Ibanez AF120

This one is a traditional looking jazzbox in a beautiful brown sunburst with a spruce top, a maple back and a three-piece maple neck. The fretboard is rosewood or mahogany (?) with custom 3D-ish block inlays. It's got two jazz-pickups, gold hardware and the standard four tone/volume knobs. It features diecast tuners. Hardshell Ibanez case included.

Being a jazz guitar it sounds very mellow and full with lots of bass and angelic ringing highs. The middle and back positions sound a little brighter and will respond better to some light overdrive to play some more blues-oriented things. Even if you crank up the overdrive to a serious level it'll react beautifully. But its strength lies in those clean mellow tones. Even though the body isn't quite as deep as let's say a Gibson L5, it sounds very full. It could definitely compare to a 175. It's got flatwound strings on it and the neck is very fast. Chords ring through nicely, but I wouldn't recommend doing a lot of heavy bending. It just doesn't feel right. But then I guess it wasn't intended for that. It's not a strat! I compared it to some similarly priced Epiphones and the Ibanez won hands down.

It came out of the box set up just right! It's very playable. And Ibanez is known of course for its high quality standards. Rightfully, I'd say. Neck, electronics, tuners, strings,... No production flaws visible. The thing even smells great.

Everything looks pretty solid, but I've only had it for two weeks, so...

I've been playing for about nine years now and I'm pretty much set up, but I was looking for a good jazz box without having to spend thousands of dollars on Gibsons. (I'm not really a Gibson-fan) And I found this one for under 900$, case included. It gives a lot of bang for the buck. It looks/sounds a lot better than the Epiphones and it's probably better constructed. So I'm a happy man.