This thread is a bit old, but I'll put my two cents in anyhow..
I currently own a RG350EX -- I bought it about 15 months ago, and at first I loved it. My first Ibanez. But, while performing a setup on it, I noticed several key issues which left me sorely unimpressed with the guitar.
This is obviously their bargain basement RG.. Korea, $399 price tag.. and, the guy from Vital Remains plays one?!?! (While going through pics of a gig my friend went to, he had both pics of that gig, as well as pics of our recent gig.. I found something interesting.. Two frontal shots of the RG350EX.. One of them was me, the other, was the guitarist from Vital Remains. I guess even death metallers have to play on a budget.)
Here are my rants:
The nut was not level. It is not even centered properly. On the 6th string side it is considerably higher than on the 1st string side, you can actually see about .5 mm of binding on the 6th string side where you could not see any on the 1st! Needless to say I had to shim that side to even it out at the expense of action. I was actually having buzz on the top two strings, thus making a shim necessary.
While re assembling the guitar, not one, but TWO of the holes for the neck screws completely stripped out. I had to use toothpicks and glue, and one of them only torques down to a few inch-pounds, which is barely snug. Luckily the neck hasn't flung off or gotten any looser, but it was deeply aggravating to see this on a brand new guitar.. Korean as it is, once again, my Mexican strat has better quality.
At a gig I somehow managed to literally rip the strap lug out of the body while becoming slightly "impassioned" during a solo.. Lovely.. They give you absolutely inadequate screws... Yes, my Mexican strat has longer screws.
The tremolo .. Ok. It's a Edge III - which means, Ibanez took advantage of the FR patent expiration by making their own lower-cost copy.
I play in C#, and I like Hybrid Slinky strings, though sometimes I'll just play "Regular slinky" 10's, this requires that I have somewhat loose tension on 3 springs, as 2 springs will just not work, period, and I have the tremolo set as close to perfect neutral as possible.. Some how I managed to loosen a screw too much and guess what? the spring tension literally ripped it out of the body. WTF? Basswood is evidently a poor material, come to think of it I think my strat is Alder.. But honestly, I have no idea.. I just know, my strat has MUCH longer tremolo screws.. so guess what?? My $400 RG350EX has been basically rebuilt with parts from my cannibalized strat because the stock hardware was completely inadequate.
Now that I have finally assembled a decent guitar, I do rather enjoy it.. It hasn't broken yet, the longer tremolo and strap bolts have definitely proven their usefulness, so with my choice of light guage strings and low tuning I can still have a perfect-neutral
bridge position, dive bomb and bend-up without
string breakage, and it really does hold its tune.
Do I have any other gripes? Maybe it's just my style, but I've somehow managed to completely wear off the mirror finish on the pickguard, revealing a blotchy spot of black plastic... and ... heh.. I have rubbed through the chrome on a couple of the string saddles revealing COPPER.
Quality.
Bottom line is, this guitar needs a VERY thorough setup and inspection. EXTREME caution must be taken when removing any screws because it's more than likely that the basswood body will just strip out.
REPLACE your tremolo screws with beefier, longer tremolo screws (Strats have very long and perfectly suited screws). REPLACE your strap bolts with longer beefier screws or you WILL have an accident.
oh and make sure you tighten up the whammy bar otherwise it will flop all over the place, pull out when you pull up, and cause your whole bridge to erratically vibrate from the looseness. You should do this with at least every string change, but definitely before gigs. Just remove the springs, gently let the tension off of the bridge, remove it, and with the bar inserted, snug up the two hex screws, that will keep your bar nice and solid...
My $.02 (notice that's .02 dollars, or 2 cents, not .02 cents, or $.0002 dollars)
