Ibanez has unveiled a host of surprise electrics guitars, including new star signatures and a firm-first Iceman.
There’s a lot for players to get their teeth into here, so we’ve trawled through the listings to pull out the highlights.
Leading the signatures, Steve Vai’s visually updated PIA77BON2 features an intricately detailed design, including a hand-painted gold leaf body finish and an expansive PIA Blossom fretboard inlay.
Its DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups continue the aesthetic, and it otherwise conforms to the usual PIA spec sheet.
Joe Satriani, meanwhile, has the new JS2470 to his name. It follows a similar tonewood recipe with an alder body and three-piece maple/bubinga neck sculpted to his namesake profile.
At its heart, there’s a DiMarzio Satchur8 humbucker in the bridge and a Sustainiac in the neck, and it’s complete with a dedicated three-way switch, taking in Harmonic/Mix/Normal modes.
Nita Strauss’ latest signature is a Torch Red-colored shredder. The JIVA10R pairs an African mahogany body with a quilted maple top, a three-piece JIVA maple/purpleheart neck, and an ebony fretboard featuring a Beaten Path inlay design.
Aside from the signatures, the pick of the bunch is the newly modernized and weaponized Iceman.
It's a body shape favored by System of Down’s Daron Malakian, inverted by Paul Gilbert (to make the Fireman) and more recently adopted by Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale.
Here, it gets a seven-string, multi-scale makeover. It’s armed with Fishman Fluence Modern humbuckers and has a five-piece Wizard II-7 maple-and-walnut neck, an Okoume body. It looks like it could do damage.
There are plenty of highlights elsewhere. Last year, Ibanez revived the forgotten (and pretty mad-looking) P Series guitar. Now it’s back in a more metal-minded fashion.
Available in White or Black, each model features what appears to be an aluminum pickguard for its exaggerated treble-side horn.
Building on a basswood body, five-piece maple/walnut Super Wizard neck, and 24-fret bound rosewood 'board with Sharktooth inlays, it is one of the most radical-looking Ibanez guitars currently around.
As we said, there’s a lot to absorb, but with the Iceman getting something of the Alpha treatment, three stellar shredders getting new squeezes, and the P Series continuing to reintegrate itself into the modern scene, it’s good news for Ibanez loyalists.
See Ibanez for more.
