What would it look like if Ibanez was commissioned to make Stevie Ray Vaughan his dream blues guitar? What would SRV’s number one Fender Stratocaster look like if the R&D team at Ibanez’s Japanese facility were making it?
Okay, the GF1 is an HSS electric guitar, with a Seymour Duncan Hyperion humbucker at the bridge position, a pair of Seymour Duncan Fortuna single-coil pickups at the neck and middle positions – and the pickguard is tortoiseshell. That is another point of difference.
But then you could always swap it out for black one; that’s what Vaughan did with his Number One Strat, which originally shipped with a white guard.
Ibanez doesn’t do ordinary S-style guitars. It’s either pushing the boundaries of doublecut electric guitar design in search of the ultimate shred platform, emaciated Wizard necks, high-output humbuckers, a double-locking vibrato for kicks, the whole Ice 9 yards.
If it's not doing that, it is thinking of ways of putting a new-school twist on it, like on the GF1. It is quite obviously part of the AZ series. That’s a great starting point for a signature model. It can be shreddable but classy, the kind of guitar you’d play at at some joint with a dress code.
It has the HSS configuration and five-way switching, volume and tone controls, and Ibanez’s latter-day power move, the dyna-MIX9 switching system, which presents you with nine core tones via the flick of the Alter Switch.
It’s superb fun – and it’s useful – as we found out when we recently got our hands the Ibanez G54W (yes, that is a headless guitar but the point stands: HSS plus dyna-MIX9 equals fun).
And the GF1 is still a guitar that we would consider a high-performance instrument. It has the Prestige MIJ build, with the Oval C baked maple neck, bolted to a solid alder body with an easy-access heel contour. There are Luminlay side dot markers. The rosewood fingerboard seats 22 stainless steel frets and has been given the boogie Prestige edge treatment.
The hardware is tip top, too; a Gotoh T1702B vibrato, Gotoh Magnum locking tuners. Yes, yes, yes... This one's a peach. Sadly, it is only available in certain territories in Asia – but then that’s part of the fun of digging out the passport and traveling. And if you catch Gaofunk in concert this year, you'll see him playing it.
“I’ll be using it to bring you wonderful music during my 20th anniversary national tour this year!” he says.
The launch of the GF1 came just a day after Ibanez announced a signature model for Japanese shredder Hazuki, a 7-string guitar that is exclusive to Japan. It’s stunning.
Priced ¥440,000 (approximately, $2,899/£2,199) the GF1 Gaofunk signature model is available now, and we’ve seen it listed for just ¥330,000. See Ibanez Japan for more details.
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