Ibanez Les Paul Copy

. made in 1978 in japan. I bought it for $75 plus a 1977 Ibanez Les Paul that I just about destroyed

I play Metal/Hardcore stuff, but sometimes like to calm down and play some Emo and punk stuff. I have a Boss Metal Zone, Boss flanger, and the Boss Me-8 which is all plugged into a Crate G212XL (a big piece of poop that i've been trying to get rid of for 2 years now) The guitar sounds nice. i love the sound it brings out. i just bought a brand new ESP LTD MH-200, but i don't like it. I still play this puppy, it rocks!

Everything was set up PERFECT! I played it and it was great. and It fits my style of music perfectly

i've played this guitar live and at practice in a chaotic metal hardcore band. and i have broken guitars live before and this thing keeps going. the strap buttons ripped out on me a couple times while playing live, but i fixed it easily. i can depend on it. but of course i need back up.

never dealt with ibanez, but they seem nice.

i've been playin guitar for 5 years. if this guitar was stolen, i would buy another les paul. I broke my 1977 Ibanez Les Paul and immediatly searched for another. It's great.

Ok what we have here is a les paul style guitar. two humbuckers, volume and tone controls and the rythm/treble switch. The neck is a bolt-on and not glued like the gibson ones. this baby has noe serialnumer s? i havent been able to date it yet, but it's early 70's i think. The neck and body appears to be mahogney. tuners have been raplacen whit shallers. i got the originad gold ornamentet and gold interior case with the guitar. looks like new only a few dings ..9 out of 10. the white plastic parts have turned green/yellow.

i play all kind of styles and the two humbuckers gives a wide range of sounds. i play it trough a fender blues deluxe allt upe 40w amp and the it sounds amazing. like the way a les paul should sound.

this guitar is perfekt. stays in tune plays well all the way to the top of the neck. setup was perfect when i got it. i like the fackt that it has a bolt on neck because i think the gibson glued on guitars feel a bit stiff. i know im propably tho only person in the world to have this opinion.

there is no waranty on this one , but ibanez are well known for their 70's copy guitars. and this one is no exseption. i use it all the time. but i never go on stage without a backup guitar. you know...if a string brakes you want to get into actin again fast...

there is no waranty on this one i guess...ibanez is a well known brand but this one is to old for them to take responsibility for....

great guitar...looks cool and i feel a got a god guitar for the money spent. i have had them all and i still keep buying and selig but this one is a keeper...great addition to my collection.

Manufactured in Japan, sometime in the 70s I assume. Basic LP copy, except it has a (yuck) BOLT-ON neck. Not cool, not Les Paul-ish. I won't go thru all the details of pickups, switches, knobs, fretboard, etc. You know the routine, made to look like a LP Standard. The pickups are exposed, hardware is gold, binding on top & bottom and on the fretboard and headstock. "Ibanez" nicely inlaid on the headstock, along with a sort of "Custom" inlay underneath the name. Don't know what kind of woods this piece of crap is made of, all I know is it is several DIFFERNENT pieces. Why the hell do people think these things are cool? Are the 26 pieces of plywood used to make them some sort of rare tree only found on Japan? I don't get it. Light as hell, I think it's hollowed out underneath the cap on the top. Tuners work fine. I subtract BIG TIME for the stupid bolt-on neck. Gibson sued over this guitar? Why? I'm convinced it's "The BLair Witch Project" of guitar lore, an urban myth that suckered millions into thinking these are actually good Les Paul copies. Hell I think Jay Turser makes a better copy than this thing. "Blair Witch" sucks, by the way.

Actually, not bad. My 80s Hohner Les Paul Goldtop copy kicks it's ass, but that's another story. These pickups actually sound okay. Have no idea if original or not. I don't find that it gets a ton of sustain though. That might be due to the bolt-on neck, the 25 ounces it weighs, and the hand-selected pieces of plywood. I don't know.

Overall not bad. I will say, it's held up fine for a 20-25 year old guitar. Action's fine, stays in tune fine, no problems.

Again, I'd have to rate it high. It's survived this long. Maybe they put some space-age additive/protective coating on that plywood or something. This guitar has aged well.

Right...

My two favorite guitars are the Les Paul and the Strat. I've owned "real" Stratocasters, but Les Pauls are prohibitively expensive. So, I've only owned copies. Over the years, I've come across some good ones. I had a Hohner Goldtop copy that was way cool. I had a another copy in the early 90s (cannot recall the name!) that was made to look like a "black beauty" and it was awesome--wish I'd never let it go! Though Epiphones are constantly ripped by some people, I've played some Epi's that I thought were cool as hell (their quality varies greatly though; if considering, sample a bunch of them...) If this guitar didn't have the reputation it does, I would only have looked at it and said, "what a crappy copy" without even listening. But as I said, the sound isn't all that bad, and that's certainly one of the important considerations of a guitar. Still, vibe is important as well (to me, vibe equals = tone; feel of neck; if copy, how true to original; and overall coolness factor). On 3 out of 4 counts, this one sucks. So, despite the fact the sound isn't bad, it's obviously durable, and the fit & finish are fine, I wouldn't hang onto this axe if it was given to me for free. Hey that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. I sold the guitar for $300 a month later, so I didn't really lose anything on it. But I have to say, I don't miss it.

I can't exactly tell you any year, but I believe this is one of the earliest Ibanez Les Paul copies. I believe this because the lack of the inlays that appear on the headstock of most of the Ibanez LP's. Also the Ibanez logo is in a different style of lettering as on the other ones, in fact the lettering resembles that on an Ibanez I saw from the mid-60's. And if the logo tells me anything this one's 100% Japanese and probably made in the Fuji Gen-Gakki factory along with about a doze other brands like Hohner, Goldentone, Tokai and in the early 80's Fender as well. Enough about production history, here's the details: 22 frets, enclosed tuners, bolt-on neck, parallelogram inlayed position markers, bound neck and headstock, 2 humbucking pickups, 3 way selector switch, tune-o-matic style bridge, stop-bar tailpeice, 4 tapered knobs; two marked "Volume" and two marked "Tone"; and a gold finish on the top of the body and cherry all around like a Gibson "Gold-Top" with the top-edge of the body bound. It looks pretty accurate, aside from the Ibanez logo and a few minute details (the plastic plastic saddles, the way thepickguard looks, really little things.) But for what it's worth, I kinda dig these lawsiut guitars, Ibanez were the kings of this trade, with several Les Pauls, Flying V's and Rickenbacker basses to coose from. I got the guitar with what seems to be its original formed hardshell case and inside the compartment in the case, there was a Rocky Horror Picture show pin and a flathead screwdriver.

In all honesty, I wasn't expecting anything out of the sound. In fact I didn't even expect it to work. But work it did, and quite well. I had what I believe was a Hohner (or possibly a hybrid of Jap makes) LP copy which is similar in feel, you can read my review on that one (I call it by the name on the headstock, Hohner L 75.) It's slightly noisy, especially the bridge pickup which sounds good, but not like the neck pickup, which I don't think is original, it resembles a DiMarzio humbucker, there's no name on the pickup itself, just 6 flat polepeices on each bobbin. The sounds are fulll and as with most cheap humbuckers they can get somewhat bright. I like the sounds they suit my classic rock/hard rock/alternative style well, it ca be a good change from my main guitar, a Rickenbacker 360.

I bought this at a flea market, I didn't expect it to do anything at all. I was planning on using this as a parts guitar to repair that Hohner I mentioned before, it being my sister's guitar now, and she wanted some work done on it. But I figured I'd plug it in and see for sure. To my suprise, it plays and feels great. The only work I did was adjust the bridge saddles, put a screw in to hold the neck pickup in place, a re-string and about 20 minutes worth of polishing with a little McGuiars car polish. It handles itself good for possibly being 10 years older than me. It looks like the srap button screw was broken clear off the guitar and someone smoothed it out and installed a new scre about a half-inch over. There's a a few small paint chips, but I'm going to buy a couple Gibson finish touch-up pens from the Stewart-McDonald catalog, see if I can fix them up a little, maybe I'll get a pickguard and some knobs while I'm at it, the one on it has this weird peel-off adhesive backing, probably for use with one of ther other models, I also don't care for the pickguard's looks, and the knobs look a little chewed up. I can fix whatever's wrong. So I'm not worried about much, as I said before, this could be a 30 year old guitar.

This guitar has obvious stood up to live playing before, it's very well played in. It feels solid to me. The tuners are a little rough, but that's about it, I have a set of copy Schaller tuners if I need to change them. But these Ibanez "lawsuit" Les Pauls seems like it's better than any modern Epiphone. I can imagine using this one on stage, but the way Peter Buck of R.E.M. uses his Les Paul, as an occaisional change from the Rickenbacker for a fuller distorted sound.

The guitar's 30 years old at most, 25 at least, I doubt there's any warranty. My hobby is fixing old guitars, this is a cool guitar which is mine to tweak and hot-rod however I want.

This is guitar # 11 for me, and it's #5 from this flea market. I buy gear here and mess with it. It's a fun hobby for me. This is a good guitar and it'll be a big help as I replace the control pots on my sister's guitar. I'm very thankful that this guitar works, I love it. It'll go well with my Rickenbacker. I dismantled my Karera Rickenbacker copy yesterday, and now I figured out why, so don't need to buy any parts for my sister's guitar. Good thing, too. That Rickenbacker copy was a peice of trash. As for this guitar, it's a new friend, and I think we'll get along just fine.

This is-- or should i say, was-- a great copy of the traditional two-pickup Black Beauty LP Custom design, built in '77. These are relatively common, and I've seen them in a variety of finishes and configurations. A lot of them, like mine, have been molested with non-original hardware and pickups in order to make them more like the real thing or more to the player's taste. The guitar originally had a black pickguard, white binding and all-gold hardware, i'm assuming; the block inlays on the neck and headstock are obviously still there and look real nice-like. Mine has been outfitted with Schallers, two Gibson PUs of as-yet unknown type or vintage (one with CHROME pickguard and one utterly naked), a cream pickguard and gold "taper" knobs (taper knobs bug the hell out of me-- my Hamer Special FM came with 'em too and i promptly threw speed knobs on there). The one big thing keeping this axe from being a 100% copy is the bolt-on neck, which has kept this thing from becoming semi-valuable like the Artists. IMHO, this is a much better-looking guitar and I think it plays every bit as well, if not better than the Artists. I should also mention that Ibanez made two different types of top on their LP copies-- a solid and a "hollowed-out." Mine is hollowed out, as you can tell by rapping on the top with your knuckle. Initially I worried that this would be prone to crushing, but the guitar has been dropped on concrete by a previous owner and nothing horrible happened to the top (gave the binding a bit of a problem, though).

I won't comment much on the sound of the axe, electrically, since the PUs are non-original. I understand most of these came stock with Ibanez Super 70's or DiMarzios. The Gibson PUs are OK but not spectacular, and I'll probably throw in set of Duncans in the near future (this was acquired as a backup axe for my Hamer). I will say that I was inspired to purchase this by a friend's guitar-- he picked up a hell of a deal on one of the "black beauties" that have the vine inlays. I believe the pickups in that axe were stock, and they were also weak in terms of both output and character.
Acoustically this guitar is loud and has a pleasing, full-range tone. This may partially be due to the hollowed top. The sustain is quite impressive for a bolt-on axe-- in fact, it can hold out as long as my set-neck Hamer and is louder to boot. If the bolt-on factor is holding you back, try one and see-- it doesn't seem to be an issue with this guitar. The axe seems to have very few dead spots that aren't brought on by problems with fret wear and the overall sound is well-balanced and thick, once again-- like the real thing.

At present, the axe feels VERY much like the almost inimitable feel of a good LP standard or custom, if not quite as vibey (but certainly with tons more vibe than a recent standard, studio or Epiphone copy). The neck is not as skinny as I would have liked, but it's awfully trim and certainly a notch thinner than my Hamer's. It's a pretty average thickness neck for, say, a standard. Apparently Ibanez made these in varying thicknesses as well. My friend's "Vine Beauty" had a thinner neck, which actually just made the axe feel flimsier and cheaper. To me, mine feels a bit more authentic.
The guitar seems to have been set up recently; the seller put a new bridge on it, which gleams rather nicely. I should bring up at this point that you shouldn't expect to find one of these with the gold all still stuck on the hardware. I shopped around for a few weeks via the 'net and everyone who had one said theirs had the gold flaking off the PU covers and bridge/tailpiece. The neck coverpiece on the back is pretty tarnished, and the gold on my tailpiece is gone to the point where it just looks like nickel that's been gone over with a piece of sandpaper. But I digress...
The frets and fingerboard are almost exactly like every good Paul I've played, nice and wide, but mine has a fair amount of fret wear which leads to buzzes in random locations all over the neck, especially when bending. The nut appears to be a replacement and was not put on terribly well. The bolt-on neck is not the tightest fit I've ever seen but it sure beats a modern-day Fender. This guitar has been abused a bit, but the finish doesn't look too bad aside from a few small and almost unnoticeable cracks from weathering. It appears to have been done right, if not to boutique standards. (hey, it's black! what can i say?) Actually, it's pretty sexy-looking, i expected it to be a bit more tattered and dull.

I think the guitar itself is very well built, especially for a Japanese guitar, and I would pick it in a second over any sub-Custom-Shop Gibson from the last ten years. The hardware is a bit cheaper and flimsier, however. I'm expecting to replace all of it within the next few months to put it "back to Ibanez spec."

While I still prefer my Hamer for subtlety and build quality, I like this guitar a lot for the cash. It feels a lot more "Gibson-y" than my FM (including the sheer weight-- this thing is DAMN heavy!), and I think it has a lot of vibe that the other cheap copies just don't possess. With tons of these out there, I think you'd have to be a moron to buy an Epiphone or LP Studio, or even a new Standard... this feels and looks SO much better. Then again, there are lots of morons out there, and Gibson is still selling truckloads of their cheapies. And these *are* getting harder to locate, especially in stock condition. Nonetheless, don't let a vintage dealer convince you this is the "holy grail" (the recent text in an ad for an Ibanez goldtop in VG, followed by the ludicrous figure of $800). Raise holy hell until you get it under $300, well under $300 if it's been messed with or is in iffy condition. Then go home and smile a lot.
This is a great backup or beginner/intermediate axe, or just a great alternative to the LP for the budget rocker, and I'm glad I picked one up. They're sexier than most Artists I've seen, and cheap enough that I'll probably buy a couple more down the road! Check it out if you get the chance.

This was the first guitar I ever played and was borrowed from a freind for the first year of my guitar carrer. It is a "Custom" model made in the mid 70's in Japan. I believe it is considered a "Lawsuit" model, due to the fact that it is a nearly exact copy with no rights paid to Gibson. Strangely enough, it has a bolt on neck. The body is probably mahogany, but is routed out to eleviate some of the heft of the LP design. It has a flamed maple top and is finished in a see-thru deep plum finish. All hardware is gold. Your standard tuneOmatic/2 PAFs etc. The neck is also finished that way. The headstock is the exact shape of a real LP. There is a strange mother of pearl inlay on it that is similar to the LP ones. The name "Ibanez" is written in script as Gibson would be.

I have not seen (Or heard) this guitar since I gave it up in 1988. Like any good guitar, though. It leaves an impression. It is warm with tight distortion, but can get muddy. To hear what it sounds like , go plug in a Les Paul Custom and that's it. And that's the great thing about these. They look, play, and sound like the real thing. That's why Gibson got so upset back then. Who wanted to buy a Gibson when you could have the Ibanez for less?

In the days that I played this, I could not have begun to know what the setup was like. In retrospect, It was average for a Les Paul.

The guitar was over 10 years old when I had it, but had not fallen apart. The gold was still intact. The tuners needed to be replaced. There were some gouge marks on the back of the body where a belt buckle had scraped it. I broke a lot of strings in those days. I'm not sure if it was my fault or the guitar's. Overall great!

I've been playing for 11 years now. I've owned 3 Kramers, a Peavey, and a crap bass. I play hard metal, but can get bluesy too. I played this guitar straight through a Sunn Alpha 112P. I never got the chance to see what it would do on my current Fender 100 watt monster with all the effects, but with the amp distortion it was fairly tight and controled. I have played the $ 1000.00 plus Gibsons and the Epiphone equivilants. The best testimonial I could give this thing is that I would buy it over them. It's not any better, but it's not any worse either. My ideal guitars are the metal monsters of the 80's. I feel most comfortable with a Charvel/Jackson, Kramer, or newer Ibanez. There is a place in my heart for the LP design, however, and most of that is due to the fact that for the first year of my carrer, I played this guitar. There are a lot of cheap rip-offs of the Les Paul. This is not one of them. It's a REAL guitar.

mine is a 1977 Les Paul Copy! I got it used, i'm the 3rd owner. Some moron tried to rout the body for a third humbucker... if you meet a guy that would do such a thing, PLEASE kick his ass!!!!! it stays in tune well, has a great cherry sunburst finish, and looks great!

I play alternative/rock and it's ok for clean stuff, but i really have to work to get it sounding good distorted. I use a Laney amp and several Boss, DOD, and other misc. pedals. it has a really rich, bright sound, and it isn't noisy at all. it has really good sustain! but, versatility isn't its strong point. thats probably because of the bridge pickup, which isn't original, by the way.

can't say b/c i got it used. However, it's in EXCELLENT playing condition now, and its 21 years old, so that says they built it good!

The finish is great, and i would gig with it, depending on what i was playing though (such as louder, distorted songs), i might want a backup. However, it's great for it's style of music

beats me... i know a friend w/ an Ibanez... neither mine or his have broken yet, and that's his ONLY electric...

I like strat type guitars with wider frets, so it isn't the top choice of guitars for me. but, for $150, it's the best investment i've ever made. if it got stolen, i'd probably get something with more bottom end, gritty sound and wider frets. also, a skinnier neck.