Ibanez GAX70

THE FEATURES AREN'T GLAMOROUS,BUT IT HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED.THE PICKUP
SELECTOR IS A BIT NOISY BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK.THE PICKUPS ARE PRETTY GOOD,THERES NO REASON TO CHANGE THEM.THE BRIDGE IS GREAT FOR PALM MUTING,AND THE NECK IS NICE AND WIDE.

THE SOUND OF THE NECK PICKUP IS NICE AND WARM,GREAT FOR CHORDS.THE BRIDGE PICKUP WITH A GREAT AMP AND DISTORTION(I USE A MARSHALL AVT 275 AND BOSS MT-2 METAL ZONE) IS GREAT FOR SOLOS AND POWER CHORDS.

THE ACTION WAS A BIT HIGH FOR ME,BUT IT CAN BE EASILY FIXED.

THE STAP PIN SCREWS CAME OUT BUT I JUST GLUED THEM IN.

THIS GUITAR IS AMAZING.IF SOMEONE STOLE IT I WOULD GO INTO A DEEP DEPRESSION FOR A WEEK AND THEN BUY ANOTHER ONE.

Two power sound humbuckers, separate volume and tone for each pickup, three way switch, non-locking machine heads, fixed bridge.

With the stock pick-ups, this is a 5. The Ibanez power sound pickups are not great pickups. I replaced the bridge pickup with a Armstrong distortion pickup. Much much better! A $30 upgrade

I had to have a guitar tech look at the guitar, and fix the intonation. It was not setup up very good. This helped the guitar stay in tune. The guitar tech is a friend, so this was free.

Seems like a solid instrument. No problems with electronics or anything else ... aside from being setup wrong when I got it.

Never dealt with them.

With the stock pickups, and factory setup, this thing is a 6!

The other upgrade I am considering is locking machine heads.

With replacement humbuckers, and the proper intonation, this thing quickly moves up to an 8, and maybe even a 9.

This is really a great deal. But be prepared to spend a few more dollars to turn a fair guitar into a very good guitar! For people looking for a fixed bridge on a limited budget, this is a guitar to consider. I love mine ... now.

see above, below, wherever, they're all the same. mine has an aidan swafford (awesome guitar player, think he uses this guitar) signature scratchplate on it. i put it on this red beast mostly for looks, but it's taking some scratches too.
i got it from Cash Converters (not an authorized guitar dealer, price is either too high or too low, i got it pretty good) with some dings in the transparent finish and a few nicks in the neck and head. it still has its original ibanez stock pickups (more on them later). nice simple LP electronic configuration. everything i need and nothing i don't (except mabye a drop-D-lever if it stayed in tune).

this guitar is perfect for my musical style (rock, metal ie. Creed, Linkin Park, P.O.D.-christians, cool!). at the moment my amp is a roland DAC15 30 watt 1x8" amp (awesome amp for its size, see review on that, too), and this guitar can give me a lovely warm sound on clean for playing in church, or a really full-out distortion with heaps of midrange for chugga-chugga palm-muting. AWESOME!
the only thing i don't like about this guitar is the neck p/u (bass). it's really to bassy for anything, even warm, full clean playing. huge bass with no treble definition, even when both pickups are going. good for some people maybe, i just like to hear my high notes. i turn this pickup right down and use the three-way switch to 'turn the guitar off'. thinking of putting a treble distortion pickup in the neck position to give me to treble sounds, and use the amp to get my bass back, but i'm not sure yet if this will work or not.
i've been playing for like 5 years, and i have never played a Gibson or a PRS, but this is the sound i hear and want in my head, although i'm not sure my tonal desires are necessarily shared by the parents (must not be a genetic thing!). give me an ibanez any day!

this guitar is secondhand or older. when i got it the intonation was off a bit, i'm trying to sort it out at the moment. no physical flaws except for the dings, and that's not ibanez's fault. all the components seem to fit...apart from the tone and volume pots that stick out of the guitar at weird angles...bit cheap, and the the jack nut and strap buttons kept coming out. i've fixed them with some wood glue, or something. pickups a bit rusty, but that's my fault for sweating so much when im dampening low riffs with my palm! 9 for ibanez because of the pots...5 for the guy who banged it up before me.

broken a few strings, jack plug's come loose, usual consequences for being a guitar player. i play it in church without a backup...but i'm not really about to break a string in church, am i! used it for a couple of small gigs, but i didn't have any backup for in case strings break. my problem is with strings, not the guitar.

never had to deal with them, but the local guitar shop is pretty good to talk to...i'm going to try to trade in a ibanez seventh heaven tone-lok pedal i bought from them new for a smash-box...we'll see how i get on.

really, REALLY cool guitar for the price. if it were stolen or lost, i would probably save up and buy an AX1220BBK ($2000...bit of an upgrade, eh!--same shape, nicer finish, better pickups, etc.), but for now, this ol' red guitar will do me fine! for $400 you can't go wrong. great guitar for the transitional phase from beginner to tone-freak!

just a follow up on my previous review.

NA

NA

This is where some gripes have begun. First of all, one of the strap buttons came loose and i had to do the toothpick and glue thing. that kinda pisses me off... little things like that shouldn't happen. Second of all, one of the tone knobs came loose and I had to open up the thing and duct tape it down, actually, my friend did that for me, but the fact remains that little things like that should NOT happen. So, I'm just giving this section a slightly lower rating, a 7.

I can't really give it any lower than that, because these are relatively small and easy to fix problems. The actual body of the guitar is still just fine, not a nick or a scratch or whatever else.

NA

NA

99
Dark Red
24.75 inch scale neck
agathis body

nothing really special

This guitar has a great sound. And when you look at the price it sound 10X better. It has a very warm sound good for rythm playing. It's really not made for shredding but can be played fast. It just loses clarity. There's no buzz and as i said has a warm thick "bassy" sound. sounds like meegs from coal chamber. Good for new or goth metal. Or stuff like hatebreed. But no faster. Has a nice warm clean sound too. It's all around warm and heavy.

It came fine. Nice color. Finish stays nice. Just clean every 6 months.

This guitar can take a beating. i've had it for 3 years and it is working fine. The only problem i ever have is that i have to tighten the jack. but i thinks it's probably my fault. Other than that it's solid. This thing has gone over, hit the floor, been sweat on, wet, and beaten an inch from death and it still sounds great. It stays true to the ibanez custom of being a tank.

Never dealt with them

Fantastic guitar. It's cheap, sounds great, and'll last you forever. I don't think i'd have the heart to part with it. If you're short on cash and you're looking for a great guitar pick this up.

Check the previous Reviews

Ok, heres the moral of the story. DONT JUDGE GUITARS BY PRICE!!!
Ive had this guitar for a while and it is F*IN AMAZING!!! If you combine it with a Crate Amp w/ Reverb and a Digitech Metal Master Distortion Pedal, you will get the sickest sounds ever. I play hvy metal so what would u expect? The tone is superior to fenders and gibsons. My friend has a 1000.00 epiphone and we compared sounds. the ibanez whooped his @$$. This is definately a MUST HAVE for beginners-advanced players.

The pickups scream, i bought the floor model so i got scratches and fingermarks but it doesnt bother me. The guitar is a masterpiece, suprizingly its at such a cheap price. I only experienced one flaw in this, the neck adjustment. It can get annoying. But its not really a big deal.

This guitar is bulletproof. The worst thing that can happen to this guitar is a dent ( by slamming it into a wall or something ) or getting it out of tune ( same as dent ). It is ezily dependable, the buttons keep the strap secure. i dont need any backups for this guitar at all. and all you fender strat fans, strats suck balls.

Never had any probs.

10, 10, 10, 10 , 10 ,10. Does that show u how much this guitar rocks? Ibanez makes THE best guitars. Nothing can compare to its superiority. Definately get this guitar if u play metal/ blues/ jazz . The tone is crazy, the bridge is smooth, i never broke any strings and dont plan on. if it were stolen, id probably buy another one beaause theyre so damn cheap.

well it's been listed here a thousand times already so i don't think i'll bother. nice sg-style dual controls for tone/volume on each pick-up (two humbuckers). no trem on the bridge but i f**kin hate trem anyway, too much tuning hassle. not bad features wise, but nothing special.

still got the stock pick-ups in it and it's a perfectly acceptable sound, pretty thick although sometimes some definition gets totally lost when using the neck pick-up and distortion. the pick-up selector is *very* noisy, even after cleaning and muchos playing about with, so if u want to do the old tom morello machine gun effect it will sound bollocks. It's good for metal, but anything mellower you'll be struggling with, even after reeeally playing about with the eq i couldn't get a less intrusive tone. so not much variety in sounds, and compared to my other guitar (a jackson ps-4 - BEAUTIFUL!) it leaves a little bit to be desired tone wise.

my main problem is the intonation - the guitar came to me and the intonation at the twelfth fret was piss poor. the 3rd ( G ) string is totally shot to hell as well, you have to tune it a microtone down just so it's in tune with the rest of the guitar, but then open chords sound terrible. considering it came straight from the manufacturer i find this absolutely shocking, very disappointing indeed. the fact that i have to pay to get this kind of shit fixed really pisses me off.

ok, i will admit the finish is reeeeal nice : cherry red i think the actual name for it is. i had to play about with the rest of the set-up, after i sent it to be fixed for the intonation, which was a bit irritating but i like my guitars just right. there were quite a few rough edges on the neck and on the whole it feels a bit 2 flimsy.

little to none. example - im playing a gig and i open up my gig bag to find the the bridge pick-up assembly has totally collapsed, the plastic casing totally shot and the pick-up is basically hanging out of the guitar. That kind of thing is totally not acceptable for someone playing gigs. this was after about three months of use. also, the tuning pegs are totally shit, after about two songs into a live set, it needs fully re-tuned and i use thick strings. the switch is also very flimsy. oh and it's also incredibly bottom heavy so when u let go of it the headstock smacks u in the face. NOT IMPRESSIVE AT ALL.

this really takes the biscuit - i phoned them up after all these problems and they said stuff like that did not come under warranty. they were total fucking assholes about it as well, seeming totally un-interested and even rude. one fucker even said "well what do you expect for $200 dollars?". well i DON'T expect to have to shell out another $150 to make the damn thing playable and i sure as hell don't expect some cheeky little fuck on the other end of the phone acting like a wise-ass. if ibanez call this "customer service" then they got a lot to learn. i will never buy another ibanez guitar - this thing is pretty much a piece of shit.

in the state it arrived in, had someone stolen it i would track them down... purely to shake their hand for taking the thing off my hands. i am willing to admit that i got a "runt of the litter" and mine may have been a one off, cuz the one in the shop was a lot better. but after the experiences with the company i think that ibanez are a bunch of fuckwits, in no way deserving their reputation as good manufacturers. frankly my experience with this guitar was nightmarish, with new things going wrong almost every week. sorry, not good enough. this guitar eventually wound up keeping my family warm on a bonfire, after i purchased an esp viper-301. now that's a REAL guitar, maybe ibanez should take some goddamn notes. i heard the guy from linkin park uses this guitar - hmmm, figures.

I'm not sure what year, but I can say this much....it's trans red with chrome hardware, 22 frets, stop tailpiece, blah blah blah, you guys probably know all the specs from the 80 other reviews.

It suits me quite well, of course alot of people(Jam hippies) think I'm a no talent hack since I play metal/hardcore. That's ok, because I can play circles around those assholes. I play the guitar through a Mesa Boogie V-Twin into a Digitech GSP 5, then into the high input of a custom built Crate BX-160(bass amp). It's the Crate head with a custom cab and a JBL 15. It sounds great for what I play, Bt the pickups are a little lacking in clarity, even through conventional guitar amps. Decent bite, and the wiring hasn't given me trouble in the 1 year+ that I've owned it.

The setup when I first got it was non-exsistent. This is mainly due to the fact that I bought it discounted, due to the fact that someone dropped the guitar on it's headstock and put two hairline fractures in the body directly between the end of the neck and the neck pickup. The fact that it is still in great condition after that should speak volumes. The store tried to do some repair work, but failed. They loosened the truss rod, but once I got it set up to my liking, the frets didn't buzz, the action feels good, and the finish has been hella durable thus far.

Si, la guitarra can withstand live playing. I did the trick where you spin the guitar around your head, and that ripped one of the strap buttons out, so wood glue and strap locks are definetly necessary. I also launched it about ten feet a cross a parking lot, and while it put a nasty little dent/chip in the back of the guitar, it didn't f*ck up the truss rod, it still stays in tune, and it didn't really affect the guitar, except for the cosmetics. Considering the abuse I've put it through, this is one tough little bastard.

Couldn't tell ya.

Remeber when you look at the price that I got it discounted. I've played for three years or so, and This was my first guitar. I played bass for two years before picking up guitar, but for the shit I've done to this guitar in the time I've had it, it's in great shape. I still have it and play it, even after buying a late eighties BC Rich Stealth(which has become my main guitar). Hella cool guitar, and definetly worth it.

same as all the other ones... i don't feel like listing it all, so just go to the ibanez website and look for yourself.

well, the sound is decent. i've played this guitar on two amps and it sounds good on both. sound seems nice and full, good variety... you can get lotsa sounds out of this. i have no complaints about the sound at all, it can do anything i throw at it quite well... although it depends on the amp i'm using. it's no fender strat, but for the price, it's damn good!

no finish flaws at all, nothing ever comes loose, i don't have to tune it very often... only once so far. i love the controls, you can see them from all angles, although i wouldn't mind lables on the or something so i know what they do.... i've figured it out by now tho. pickups were adjusted just fine... ya... nothing wrong here.

well, i dont' see why this guitar wouldn't withstand live playing first of all... really durable. finish is super strong, its bumbed into wood and at times concrete walls, and not a scratch. the strap buttons seems solid, but i'll still get strap locks or something sooner or later. from what i can tell, if you put the strap on properly, it won't fall off. now, as for using this at a gig without a backup... this IS my only guitar, so yes.... :D

no idea... never had to deal with them yet.

well, this is my first guitar, and i haven't been playing very long at all.... so don't just buy this guitar because of my review... i'd have a look at reviews done by people with more experience.

i would buy this guitar again if it were stolen... it's a nice guitar, great "bang-for-the-buck" thing going on.

i love the body shape... it seems to take the best elements of the les paul and the sg... i like that.

before buying this i did compare it to other guitars... i tried a squier strat, and a bronze series bc rich warlock. i've been told that low-end, cheap bc-rich's suck, and that if you want a strat, dont' get a squier... so the obvious choice was this. this one was the cheapest, and the best (out of the 3) from what i can tell.

the only thing i wish i had was a better amp... but that can wait...

All ready been stated by other players. What you pay is what you get (at least in this case).

First I like to play a guitar straight with no effects, boost, gain, distortion, crunch (you get the picture), and then with all of the above to listen to the pickups. As I said...you get what you pay for, the stock pickups are a bit weak in comparsion to the stock pickups on my Squire II Strat, which I paid about the same price back in 1993. (the foremention Squire has been upgraded since). Played it through my pedal and amp, sounded fine. Set up was a bit too high for my likings and the iontonation was off. I re-set it up as best as I could (hey, we talking about a $200 axe here). Afterward's, I got the feel I like but then I got a FLAT BuZz on the 15th fret on the high E string! That did not make me happy at all even after re-setting (raising it slightly higher) it still buzzed. My squire is set lower, and no buzz on that baby! Fret work? POOR! The axe is good for rhythm playing, but lead work is out of the question here.

Action was medicore and after re-setting, I see why it was set high. Fret buzzing on the 15th fret on the high E string as I stated previously.
I didn't bother the pickups since I'm planning on replacing them anyway.
The so called "Butterscotch" finish really looks orange, which seem to be a popular color from the place I shop because that color sold out quick. The finish and color is good for this price range.
The tuners suck...will not keep the guitar in tune for too long. I plan to change those to grovers soon (after I see what I can do with that pain in the @$$ 15th fret buzz).
The top black finish on the head stock chips very easy, and I try to be very careful about handling my guitars.
And for the guy who didn't know what wood the body was? It is Agatis.

I've played it live a few times, and it did ok...but I had to re-tune after a few numbers.
I think the tuners will go first before the rest of the hardware, but I don't play this guitar too hard anyway.
I agree with the other guys, you gotta get lock strap buttons...I've almost drop this guitar a few times because of not having a set installed on it.
I'm a bit hesitant on deciding if I could depend on it, I don't play too hard on the strings. But I have broken a couple of high E strings on this guitar since owning it. I say this because I use the same strings on my other guitars and haven't broken any strings on those. I probably will end up replacing the bridge too.
On a paying gig with more than one set, I would definetly have a backup.

Haven't used them.

I have been playing for 23 years off and on (mainly off up to until last year).
Well I should had played it somewhere else before buying it online.
I would not replace this axe if it was snatched...I'm through with playing guitars on this level of quality. The reason I bought it in the first place was because I was asked to join a band from a bud whom I haven't played with in years, and I was currently at that time not playing guitar at all. I did not want to invest a whole lot of money just in case there was a reason for letting a lot of years go by not playing anymore. The axe looked cooled in the catalog and I knew not to expect too much at this price range, but it did help me get back in to playing again and with renewed intrest.
I'am jazzed up about playing again and I bought a C-1 Classic w/Natual finish. As much as I love PRS, LP, the damn guitars are just over priced. I think Ibanez should make available an upgraded model with at least better neck and fret work.