Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar Transparent Red

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I purchased the blue one about 7 years ago. I have always been impressed with how good it sounds acoustically - very balanced and sweet sounding. My rating is influenced by the price point. The guitar is very light and well built. The neck is slim and very comfortable. The appointments are very well done. Only negative is the tuners are a little flimsy, and don't work completely smoothly. I have used this guitar primarily for recording. You can get a smooth muted jazz sound with the neck pick-up, and an excellent rock sound with just a little distortion on the bridge pick-up. You can get a very pretty clean sound with both pick-ups. My favorite fun thing to do with this guitar is to generate a wailing feedback that results in some awesome crazy sounds. The body is totally hollow, so it is very prone to feedback. Add the hi-gain humbuckers and the Bigsby, and you have a formula for making some very interesting and tasty noise. This guitar can do alot ... highly recommended !

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I bought this guitar for my son at Christmas. He loved it. I myself have owned nearly a hundred guitars in my life; usually I have around twenty in my collection at a time. Most of my guitars have been American made new and vintage instruments, Gibson, Fender, Gretch, PRS etc... I do have one Ibanez, an Alex Scolnick model from the eighties. It's a great guitar.

What impressed me first with the Artcore was how well it was built. It is at par with other Gibson and Gretch semi hollows I have owned in the past. Once I set it up, it plays very nice. Easy to play and has a descent fret finish. I do highly recommend you have a professional setup at purchase. This is not an instrument ready to go out of the box.

I have owned many Bigsbys and the Ibanez version works just as well as any original Bigsby. And just like a Bigsby you will hear the occasional harmonic overtones on the semi-hollow/hollow body archtops.

What impressed me the most was the pickups. My experience with Asian, especially China, is the pickups are thin and lack any dynamics. These however sounded incredible. I have spent thousands of dollars in my lifetime on pickups. Now would I compare these to a $500 set I have purchased in the past?... No. However given the cost of the guitar, they sound amazing. They have a very nice upper midrange tone with great dynamics. They are almost "P-90ish" in comparison. I would not waste my time swapping pickups.

Overall this guitar is a great value for the money!

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I received this guitar for Christmas (well a picture. Everywhere was out of stock) and this is one great guitar! When I first unpacked the guitar (well done by the way!) I strummed a few chords, decent sound if you're just passing the time in your apartment. I finally plugged this in and it blew my mind! The build of this guitar is fantastic. I doubt it will ever fall apart (like others I've seen). Ibanez really does a great job!! The moment I unpacked it a few of my fraternity brothers came in and I reluctantly let them try it out. Lets just say that Ibanez will have a few more orders to fill next month. Fantastic guitar Ibanez. Keep it up!!

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I bought the Ibanez Art Core guitar and I was amazed at the tone on the guitar even through acheap amp it sounds good. I had trouble keeping it in tune but a quick adjustment of the bridgefixed the solution. It sounds as good as any Gretsch guitar and the price can't be beat.

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I enjoy mine, plays and sounds great. Only bad thing my b string comes out of tune very easy after playing almost every time but no big deal, overall this is a great guitar for the money

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

A few years ago, I saw this guitar in a musicians friend catalog and I loved the color ("ocean blue") so i went to a guitar center to check it out. I was a man of little money back then, so it took me a while to save up. By the time I got the money, gretsch came out with the electromatic hollowbody that was at an affordable price (for gretsch anyway) I saved up more money and finally went to the guitar center to buy the electromatic. I strummed a few chords on each, and the tone was SO much brighter on the Ibanez, so I decided to buy it anyway and got a VOX Valvatronix amp to match. Since then, I have loved both, the tremolo sounds AMAZING, the tone is second to none, and each pickup even has seperate tone and volume knobs, giving you complete control over how you sound. I remember one case where I took the guitar out after it being in the case for like 3 months and the tuning was still almost perfect! I might consider buying the electromatic too, but with the guitar's killer looks killer features, and killer sound, I have NEVER, ever, EVER regretted purchasing this guitar.

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

The thing a lot of people misunderstand about this type of vibrato piece is that it's NOT meant for dive bombs. It's a TREM arm, which means that it's meant for a slight vibrato, not crazy whammy work. If you use it appropriately it wont knock your guitar out of tune, I've had this guitar for almost 3 years now, and I still haven't experienced any issues with it. Except that the jack and the pots are really cheap. I swapped mine out for more expensive pots after a few months, and it sounds even better than it already did, and it sounded sweet to begin with.

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I was rather snobbishly inclined to reject Ibanez as a legitimate candidate to produce a guitar with the attributes I desired in a hollowbody, but all it took was picking this beauty up one single time and strumming a single chord to overcome my prejudice.I was instantly impressed with the weight and balance this model offers. I do not think there has ever been a guitar produced, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, that has ever had such a pleasing neck/body weight distribution as this model. When seated or standing, neck shifting is a foreign concept, and where you place the guitar is where it rests. Not wanted to delude myself, I plugged the guitar into the crappiest solid state cheapie at the shop so as not to get a false impression of what she would sound like when I got her home. This did not even suffice to turn me off of her. I am absolutely amazed at how responsive the pick ups are to tweeks in the volume and tone. Usually humbuckers on a cheaper guitar only sound decent when turned up to ten and will get muddy when you need to back off a little. These do not suffer from this condition. The clarity and response is amazing when you need to take a litte edge off when playing distorted, which truly makes this a versatile instrument. When clean, Atkins, The Ventures, Travis, Benson are all attainable at various levels of volume. Distorted, Reverend Horton Heat, AC/DC, Nugent sounds are all available depending on where you set the knob, without losing any pronunciation in the individual notes.The fretwork is unbelievable at this price. Usually a hollowbody at this price suffers from that horrible ukelele/toy instrument fret condition. This guitar is comparable to any Gibson or Gretcsh in the quality and size of frets (I will say the size of the frets seems vastly superior to Gibson). One drawback seems to be the intonation in upper registers is not on par with similar domestic manufactured instruments. This, however, is not dramatically noticeable, and seems to be the only drawback to the guitar. The vibrato system works as it should, and while (don't be fooled by others who tell you otherwise) IT WILL knock the guitar a little out of tune, it does exact nearly the same damage as other guitars I've played with a "Bigsby"-style tailpiece. This is probably testimony to the nut/tuners setup, but after having the guitar a short time, I do have to say I am not yet certain about the tuners. For right now, they seem to be adequate. For the rest, the finish is awesome, the binding work is awesome, the inlays (I usually don't like red, but got it anyway because the inlays are so much better than on the other finishes; why are those inlays only available on the red finish?) are AWESOME for the price, and the electronics seem reliable.

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

I've had this guitar in silver sparkle for nearly three years now and I've got to say it was well worth purchasing. The guitar is very sturdy in construction and also very light and well balanced. The bigsby works very well with no major tuning issues. I will say that people not familiar with bigsby use may be un-necessarily complaining about tuning. One major thing with this guitar and its trem is that it works much better once the strings become completely stretched in and the tensions are balanced. Also, the stock tuners are a little iffy, though I've stuck with them, I can see them being improved as they are a little loose feeling.The pickups are something else! I use this guitar with a vibro-champ xd and it is the baddest rock guitar around. It nails classic rock tones like ac/dc and Nugent better than any guitar I've ever seen. On the flip side it is a wonderful jazz/blues/country guitar. The bridge pickup also handles surf excellently. This guitar is very reactive with different types of amps and settings and you need to tinker to bring out the full potential of the stock pickups. If you don't understand feedback and how to work with it then you don't need a hollow body anyway...Also the neck/frets on this guitar are the bomb. This guitar is easy as hell to play and has nice fat perfectly rounded frets to assist you in bending to your hearts content.

Comments about Ibanez Artcore AFS75T Electric Guitar:

Tone! Tone! Tone! Followed closely by playability. I am very pleased with this purchase. I always squirm a bit when looking at these Artcore tops - they sort of look warped but they are not - that's just how Ibanez makes 'em. Otherwise flawlessly beautiful guitar. Tones are flat out supernatural: Jazzy, Gretschy, Twangy, Surfy - does it all! Stunning value. Like it so much, I might buy a second one!