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Hatsubai « Odd scale length »
Published on 08/10/11 at 16:25Ibanez set out to create a more interesting guitar, and they came up with this. They described this as a mix between the S and the Radius, but it's kind of its own little thing. The guitar has a mahogany body with a bolt-on maple neck and rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, dot inlays, a vintage style tremolo, two humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a five way switch.
UTILIZATION
The guitar's oddest point is that it has a scale length just over 25 inches. It's almost as if they were trying to create a PRS scale length with a strat body but wanted the tone of a Les Paul Special. It's...different. The fretwork on this was kinda iffy, and the ends were slightly sharp. They needed to be rounded if I were to keep this guitar. The nut wasn't bad, but it needed to be lubricated. The guitar has the all access neck joint, so I was able to get to the higher frets without any issues at all. It was kinda heavy, and I'm not a huge fan of heavy guitars as they tend to not resonate as nicely as lighter guitars do.
SOUNDS
The stock humbuckers in this were pretty awful. The good thing is that this is very versatile thanks to the five way switch. You have the neck position is series, neck in parallel, two inner coils split, two humbuckers on at the same time and the bridge pickup. You can get all kinds of awesome tones with this configuration. However, the pickups themselves were very dull and bland sounding. They lacked clarity under gain, and the cleans were pretty dismal. If you're going to keep this guitar, I recommend a pickup replacement.
OVERALL OPINION
These can be pretty hard to find, and when you do find them, they go very cheap. They can work out great for backup guitars, but they need a bit of work to get them to play just right, I've found. The tone can also be a bit hit or miss compared to some of the other guitars in the Ibanez line up. I'd rather have a normal S series, personally.
UTILIZATION
The guitar's oddest point is that it has a scale length just over 25 inches. It's almost as if they were trying to create a PRS scale length with a strat body but wanted the tone of a Les Paul Special. It's...different. The fretwork on this was kinda iffy, and the ends were slightly sharp. They needed to be rounded if I were to keep this guitar. The nut wasn't bad, but it needed to be lubricated. The guitar has the all access neck joint, so I was able to get to the higher frets without any issues at all. It was kinda heavy, and I'm not a huge fan of heavy guitars as they tend to not resonate as nicely as lighter guitars do.
SOUNDS
The stock humbuckers in this were pretty awful. The good thing is that this is very versatile thanks to the five way switch. You have the neck position is series, neck in parallel, two inner coils split, two humbuckers on at the same time and the bridge pickup. You can get all kinds of awesome tones with this configuration. However, the pickups themselves were very dull and bland sounding. They lacked clarity under gain, and the cleans were pretty dismal. If you're going to keep this guitar, I recommend a pickup replacement.
OVERALL OPINION
These can be pretty hard to find, and when you do find them, they go very cheap. They can work out great for backup guitars, but they need a bit of work to get them to play just right, I've found. The tone can also be a bit hit or miss compared to some of the other guitars in the Ibanez line up. I'd rather have a normal S series, personally.