All user reviews of 3/5 for the Ibanez RG470

Early Rg470 models were made in Japan and later on production was moved to Korea. The majority of examples around today were made in Korea. The Korean examples feature a basswood body with a 24 fret neck. The neck is maple with a rosewood fretboard. The body has 3 pickups two of them are humbuckers with the middle pickup being a single-coil. This example featured a Lo-TRS tremolo system. The body is a superstrat style with large cutaways.

UTILIZATION

The construction on these guitars is decent. I find a guitar like this will rarely feel as solid as a Les Paul or similar guitar. The fret work can be bad on some examples but on this example the fretwork was good. The Lo-TRS tremolo system is a very low quality unit. Cheap tremolos can ruin a guitar. Without a proper setup this tremolo system will make the guitar go out of tune often. Like most new Ibanez RG's the 470 has the all-access neck joint which makes reaching the highest frets a breeze. This neck joint along with the large cutaways on the body make playing the guitar very easy.

SOUNDS

I am not a big fan of basswood guitars. They do not seem to have the thick sound you would get from mahogany or alder. This combined with the cheap pickups Ibanez puts in its lower end guitars may make the guitar sound bad plugged in. The switches and pots are of a low quality also which doesnt help. A pickup swap is recommended on these lower end ibanez guitars. The pickups ibanez puts in its lower end guitars from the factory are pretty dull and weak sounding.

OVERALL OPINION

With a proper setup Ibanez guitars are some of the best playing guitars out there. On some models a pickup swap is needed to get the tone to your liking. Also, you may want to look for a model with a hardtail bridge or higher quality tremolo unit. For a beginner a bad tremolo unit can lead to major frustration. Low quality units will not stay in tune without a professional setup sometimes.