Ibanez RGA42T

This guitar is part of Ibanez's new arch top RG guitars. These guitars have a better feel than a normal RG because of their arch top design. The arch top design fits your arms and body better than a guitar with a flat top. This guitar has a mahogany body with a bolt on wizard 2 neck. The neck has 24 jumbo frets on a super flat radius fretboard. It has Ibanez's edge 3 tremolo. It is not common for them to put a tremolo on their arch top guitars, usually they come with hardtails or fixed tremolos/ This guitar features some of Ibanez's own brand of active pickups. These pickups are similar to EMG pickups in design. The controls are pretty unusual with a single volume with a 3 way blade toggle. The extra switch on the guitar is an active mid cut switch. There is a battery compartment on the back for the battery for the active electronics.

UTILIZATION

The RGA line has been my favorite line of guitars from Ibanez. They started out as a couple of mahogany bodied hardtail guitars now it is a full line of guitars. The arch top bodies on these make them super comfortable to play. They feel really nice against your body not having the sharp edges that a normal RG has. The necks on these models are super thin with jumbo frets and flat radius fretboards. This means you can get a super low and easy action on these guitars and really shred on them. This guitar has a battery compartment for the active electronics so you can easily swap out the battery without opening the entire cavity up. The tremolo system on this guitar is pretty good It has a normal set of springs so it will be a bit harder to change tunings than on one of the higher end models.

SOUNDS

this guitar is good for heavy playing. It is a normal guitar but it comes with great features that you do not find normally on an RG. It has a mahogany body which has a much better natural tone than the basswood they normally put on most RG guitars. The active Ibanez pickups are much better than what you normally get in an Ibanez but they are not as good as a set of EMG's. The eq switch is pretty useless its just a mid cut that makes your signal sound weak. The pickups are nice and crunchy. The bridge pickup is much clearer than what you would normally get in an Ibanez guitar. The neck pickup is nice and smooth but has good bite to it so your notes come out clean and not a pile of mud. These pickups are pretty usable much more so than normal Ibanez pickups. You do not need to swap these out but if you are a pro you may still want to.

OVERALL OPINION

These guitars are some of the better non prestige models Ibanez makes. This guitar has a lot of good features that should be on more guitars. The mahogany body is a huge improvement over basswood. The active pickups provide more than decent tone compared to the almost unusable Ibanez pickups. The eq switch is not need but you can just ignore it. If the lack of tremolos on arch top RG's had stopped you from getting one before you no longer have an excuse not to have one.