Ibanez aw140qmece-vv

I own the new 2007 vintage violin finish guitar, its a regular acoustic body, with cutaway, Grover gold tuners are real smooth, nice clean rosewood fretboard with vine inlay (looks great & plays fast and smoothly) 20fret with all smooth and cleanly finished nice solid englemann spruce top with impressive quilted maple back and sides, mahogony neck, v nice oyster inner shell fretboard vine and sound hole suround, i was very suprised to see it is "crafted in china" as written/carved inside the guitar the overall build quality apears equal to the best guitars martin/taylor etc, very unlike other china guitars I have seen, but M.I. china does seem to be getting better quality just like in the 1950s/early 60s made in japan was crap now its top notch gear. it has the fishman classic 4 preamp and sonicore pickup which includes an electronic tuner and mic adjust, the battery is deemed to last a long time (as long as you dont forget to unplug the amp cable or leave the tuner on) it came with dadderio exp strings, a nice quality padded ibanez gig bag with sholder straps and pockets, and quality strap.

This guitar is very flexable in playing, I play fingerstyle 99% of the time and if played with nails its a crisp almost bright sound but not in a bad way. with fingers its smooth and mellow with nice bass on the bass strings and the high strings realy cut through and sing, the pick is diffrent again it gives a full rich sound. lots of variety in the sounds it can make.

I will be changin the strings because I like to bend my notes, the exp strings fitted are just not right for this.

I give it 9 because the sound has so much variety, I have played lots of guitars before buying this some were dead cheap some top of the line, sound is a very personal choice, but the endurance of the sound on this ibanez lasts a full 10 seconds having struck a string on this guitar, my other accoustic fades out at about 5 secs. for me to give a 10/10 to any guitar I would need to play guitars costing ???3000-15000.

the factory setup is good but I am used to playing electrics: fenders mainly along with a les paul and a custom built superstrat, all custom setup for me, so I am used to quality and a nice low action, the ibanez is clean playing but the action could be brought down quite a bit. appart from that everthing is setup fine, the neck is straight all hardware is quality stuff, when I bought this guitar I went through it with a fine tooth comb and found only 1 flaw in the finish and that is a small crack (hair line) about 1cm long originating from a screw for the preamp it is just in the lacquer though not the wood. appart from that the finish and craftsmanship is perfect.

this guitar looks robust and looks to last, the englemann spruce should age well, the finish does look like it will lightly scratch in places (the thumb nail test) over time but nothing that wont polish out I guess. good finish but short of my fender strat finish (50yr anniversary 62 reissue) but quality acoustics need to let the sound through the finish

the strap buttons are solid, the grover gold tuner will probably outlast me (and Im 28),

reliable over all. and I'm sure outlast me too (with care)


as far as going to a gig without a backup? even with the best guitar in the world I would still take a backup, ive only needed to use the backup twice:
I went for a 2 note bend on the g string with old strings and then madness made me think I could bend an extra note up with the whammy bar on top of the double bend... SNAP went the string..embarassing,

second time the jack plug on my super strat came loose and twisted around snapping a wire causing enough feedback for everyone to hold there ears, the amp was at full scream when it happened.

never needed customer support, warrenty is 30 day money back (from thomann europe) and then the ibanez gaurentee.

I first picked up a guitar at 14 or 15 so that would make it 13-14 yrs playing (with breaks), my dad plays too and used to have quite a collection, so I learned a lot there. and have setup electrics & only 1 acoustic so far (much more skill needed and a file! for the acoustics)...

before buying this guitar I had looked at/played many acoustics, because I wanted one that firstly played excellently and looked great too, but wanted one I could amp up. I tryed quite a few guitars in fact all the shops within a 70 mile radius, tried: Yamaha, cort, tanglewood, taylor, martin, takamine, and some others I cannot remember, and when equating value for money, athetics, playability, I kept coming back to this ibanez it was a close shave between this aw140qmece and the aw800ece simply put the aw140 was my choice because of its looks, it cost a little more than the aw800 I liked the sound of the aw1000 but the odd looking cut away i didnt like, I liked some ???3000 taylors too sounded good but not better enough than the ibanez to warrent the extra ???2400. and their regular athetics , I originaly was going out to buy a taylor but for the money the ibanez cost I could only get a basic taylor, even double the price and the taylor still looked basic, to get a taylor of simular asthetics as this ibanez would cost 1000s more..one dealer even said ibanez were crap, in his attempt to sell me a tanglewood before I left his store... one thing is for sure the Ibanez I bought is a quality item.
I have been as honist as I can and hope this helps out anyone buying one of these, since this is the first review of this 2007 model (I think) it would have been useful to me to see a review first.
if you have a question I havent answered ask me: www.myspace.com/frustrationgroup