im thinking about buy this guitar. For £400. Do you think it is worth the money?? Also what are these kind of guitars like.
(ibanez saber) never heard of them.
The Ibanez Saber 540 (S series) is a thin sucked-sweetie shaped guitar made from mahogany. Consequently it has rich, warm mids and is ideal for many styles of music from Jazz through Rock. This particular guitar is about 15 to 20 years old, so the wood has aged beautifully; I tried a modern prestige model and found it to be too 'new' - these woods need time to mature.
The guitar originally had a humbucker and two single coil pick-ups (which also come with the guitar), but now has three humbuckers.
I replaced the main humbucker with a proper F-spaced humbucker (i.e. wider pole spacing than usual to accomodate the Floyd Rose). This is a DiMarzio 'The Tone Zone' and works superbly with this guitar, giving a real bite without being harsh.
The two single-coil pickups have been replaced with a DiMarzio 'Fast Track 1' and a DiMarzio 'Chopper', which look similar but have different tonal characteristics. I forget which is which, but having tried in both configurations, they are in the order that works best.
These pickups are about 6 months old.
I have used this guitar a lot, and this has naturally led to a few knocks and bumps over time (as the pictures show). However, if you are interested in the sound, playability and style of this instrument then these can be easily overlooked. The action and the frets have been professionally lowered making for greater playability, particularly at speed. As I dislike
locking nuts, the locking nut has been replaced with a
graphite nut and Schaller tuning heads are currently fitted. However, all of the original parts (including tuning heads and pickups but minus the locking nut) come with the guitar, so you have lots of options.
An excellent instrument that has been customised to be even better!
