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IBANEZ 2013 (who has the inside scoop)

174K views 990 replies 118 participants last post by  MatiasTolkki 
#1 ·
IBANEZ 2013 (who has the inside scoop)! What will be new,,what to be expected for us ibanez fans who just cant wait. :p anyone know post here :D
 
#509 ·
My point is they shouldnt need "Rich's highest upgrade". My point was that all Ibanez guitars, be it Premium or Prestige or even J-Custom, need work out of the box. This isn't the case with companies like ESP. Thats all. We'll have to agree to disagree man :) While I prefer Ibanez personally, its just the way I see it. My whole angle here is: dont hate on the Premiums, they're fairly nice guitars, and the MIJs need much of the same work to get them right also.

Anyways, lets not derail the thread too much. I'm personally very excited about a lot of the new 2013 offerings. Especially excited for all the cool new MIJ 7-strings coming out.
 
#513 ·
My point is they shouldnt need "Rich's highest upgrade". My point was that all Ibanez guitars, be it Premium or Prestige or even J-Custom, need work out of the box. This isn't the case with companies like ESP. Thats all. We'll have to agree to disagree man :) While I prefer Ibanez personally, its just the way I see it. My whole angle here is: dont hate on the Premiums, they're fairly nice guitars, and the MIJs need much of the same work to get them right also.
Agree with this.

I figure all guitars will need a little bit of setup work when you get them, especially if you live in a different part of the country and the humidity/temp is different. That's not poor quality; that's normal guitar maintenance.

But they shouldn't need anything else, especially if they're "high end."

Can you imagine if you bought a Porsche and got it home and before it performed correctly you had to take it to a mechanic to get it tuned up and have parts modified? Do you think Porsche would still be in business?
 
#518 ·
Whenever one of my MII non-Premium RG's is out or needs adjustment I imagine when I'm playing it that I'm fighting to land a big fish in the ocean. I usually think of this whenever i play any guitar that's rough around the edges. Regular MII RG's can be good guitars but they need lots of work. Yeah a good player makes the most of any wood. But I certainly can tell a difference between an RG350, an RG920, and an RG1570. The higher up the food chain I go the easier it is to play the instrument. It has no bearing on my skill. It just makes life easier. I still like the low-end RG's but I'm not deluding myself into what I'm getting at that price point. If Premiums played "just as well" as the Prestige's well then maybe the time has come to shut down the Prestige line, no?
 
#547 ·
So far from the leaks so far this looks like a great range of stuff from Ibanez and we've not seen all of it yet maybe. I'm a bit of a badge snob as much as anybody but I'd give the premiums a whirl. Primarily as the new 24 fret Premium JS someone posted looks awesome as well as that AT model. But I'd try with trepidation due to a bad experience with a PGM30 I bought years ago.

I've owned 22 Ibanez guitars in my life and with one exception all these guitars played great (maybe I'm just lucky) and only one of then was a dog and it was the afore mentioned PGM30 which just sounded dead. I've had a range of Ibani…Jem, JS's PGM's Limited edition RG's Ghostrider and even MIK ones such as RG7321 and JS700 which are excellent. And I've bought these since 1993 so I've seen the good'old days myths and I don't really buy into it. I once had a RG550 that was amazing to play and it sounded great as well even with the stock pickups, but I sold it as I had too many and the snob in me wanted to keep the Jems and higher spec RG's. I had another RG550 which I didn't like the neck…

The only thing that I wish Ibanez would do is to stop changing trems on guitars every few years. It just makes getting replacements or allowing the swapping of parts difficult that I now will only buy an Ibanez if it has an Edge or Lo-Pro.

For the price of a new JS, AT or Jem I'd rather buy a Suhr pro modern but that's just me so a sub £1K new 24 fret JS with chrome edge……..holy crap yes! I've even been getting lustful thoughts about a Jem70V to swap out the SP for a black one stick a set of pink pickups and yellow knobs on there and viola…. awesome.

For the Nay-Sayers on premiums it's a few bits of wood bolted and glued together. Do you think the employees tone match necks to bodies….probably not, but did they do this in the past for MIJ RG's ? Nope. So you will get some great guitars and some duff ones and that's why you try them out before you buy. Buying any guitar blind is a risk, I've known people buy Les Paul's mail order and got a dog so where it's made isn't as big a factor these days.

We've had the JS100 and Jem 555 before and these look much better it's just a shame that 'Premium' is emblazoned on the headstock.

But at the end of the day badge snobs will be badge snobs and for that privilege you can pay more, just like always for everything, not just guitars.




Disclaimer: I haven't actually tried a Premium yet but I tried a Fireman 100 which was nice made in I assume the same place.
 
#554 · (Edited)
And I've bought these since 1993 so I've seen the good'old days myths and I don't really buy into it.
When I got into Ibanez with a couple of '81 blazers, two mid-80's Roadstars, and a higher end Holdsworth AH-10 signature model, all those were completely superior to my similar era late-70s Telecaster, '80 Les Paul Custom, early '80's Lead II, and other Fender and Gibson gear I had from the same time period.

Not only was it a time for Japanese Ibanezes to shine but my late 70's Yamaha SG 1500 was also a great instrument as was a Yamaha superstrat with Floyd licensed tremolo. My Aria Cardinal had nothing in the Fender or Gibson catalog in its price range to compete and that Aria had phase reversal and coil taps.

Ibanez did keep the quality high in '90s and beyond but the late'70s and all of the 1980s were a time when Japanese guitars ruled the day. Gibson eventually got back to the basics of 50's/60's models in late-80s and Fender got Yamaha's executive Bill Schultz to remake Fender into a competitive company again.

Many Ibanezes in that golden era like the Artist, Iceman, and AS-200s fetch very high prices now on eBay.
 
#553 ·
Even though I'm a MIJ guy and we've seen very little of that so far,this is by far the most enjoyable release in years.
Ibanez have been listening and experimenting and i like it,and they definitely are pulling out all the stops to make the indo factory the hub of Ibanez's future.

Its quite exciting,well done Ibanez so far.
 
#556 ·
Well since some are debating Indo vs Japan or Premium vs. Japan, for me it is usually all about how the neck feels and I guess Im a wizard/superwizard snob. I look at the premiums and being an Ibby fan, I want to like them. I saw a 920 that just made me drool, but everytime i go to play one of them at the LMS they just dont feel "right". I can't seem to enjoy the neck profile and something else just seems off, I really can't even place what it is. Since the 70v is supposed to have the jem profile, Im sure I would like it but I live in a small town and will never get to play one here. There are definetly some interesting looking stix for 13, I hope one of them feels right for me.
 
#560 ·
I like the neck but I'm a fan of the Prestige Wizard. To me Premium Wizard feels similar; it's the radius that's different I believe. It does feel a bit off but still good. I'm not a big fan of EZ/EZ2 though; well, not as big a fan anyway as the trems that preceded it. I understand why Premiums exist. They're to replace the gap left by Prestige who's pricing is out of this world thanks to macro forces. Fine! I get it. But most are more expensive than the guitars they're replacing from the MIJ line which to me seems odd. But hey, if Ibanez can get away with it good for them. I'm just not going to buy a MII Premium 7 for $1,000 when there are plenty of $400 MIJ RG7620's to be found on the bay.
 
#559 ·
Jesse understands that if you have the privilege of seeing a catalog page that it comes with the same restrictions placed on the dealer that has the catalog, and the information is confidential and not to be shared with anybody. Unlike the d-bags that race to their keyboards and shout it to anybody that will listen for their 15 seconds of fame.
 
#562 ·
Leaks of info always come out for many reasons. Some by those who should not but do for attention. Some by design to drive up interest and fervor.

This thread reminds me of kids before Xmas. Such excitement and then complaints afterwards when they don't get what they want. I want blue! Blue blue blue.
 
#563 ·
It's different, and the same, every year.

This year, UK evidently is bucking the system and doing whatever they want, and Japan will have to deal with them. The release to musicradar, and then a couple dealers with model pages already online. In no way is this factory authorized. If it was factory authorized it would come through a factory owned distributor.

This year you had the idiots in sweetwater IT dept link several new models, reported and immediately pulled down. Mistakes will always happen when there are humans involved, there was no "intent" with those IMO, just a screwup.

There will always be some that get to see the catalog the reps will give to their top dealers to start the orders flowing [and their commission checks] but of course those come with the caveat that the information is not for public release, but some of the individuals that get a peak at these catalogs are of questionable ethics and could care less what they spill as long as they get their 15 seconds of fame.

Then there's always the hackers that have found access to evidently more than one data source, one prominently coming from a chain in Germany a couple years ago, no doubt still being accessed. This is why I keep all the advance pictures I get on my PC only until it's allowed to be published, 1/24, or, first day of NAMM every year.
 
#566 · (Edited)
I didn't know that something like a 2013 guitar from Ibanez was so secret. If anything, wouldn't it make us (or at least big time Ibanez fans like us) get more interested and more likely to buy one of their guitars? Gibson has their 2013 models out, Les Pauls and SGs put apparently not others, in MF/GC and have bragged about this or that guitar being a "2013" since November of last year, if not sooner. Maybe that's how it should be done.

Some companies, like Apple, brag about their secrecy and form a huge myth only to make TIME magazine covers before their release which is totally what Steve Jobs and Apple had in mind in the first place. Whether a product is good, bad, or just mediocre, having a shroud of secrecy around it does help sales, even if the company "releases" information sooner making the buyer feel like they "discovered" it first. The so-called leaks that first made news concerning Apple are later found out to be marketing but I just pat them on the back for being so clever.

I know "you" probably know all the 2013 models and assume are probably banned from print ads and internet pages on that information until NAMM in a couple of weeks. The UK sites who put up the stuff are pretty well known and must have possibly had to pay a fee to publish the 25 or so models from 2013 we have seen here on Jemsite.

I am not really shocked in what they have in 2013 with different colors and a few changed parts. I do love the use of ebony fretboards on an Artcore and the reintroduction in some markets of now higher end Artstars with ebony. That was fun to see here.
 
#564 ·
The best way to keep a secret is to tell as few people as possible. I guess with the way pre-NAMM stuff is set up (catalogs, sales meetings, getting websites ready, etc) it is virtually impossible to keep these secrets.
I think even the ancient Egyptian pharoes would have a tough time of it in today's world. :D
 
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