phillybhatesme
Well-known member
I got a really great deal on an Ibanez RG5121 Prestige at Guitar Center, of all places, yesterday. It's my first Ibanez and I'm really pleased. I don't consider myself a shredder by any stretch of the means (just ask @Techdeth how our lessons went lol), but I do play with some gain when I'm with my drummer.
My first impressions at the store were really good, but I didn't actually have a lot of time to test it out. When I got it home, I had to jump into work appointments immediately and didn't really end up playing the guitar until late in the evening. Overall the fit and finish is fantastic and the neck feels great. The nut's a bit high so it'll need a setup at string change, but I'm not there yet. The biggest reason I even picked up this guitar was for the Fishmans. A friend of mine had Fluence Moderns on one of his guitars downtuned to D standard or drop C and I was amazed at the clarity offered to full chords even when you're playing with high gain. It sounded like you could still hear each individual note to my ears and since then I've been after a guitar with them installed. (Why not install new pickups on a different guitar? Because I like the sounds of all of my guitars).
I'm not a Floyd/dive bomb kind of guy, so the hard tail bridge is perfect for me. The tuning stability is great, but the tuners are a bit close to each other so I have to be mindful of that when tuning. My biggest concern was the placement of the volume knob (hi strat users, it's me, the bane of your existence). I palm mute a lot. I sometimes palm mute the treble strings, which is damn near impossible for me on a strat. This guitar was similar, but thankfully the volume knob placement didn't seem like a dealbreaker after 2 hours of playing today. And I didn't have to tune at all so the tuning machine placement "complaint" is moot at this point.
We recorded a couple of our songs if you guys want to listen. The recordings are done with my phone mic, which are somehow not terrible.
My first impressions at the store were really good, but I didn't actually have a lot of time to test it out. When I got it home, I had to jump into work appointments immediately and didn't really end up playing the guitar until late in the evening. Overall the fit and finish is fantastic and the neck feels great. The nut's a bit high so it'll need a setup at string change, but I'm not there yet. The biggest reason I even picked up this guitar was for the Fishmans. A friend of mine had Fluence Moderns on one of his guitars downtuned to D standard or drop C and I was amazed at the clarity offered to full chords even when you're playing with high gain. It sounded like you could still hear each individual note to my ears and since then I've been after a guitar with them installed. (Why not install new pickups on a different guitar? Because I like the sounds of all of my guitars).
I'm not a Floyd/dive bomb kind of guy, so the hard tail bridge is perfect for me. The tuning stability is great, but the tuners are a bit close to each other so I have to be mindful of that when tuning. My biggest concern was the placement of the volume knob (hi strat users, it's me, the bane of your existence). I palm mute a lot. I sometimes palm mute the treble strings, which is damn near impossible for me on a strat. This guitar was similar, but thankfully the volume knob placement didn't seem like a dealbreaker after 2 hours of playing today. And I didn't have to tune at all so the tuning machine placement "complaint" is moot at this point.
We recorded a couple of our songs if you guys want to listen. The recordings are done with my phone mic, which are somehow not terrible.
