 852 in the world, and they are very expensive. SOUNDS I use basically a one Line 6 VETTA II: https://www.line6.com/vetta_ii/US/. The Di Marzio pickups EVOLUTION fully support all electronic processing, and can attack any amp. The sound is always clear and powerful. It is a microphone that does not forgive anything, everything is picked up, including guitarist imperfections ... OVERALL OPINION I bought my JEM 10 in Germany, in December 2002. I do not use in the studio: a too fine instrument to risk damaging it on a stage (JEM will prefer, white or blue). It's a perfect guitar. The price of the JEM 10, as I said, is very high. Is justified only for lovers who can afford it. The JEM 7 is expensive too, but not more than any other instrument that high quality. If you are considering investing in a great guitar - Stratocaster, Les Paul, ... - It would be ridiculous not to compare with JEM.

(Originally written by Endrix/translated from Audiofanzine FR) Guitar made in Japan by the J Craft team. My model has a scalloped rosewood fingerboard and was made this year. The guitar has an Ibanez Pro Edge tremolo under Floyd Rose license and Di Marzio Evolution pickups (two humbuckers and one single coil). Tone and volume controls. Typical Ibanez neck: very flat and slim, similar to the RG models. I also owned one of the first models with ebony fingerboard and I can't notice any difference compared to the current versions with rosewood fingerboard. UTILIZATION For me the neck is the most important part of the guitar and that's the reason I decided to play a Jem (among other things). I find this neck is great. It's fast and comfortable, but it's not the best neck I know (I also play a Charvel). Access to the upper frets is easy thanks to the great neck/body junction. The guitar is light and I love that. The sound is even better because the guitar is extremely versatile in spite of its heavy metal look. The neck humbucker allows you to play everything from pop to rock and ballads or even jazz licks. The middle position provides typical Strat sounds. And of course the bridge humbucker produces a killer sound for heavy metal. This guitar is extremely versatile. I don't know any other modern Strat that provides such a wide sound palette. SOUNDS I already wrote above about the sound. I only want to repeat it's an ultra versatile instrument. I play it with all my amps and I always get very good results. The clean sound is good with both tube and solid-state amps. The guitar always sounds good. On the contrary, the bridge pickup gives much better results with tube amps... but that's always the case with every guitar! To keep it short, this Jem offers every possible sound! I also own a Gibson Les Paul but I don't take it out of its case anymore because the Jem offers me a typical Gibson sound with my Mesa Mark IV amp and I like its neck a lot more. It's the same thing regarding clean sound: the middle pickup sounds very good and once again it's more comfortable to play the Jem than a Strat. Its typical Ibanez neck makes it easy to play any music style with any technique. I only moderate my opinion because I have a new purchase, a Charvel SoCal and in spite of its great value, the Ibanez doesn't have the magic of the Charvel. OVERALL OPINION I've been playing a Jem for 14 years (counting my first Jem)! I like almost everything about this guitar!! The only thing I don't like that much is the Pro Edge tremolo. Considering the technical aspect, it's a fantastic tremolo that gives you more possibilities than an original Floyd Rose but I find the Vigier tremolo with ball bearing has a longer life. So I put this guitar on the same level as another wonderful instrument, the Vigier Excalibur Custom. I like this guitar a lot because it's the only one that gives me the sounds I love. If you want to play Vai stuff you have to own this guitar. The value for money is average because even though a Jem is less expensive than a Vigier, and many other lesser guitars, it's still quite expensive because it's a signature model. I would choose it again but there are new instruments hitting the market and I sold my Washburn N4 (awful look and average sound) to buy a real Charvel US, which is an amazing guitar! The advantage of the Charvel is that you buy a guitar and nothing else (no signature, no deluxe case, no nothing just the guitar). But the Jem still has its own sound.

This is the first guitar that was ever released for Andy Timmons by Ibanez. It's modeled after the guitar that Ibanez made for him, making this his first signature guitar. This one is the original version that was released back in 1999, not the reissue (called the AT100CL). However, they're pretty much the exact same guitar, just released at different times. The guitar has an alder body with a maple bolt-on neck and maple fretboard, dot inlays, 22 frets, a special Wilkinson bridge with some of the screws removed, HSS configuration, one volume, two tone knobs and a five way switch. UTILIZATION just by looking at it, you can tell the guitar is modeled after a Strat. However, this plays better than most strats out there. For one, the neck is awesome. I've always been a huge fan of Ibanez necks, and this delivers like no tomorrow. The bridge on this is really slick. It's a more vintage style trem, but it also has some of the more modern characteristics that some of the newer Fender guitars have. The fretwork on the guitar was great, and the nut was cut correctly. Getting up to the higher frets was also a breeze thanks to the Ibanez All Access Neck Joint. SOUNDS The guitar sounds awesome. In the bridge, there's the DiMarzio AT1. This is basically a DiMarizo version of the famous JB pickup. It's a bit thicker than the normal JB that you tend to hear in today's guitars as it's modeled after the older ones. It works great for pretty much anything you can think of. Want to play blues? No problem? What about death metal? Sure. It has enough of everything to really do any style you can think of. The neck and middle pickups are DiMarzio Cruisers, and they're kinda like P90s more than single coils. They're super fat and warm, but they have that awesome P90 characteristic that just oozes with tone. OVERALL OPINION These guitars are awesome. In fact, they're some of my favorite Ibanez guitars out there. Nearly everything about them is perfect, and they'll rival just about any strat you can put them against. The best part is that this guitar already has great pickups in it, so you never need to replace them. If you find one of these at a good price, jump on it.

Joe Satriani has long been a player of both basswood body guitars and floyd equipped guitars. Why they continue to release these hard tail models, I'm not exactly sure. The guitar has a mahogany body with a maple neck and a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets with dot inlays, a LoPro Edge bridge, two DiMarzio humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way toggle switch. UTILIZATION The guitar itself is put together fairly well. The frets are in great shape. They are perfectly crowned and have a very nice bevel on them at the edges that makes them feel great when moving up and down the neck. I was able to get some nice, low action with this guitar. The biggest gripe I have is that this guitar has a hard tail bridge. Satch has always been known as a floyd user, so I don't really see the point in releasing these hard tail bridge equipped guitars. I guess there's a market for them, but it's a lot smaller than the normal Satch market. SOUNDS The guitar sounded really good, I'll give it that. The mahogany body actually sounds better than the normal basswood body, in my opinion. Where as the basswood body is great for leads and fusion tones, I find that mahogany is a better "all around" wood, especially with the thinner S series bodies. The FRED in the bridge got these real cool harmonics, but it also had some nice girth to it that the other basswood bodied models didn't have. The neck sounded a bit fuller, too. There wasn't as much annoying treble, and the midrange was a bit more complex instead of overwhelming. OVERALL OPINION I really dislike the hard tail bridges on these guitars. That said, they're high quality guitars that sound pretty good. If you're into hard tails, you might enjoy this guitar. I recommend looking elsewhere in the Ibanez line up, but there really aren't too many that have the specs that this model does.

This is pretty much the regular model that everybody thinks of when they think of Joe Satriani today. It's his standard production model, and aside from the color, it's very similar to the actual one that he plays. I should note that his actual model has a compound fretboard where as this is just a standard 12'' radius. The guitar features a basswood body, a maple bolt-on neck with a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, dot inlays, Edge Pro tremolo, two humbuckers, one volume, one tone with a coil split and a three way switch. UTILIZATION The guitar was nice and lightweight. The body was super thin, and it was crazy easy to play standing up. The finish on this was one of my favorite finishes from Ibanez. It's very laid back and elegant looking compared to some of the other finishes out there. The neck on this is pretty nice, but I don't like the fretboard radius as much. It has a classic fretboard radius. What I mean by classic is that it has a Les Paul style radius on it. I tend to prefer flatter radii, so I always tended to gravitate towards the regular S series or even the RG series. This is kind of like a fusion between a Strat and a Les Paul at points. SOUNDS This guitar had the older pickups before Satriani switched to his new ones. It has a DiMarzio FRED in the bridge and a PAF Pro in the neck. The FRED in the bridge is a pretty unique pickup. It has these odd harmonics that can really add something to the lead lines. Combine this with the basswood body, and you got yourself a really cool lead guitar. The PAF Pro in the neck is great for that open and vintage style PAF lead sound. It can get some really cool character going on, especially on the wound strings. The guitar also has a coil split switch so you can get those kind of single coil tones going on. To be honest, it doesn't work that great with these pickups, but if you are on the clean channel, it's pretty nice. OVERALL OPINION This is a very cool guitar, but I generally prefer the regular S series for whatever reason. I like the necks on the standard S series vs this neck, and I like the mahogany body instead of the basswood body. This is great for leads, but I find the regular ones to be a bit more versatile than this. If you can find a good deal on this used, and don't mind playing sig gear, then I recommend picking one up. Most people should really dig this guitar.

The Ibanez JS1200 is an updated version of the guitar that Joe Satriani designed for Ibanez all those years ago. Joe's always been more of a vintage guy and his guitar is an excellent blend of the typical Ibanez superstrat and some more classic Strat type guitars that Joe played back in the day. It features a basswood body, rosewood fretboard with 22 6105 frets (taller and narrower in design) the recently added for 2010 Edge Tremolo (replacing the old Edge Pro bridge used for many years prior. It also has DiMarzio signature Satriani pickups - a PAF Joe in the neck position and a FRED in the bridge position. They're made in Japan at the Ibanez factory there. UTILIZATION The JS1200 is definitely an ergonomic and streamlined instrument for my tastes. Though it's not quite as thin or fast as a typical RG, it eschews that extra bit of speed for a more comfortable vintage spec'd feel that I personally love. I had an original Ibanez Radius that was quite similar in feel to the JS1200 - nice comfortable medium sized neck and a body that sits very well both sitting and standing. It's a good medium weight that is easy to play for extended periods too. The upper fret access isn't as good as an RG or a JEM but it's fairly good - kind of like an old Strat. Getting a good sound out of this guitar is pretty easy. Joe tends to like more of a vintage voiced tone than typically is found in Ibanez guitars, so this is a treat for players like me who prefer an old school tone. There is also a high pass filter to create a different set of tones as well... very cool. SOUNDS I've tried this guitar through a multitude of amplifiers and have concluded that at its core it sounds like a typical Ibanez RG guitar, but with thicker lows, a more prominent midrange and less spiky highs. The clean tones are excellent for blues or jazz type settings, and with the high pass filter engaged it gets into kind of a Strat territory which is pretty cool. The drive tones are exactly what you'd expect from a Satch guitar - very open and refined but with enough output to work with higher gain modern rigs of today. It's a perfect compromise between the vintage Fenders and the more modern superstrats. Rhythms are fat and chunky, with excellent articulation and clarity on the low strings. The lead tones have great sustain and richness on both pickups, excellent for legato or alternate picked passages. OVERALL OPINION All in all I think the Ibanez JS1200 is a really cool and unique take on the typical Ibanez superstrat. It's a bit expensive at $1,800 new but they can be had for a reasonable price on the used market. It's well crafted and sounds great for hard rock styles, plus the feel is enough of a departure that fans of a more vintage feeling guitar will dig it.

Paul Gilbert is a shredders shredder. He has put out a ton of stuff and his playing gets better and getter and it was already great 20 years ago. He is an unusual shredder because he prefers a hardtail bridge on his guitar. Most shred players cant go 30 secconds without a divebomb. Paul prefers the hardtail bridge for the tuning stability and simplicity. This is his signature model with the hard tail bridge. This model was introduced in the early 90s. Other than the finish and the controls this model is a pretty basic RG. This guitar has a basswood body with an original wizard neck which is still the thinnest. The neck is 1 piece of maple with a maple fretboard. The neck has 24 jumbo frets. The pickup configuration is an HSH configuration. The pickups are Dimarzios in every position. The neck and bridge pickups are PAF Pros while the middle pickup is a JEM single coil. The controls are simple. There is a single volume knob hidden within the painted on F-holes and there is a 5 way blade switch to switch between the pickups. The switch is also hidden in the fake F-holes UTILIZATION If someone like Paul Gilbert is going to play your guitars they better play very well and this guitar does. It has the old school Wizard neck which is even thinner than most of the necks they put out now. The neck is super thin and playable. The flat radius fretboard lets you slam the action pretty low. You dont get many maple fretboard shred guitars so this was the only one you could get for a long time. The hardtail bridge means you get super tuning stability and simplicity. You can easily change tunings and tune down whenever you want without having to worry about spring tension. SOUNDS Paul Gilbert has been using the same Dimarzios forever. He has been a loyal Dimarzio user for a long time. The guitar is an HSH configuration which gives you great versatility. The PAF pro is a classic Dimarzio pickup. Like its name says it is directly based on the Gibson PAF. The pickup has a super over the top tone that really cuts through the mix. The low notes have a boxey vocal quality that makes it sound like an old school pickup. It works well great in each position. In the neck it has a clear sharp sound that can really sing with your solos. In the bridge it has a very open sound that is not super compressed. OVERALL OPINION If you want the true Paul Gilbert experiance this is the guitar. You get no frills with this one. No tremolo, no tone knobs its just your skill. This guitar is all you. It doesnt cover up your playing for you. What you see is what you get with this guitar. It is a stripped down bare bones shred machine. If you are a Paul Gilbert fan or dont mind playing a guitar with painted on F-holes this guitar is a great player.

Joe Satriani is one of Steve Vai's contemporaries. He is well known in the guitar industry but slightly less known than Vai outside of it. Nowadays he is mostly known as the founder of the G3 tour which takes him and 2 other virtuoso guitar players on tour around the world. This Ibanez was Satrianis first model with Ibanez. The current model is not much different than this one. It has a much simpler finish than the new versions. The guitar features a basswood body in the smooth liquidy JS body shape. The neck is 22 frets with a rosewood fretboard and his own neck profile. Early models had the original Edge tremolo but this was changed later as Ibanez advanced in their tremolo designs. This guitar has two humbuckers and a master volume and tone knob with a 3 way for switching. It has a PAF pro in the neck and a FRED in the bridge. The FRED is one of Satrianis signature pickups. UTILIZATION The JS body shape is super confortable. It gets very thin up at the top so its fits well against your body and arm. The smooth contours along the cutaways help with upper fret access because you do not have any hard edges around anywhere. This model being so old has the old style Ibanez neck join which is similar to what you would find on a Fender guitar. While the body is thin at the top it gets nice and thick towards the bottom so the guitar has a thick tone and nice weight to it. It does not feel flimsy like some Ibanez guitars tend to feel. SOUNDS With the Satriani designed FRED in the bridge this guitar has a crazy sound that only Satriani can really take advantage of. I am not a huge fan of the Fred pickup. The FRED works well for him though. You can really get crazy harmonics from it and it is super clear. It is kinda like Steve Vais EVO pickups cousin or something. The PAF pro in the neck is a classic tone. With this guitar only having 22 frets you get a classic neck position tone. Satriani only gave this guitar 22 frets for that reason. With the neck pickup that much farther out you get even fatter tones from the position. The further away a pickup is from the bridge the more beefy it sounds and this is as far as you can get it. This beefy sound with the basswood really give the PAF pro a nice even tone that you want for smooth leads in the neck position. OVERALL OPINION These guitars are pretty much collectors items now. Like old JEM guitars you can find newer models for much cheaper nowadays. And unlike the JEM the Satriani model have not changed very much over the years. I like the pickups in the new ones better and I think most other people do to. The pickup they replaced the FRED with is called the Mo' Jo and it has a more usable tone to it. If you are looking for a Satriani guitar you are better off getting a newer model unless you get a really good deal on one of these old ones.

The JS1000 is pretty famous as it's the most popular JS model that Satriani has. The biggest difference between this model and the JS1000 is that this model doesn't have the high pass on the volume and doesn't have the coil tap on the bridge. Aside from that, it's nearly identical. The guitar has a basswood body with a maple neck and a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets with dot inlays, an Edge bridge, two DiMarzio humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way toggle switch. UTILIZATION The guitar is put together great. There are no sharp edges on the frets, so it feels great when moving your hand up and down the neck. The frets are also crowned nicely, and I was able to get some low action on this without any problems at all. The bridge on this was an Ibanez Edge bridge, and they're some of the best bridges to ever come out of the Ibanez factory. They flutter nicely, sound great and stay in tune like no tomorrow. There were no neck joint gaps on this, so no issues there, either. Overall, the guitar was pretty solid. SOUNDS The guitar sounded pretty nice, even though it lacked the versatility that the normal JS1000 had. The DiMarzio FRED in the bridge sounds great for lead tones and fusion playing. It has these cool overtones and harmonics that really jump out during single note lines. The clean tone is pretty cool on the bridge pickup, too, and I'm not even a huge fan of clean bridge tones. The neck is a PAF Pro, and it's been the staple of 80s shred tones since before I was even born. It's very open sounding, and it helps maintain its character even after going through a huge rack with tons of cable. The lead tones on this pickup are what really stand out, but it also gets a great clean tone. OVERALL OPINION This is actually a better buy than the JS1000, I find. However, these guitars are a bit more rare than the JS1000, so you can usually find the better equipped JS1000 cheaper on the used market than these guitars. If you don't need the coil tap and high pass feature, it could be worth looking into, but the price difference is so minimal that I'd probably just get the JS1000.

In honor of Ibanez's anniversary, they decided to make some really cool HAM guitars. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert all had special models that came out this year. The guitar has an American basswood body with a maple neck and an ebony fretboard, 22 frets with offset dot inlays at the 12 fret and a special inlay on the 21st, an Edge bridge, two DiMarzio humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way toggle switch. UTILIZATION These guitars are just insane. First of all, this guitar has an ebony fretboard. Anybody who knows Ibanez's history will know that they rarely put ebony fretboards on models for whatever reason. It really helps make this guitar look a lot more striking than normal. The guitar also has one of the best bridges ever made by Ibanez -- the Edge tremolo. These bridges stay in tune like no tomorrow and sound awesome. The fretwork on this model was awesome, although there was a bit of wear. Considering how old it was, that was no real surprise. There were a few other small issues, but I attribute those to wear and nothing else. SOUNDS The guitar sounds phenomenal. I really think that these American basswood bodied guitars sound better than the normal basswood that Ibanez likes to utilize. At the very least, they're more consistent. The FRED in the bridge has some really cool harmonics that jump out at you when soloing. The ebony helped give it some extra bite that the other JS guitars don't seem to have. The PAF Pro in the neck sounded great, too. It was clear, open and delivered that great 80s lead tone that so many have grown up with. The coil split in the bridge helps give the guitar some extra versatility, too. OVERALL OPINION If you can find one of these, buy it immediately. These HAM guitars are some of my favorite guitars by Ibanez that aren't made by the J-Custom factory. They're crazy good looking, utilize some of Ibanez's nicest woods, have great hardware and come equipped with very good pickups. The biggest issue is that they're rare and somewhat expensive.

Way back when, Ibanez decided to make a hard tail version of the very famous Joe Satriani JS model. Why they made it, I'm not entirely sure. Satch is a well known player of floyd equipped bridges, so it's a bit confusing. The guitar has a mahogany body with a maple neck and a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets with dot inlays, a hard tail bridge, two DiMarzio humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way toggle switch. UTILIZATION The guitar was put together pretty well. The guitar was used, so there was some noticeable fretwork. Also, on these older Ibanez guitars, I find that the edges are cut a bit sharper and aren't quite as rounded off as the Prestige models. A quick filing with a special flat bottomed triangle file can fix that. The nut was starting to show some wear, but all of these problems were because the guitar was old; most of these guitars aren't like this when they came out of the showroom floor. The one gripe I have is that this has a hard tail bridge. Why you'd want to buy a Satriani model with a hard tail bridge, I'm not entirely sure... SOUNDS The guitar sounded pretty good, actually. The mahogany body really adds some depth and girth to this small bodied S series guitar. The DiMarzio FRED in the bridge has some awesome harmonics, and the overtones work wonderful for when you're playing lead tones. I found the mahogany to help beef up the bridge pickup a bit and give it a bit more character. The PAF Pro in the neck is very open, although it tends to be a bit sterile sounding at times. The mahogany helped back of some of those highs and give it a real cool midrange grind that a normal basswood couldn't do. The coil tap in the tone pot adds some real nice single coil character to this, too. OVERALL OPINION If you're in the market for a hard tail JS guitar, look at the one with the FX bridge. I find that they're much better in terms of overall tuning stability. The biggest thing this guitar has going for it is the fact that it's made out of mahogany and not basswood. However, 99% of the S series guitars are made out of mahogany, so it's somewhat of a moot point.

Those of you who ever wanted to have that JS look but with a hard tail bridge will probably be interested in this model. The guitar also has a unique fixed bridge in that it'll actually stay in tune, unlike certain other fixed bridge guitars out there. The guitar has a basswood body with a maple neck and a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets with dot inlays, a special fixed bridge that's similar to a floyd, two DiMarzio humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way toggle switch. UTILIZATION The guitar itself is put together pretty nicely. It seems to weigh a touch more than a normal JS, but that could just be this particular guitar. Whether that leads to actual additional tonal properties, I can't say for sure. The neck on this feels great. The ends are nicely beveled, and the frets themselves are crowned properly. I was able to get some nice action on this with the bizarre bridge. The bridge itself acts just like a floyd rose, only you can't move up and down with it. You have the fine tuning capabilities, but you lack the ability to do any of those special floyd rose signature trademark sounds. SOUNDS The guitar sounded pretty good, but it didn't sound the exact same as the normal JS guitar. I honestly believe it's due to the construction of the guitar with the different bridge and lack of the spring cavity route. The FRED in the bridge has some great harmonics and cool overtones. Those overtones really pop out at you once you start adding some gain. The PAF Pro in the neck is a trademark sound of the rack guys from the 80s. it's a very clean and powerful pickup that's open sounding and not compressed. It's great for those running through tons of different effects processors, but it might sound a touch sterile through a stock Marshall. OVERALL OPINION If you want the tuning stability of a floyd rose but don't like the hassle you have to go through when restringing and tuning, this guitar could be worth checking out. You still have to use the tools to change the strings, but it's much more stable than the other hard tail JS guitars out there, in my opinion.