I am a fan of vintage style guitars and fat necks, thus my affection for the Ibanez Artcore line. While I used to like to play fast and bomb the ol Floyd like many others who grew up in the 1980s, I usually steer away from the hot rods today. But I would make an exception for a Made in Korea RG I saw yesterday.

For $399, it didn't seem remarkable as a super low price in a store that has just about everything else for a really low price, so I didn't notice it the first few times I saw it. But when I took it down and played it, it had the best neck in the whole store of used guitars, save an ESP Stephen Carpenter for $1300.

Later that day I went to Guitar Center and played many Chinese and Indonesian Ibanezes all floating in the $200 to $700 dollar range, as well as Fenders, BC Rich, and Epiphone, and while all good none of them had the same neck as this older made in Korea RG. For you RG fanatics, when did Ibanez make them in Korea and what plant did those? (I think it may have been called the RG 370 or 470 then, but it's the one with red flame maple top, black Edge of some sort, and double shark tooth inlays).

How many here own one of these beauties?

I had a RG and I am pretty sure it was a 370 but I couldn't be certain b/c the guy I got it from did a horrible repaint on it. The neck butt just said RG,,, anyways, I made a PGM clone out of it (there is a thread somewhere) but that neck was something special. I did a sand, a few coats of gun stock oil and then a steel wool buff. It was to die for. I had a PGM30 also and the clone neck put it to shame.

I have a feeling this $399 dollar used guitar has a neck comparable to the Ibanez Premium line's necks. It was fairly close to the 1986 Charvel Model 2 right next to it. It was thin, of course, and the jumbo frets were comfortable and not overly large like the Charvel. It played chords as well as lead. When the frets get too big, it's not so good for first position chording. For barre chords up the neck I don't mind giant frets so much. This 370, or 470 also had white binding.

The body had a flamed maple top, but the rest of it was either mahogany, alder, ash, or basswood and I couldn't really see under the thick red transparent poly finish. It's a fairly light guitar which I like and under 7 pounds. I am sure this can vary quite a bit.

$399 is pretty steep for a used Korean RG...but if it had a real Edge Bridge it had to be a 470, pretty sure the 300's never came with Edges on them. They did make flame top 470's in the mid 90's...

It's probably a later MIK with an Edge Pro II or Edge III. Pictures would go a long way in identifying it. $399 in the US does seem steep though. I'd definitely bargin down.

I know there's Edge, Pro II, Edge III but not sure how they are different, if much at all. I am more of a fixed bridge guy and have one of my guitars with Bigsby, so when I hear players rave or diss Floyds, Edge, Kahler, etc I just laugh. Everything with locking nut and fine tuners is so much more stable than Bigsby it's not even funny.

I have to lubricate saddles, nut, employ locking Grover tuners, stretch the strings like crazy, and tune up all the time even after it's settled in. Us Bigsby players have all these very involved rituals. It's a never ending battle and even putting new strings on a Bigsby B5 is a huge chore. I am dealing with a bridge that I love with a Bigsby, but it's a design from 1949 by a motorcycle guy who had nothing to go on. At least Floyds and all Floyd types had a pretty good base of a Fender trem to go on and many years of data and trial and error.

Even then, great trem or merely good trem, it stayed in tune for me even when I bombed the strings into a slack mode. But what is truly amazing beyond words is how great the neck is. Thin can be nice for speed but this thin neck was just perfect. Big frets facilitate bending but again they were just right. Those small differences among thin necks with big frets can be a lot depending on what player picks it up. This MIK Ibanez was like the Charvels I have always loved, simply better. The feel of it was only surpassed by two guitars in the strat realm I have come across among hundreds, and those were that ESP Stephen Carpenter and the Vigier Excalibur, both far more than I am willing to pay for. To me, spending an extra nine hundred on a slightly better version of the already great neck on this MIK Ibanez is not worth it for me. And paying for a two thousand dollar Vigier is totally not me. I can see why a shredder's shredder like Shawn Lane went for the Vigier, but I don't see a reason for me, a serious hobbyist, to go after the Vigier.

Having played a lot of RGs in music stores, I was always impressed how much better those necks were than any of my many American Fenders or Gibsons I have owned (over 15 of them). The only American guitars I have played with necks that good and consistent came from either Parker or Heritage. But among RGs, this guitar is the best RG I have ever played as far as the neck goes, and I have played a lot of MIJ RGs. The best neck I have ever played from Ibanez other than this particular MIK RG are a couple of really exceptional JS 1000s I have met in my life. I am in California and besides a lot of musicians, we have a music industry here so the great Ibanez guitars in stores that everybody has a chance to touch before purchasing get snatched up. This used store does get some of those great JS 1000s in but they are snatched up within a few days, even the thrashed ones.

If there were many other, less expensive RGs with equally great necks then I wouldn't have even made this post. A neck this nice from the aftermarket Warmoth with similar feel costs around 300 dollars.