Ibanez AS50

Semihollow body, bolt-on neck two humbuckers tuneomatic bridge and tailpiece. Laminated maple top. Typical 335 style.

The stock pickups were'nt that bad but I replaced them with PRS McCarty Archtop humbuckers. What a difference. This puppy really sings now. Even with the original pickups this guitar can handle jazz or rock. My rating is based on the PRS pickups. New pickups can make all the difference. I'm a big PRS supporter and own a Custom 24 so I knew the McCarty's were the pickups I wanted. Check them out.

The butterscotch color finish is beautiful. I did replace the tuners with Grover Imperials which really are classy. Neck is thin and fast. Set up was pretty good but I did adjust for string height. I saw another of these guitars in the same shop I bought mine at a few months later and the body wood was not near as nice as mine so guitar quality does vary from one to the other. Interior is a little messy but not bad.

Seems very durable. I don't gig so I can't say how well it would hold up live but it is a very strong instrument even with the bolt on neck.

Pathetic. Never got an answer when I e-mailed a question about this guitar.

I own various other guitars from top of the line to budget models and this Ibanez is very good and a good value. I did replace the pickups which did make a difference in sound quality. A bolt on neck on a semi-hollow is somewhat foreign but it is fast and smooth. This contributes to the cheaper price tag. If it were stolen I would probably spend the extra money and get the set-in neck AS80 model but I am happy with this guitar. I also have an Ibanez George Benson model and my experience with these models has been positive. Very good quality.

The AS50 is a version of the Ibanez AS series of semi-hollow body Gibson ES335 copies, but comes with a bolt on neck. The AS50 was made in Korea. Equipped with two humbuckers (open windings, no chrome cover), two volume, two tone controls, and a three position selector switch. Uses a tune-o-matic style of bridge, with a stop tail. Body is construced of laminated Maple (I think). It is an attractive guitar.

The sound of this guitar is very good. I only had a practice amp (Park G10R) to use, but was quite pleased with the range of sounds possible with this instrument. The humbuckers (Ibanez) are quiet and produce a great deal of drive.

The neck is a very flat and is quite fast. This neck shape works well for me, and should work well for others with relatively long fingers. The factory setup was very poor, no buzzing, but intonation was slightly off on the "G" string, and there was not enough adjustment range on the bridge to cure this problem. The low depth profile neck was quite whippy, the neck is easily bent giving a trem effect, not something I liked or wanted, although others might like this.
Ibanez fell flat on their face with the neck attachment on this guitar. After owning the guitar for a about 2 months, it started to not stay in tune. I tried all the usual stuff suggested for this problem to no avail. I finally removed the neck and found two pieces of emery paper strips about 3/16" wide placed between the neck and the body of the guitar (where the bolt on neck attaches to the body). Why, I asked were these strips of emery paper there? I quickly found out. When I reassembled the neck (without emery paper shims), put the strings back on and tuned up, the strings were really high off the finger board, and I could not adjust the action to an acceptable level, no matter what I tried. To remedy the problem (neck angle/lack of adjustment range) I fabricated a brass shim (0.035" +/- thick) of the same area of the neck attachment at the body and installed this shim between the neck and body. The shim raised the finger board enough to allow acceptable action adjustment. (This did not correct the intonation of the "G" string however).. The shim corrected the 'not staying in tune' problem. At the next string change, I replaced the stock 0.09's with 0.10's GHS boomers, adjusted the truss rod and action and found the sound to be smoother (my preference, BTW), and alas the intonation problem with the "G" string was gone, now there were six stringe, all in tune upto the 12th fret!
Whoever put this guitar together at Ibanez must have had a bad day, and their QC dept. must have been on vacation that day. Instead of fitting the neck to the body for proper neck angle/height, whoever put this baby together found two pieces of emery paper (120 grit) strips, placed them between the neck and body to raise the finger board height/angle, and passed this unit along to the next step...and eventually to me, very cheesy, indeed!

See above, I would expect other construction problems to be present based on experience with the neck attachment. I don't trust Ibanez, so I can't honestly give a good grade here.

I tried to contact Ibanez in the USA about the neck attachment problem. No luck, I even wrote them a short note asking them to call me, no response. I didn't expect Ibanez to do anything for me personally, I knew very well that I had voided their "Warrantee" when I took the neck apart and made modifications (put my shim in there), but I thought Ibanez should know of possible quality issues in their Korean manufacturing plant. If someone from Ibanez reads this and wants to change my mind about Ibanez product quiality, I would welcome your e-mail. So far, the customer support function at Ibanez has been non-responsive.

I've been playing nearly 40 years, mostly acoustic. It was an educational experience to fix Ibanez's problem on this guitar. It turned into a project of sorts, and I did learn alot about electric guitars in the process...and in retrospect, I had fun doing this repair.... but if I wanted a guitar I would consider playing I will never own another Ibanez product again. I have since replaced this guitar and now own a Fender Am Std. Strat, what a difference in quality!