Ibanez IC500

These are pretty hard to find, and I've only come across a few before. It's the mack daddy of the Iceman series, in my opinion. It features all the great things I love about the Iceman and then some. The guitar features a mahogany body with a maple top, a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, 22 extra jumbo frets, dot inlays, binding, a hard tail bridge, two humbuckers, two volumes, two tones and a five way switch.

UTILIZATION

This is the guitar that I've always wanted. It's a great guitar, although it did show some wear from it being so old. The binding on this looks great, and it adds some class to it. The guitar itself was a bit heavy, but a lot of that has to do with the maple top that's put on this guitar. It's very similar to a Les Paul in some ways. The fretwork was pretty good, but there were some grooves forming that needed to be taken care of. The nut was in pretty good shape, so no issues there. The hardware had some light pitting on it, but it was no big deal considering how great it played.

SOUNDS

The guitar had some aftermarket pickups installed in it, so I'll be going by those when it comes to how the guitar sounds. The guitar had dual DiMarzio Super Distortions in it, almost as a throw back to classic Iron Maiden. The Super Distortion in the bridge is awesome through a cranked Marshall. You got tons of output, and it delivers a super fat sound. It's not the tightest or clearest sound, but it definitely works great for classic metal. The Super Distortion in the neck was just too much, though. There was too much output, and it seemed to be too bass heavy for me. I'd like to have a more medium output neck pickup if I could.

OVERALL OPINION

The guitar is great, and it's the Iceman I recommend you get if you can find it. It's a top quality guitar, sounds great, uses a great combination of wood and the binding is killer on this. The problem is that these can be pretty hard to find, so you might be looking quite awhile for one of them. Snag it up if you find it.