Ibanez RG8270F

Ibanez has, once again, continued to do their standard J-Custom look and construction with this guitar. It's pretty much the same as every other J-Custom out there, and they seem to be sticking to this winning formula. The guitar has a mahogany body with a maple top, a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, 24 jumbo frets, a special vine inlays, an Edge Pro, HSH configuration, one volume, one tone and a five way switch.

UTILIZATION

The guitar has one of the nicest necks I've ever played. It's so smooth and wonderful to play on. It's hard to describe, but it really does feel like velvet (the word they use to describe it). The fret ends on this are balled, so they're super comfortable to play on. I don't know why more manufacturers don't do this. The frets themselves are perfectly leveled, and you can get super low action on this without a problem. The inlay work was top notch, but they've had some practice at vine inlays for awhile now. The flame, weight, bridge... everything about this guitar is about as perfect as you can possibly get.

SOUNDS

The guitar has a DiMarzio Tone Zone in the bridge, Blue Velvet in the middle and Air Norton in the neck. The Tone Zone in the bridge is a very fat pickup, but it also has tons of midrange, so it cuts nicely. I find that, due to its power, it tends to sound best if you back it down a bit. It allows the pickup to get a lot more complex sounding harmonics going on, and it's more responsive to the volume knob. The Blue Velvet is great for cleans, and splits amazingly with the humbuckers. The Air Norton in the neck is my all time favorite pickup. It's so warm and fat. You can get the best leads out of this pickup, in my opinion.

OVERALL OPINION

This is yet another top notch J-Custom that they've released. The J-Customs are some of the most consistent guitars I've played, and they're always up there with the rest of the boutique builders. About the only thing that could beat this, in my opinion, would be something from the top three manufacturers -- Anderson/Suhr/Tyler. Even then, it's debatable.