Ibanez AS53-TF Reviews

Great guitar!

Great guitar for the price. A little setup needed on guitar I ordered. Filed the nut-slots a little lower and lubed the slots. Tiny tweek on the truss rod and new strings. Fret ends was a little sharp (common on many guitars - new and old). Frets needed a little polish, too. Pickups could be better, but neck position with clean sound sounds decent. Glad the neck profile was a little beefy. Too many guitar are made with unplayable skinny back profiles. Tuners are decent, but benefit from tightning the screws. In the future, new pickups will be installed and maybe tuners, too. Love the thin satin finish. Overall, a good guitar with great potential.

Absolutely gorgeous looking guitar and plays brilliant we after a set up

Absolutely gorgeous looking guitar and plays brilliant we after a set up.

Slightly disappointing out of the box as the action was too high and internation well off however once I had given the guitar a good set up and put a set of Pyramid gold strings wow what a difference.

Tail and bridge look a little cheap And not up to the same quality standard as the body and neck, however they perform very very well.

Overall this guitar is a joy to play and sounds beautiful and mellow and has gained many admirers. For the price unbelievable value for money I would highly recommend this guitar but bear in mind you may have to do some set up work yourself or Pay a luthier, but he will end up with a guitar that plays way above its price

22 frets not all easily accessible

This is a beautiful instrument. I find that the bridge pickup is lacking clarity in higher frequencies and that the neck pickup could be a bit warmer. I am comparing this to my 30 year old Columbus 335 knockoff.

The neck is strange, it starts getting thicker close to the body as expected but the weird thing is how early it starts, around fret 14 or thereabout. This limits playability on fret 16 when playing solos on high A. Any higher than that and I am struggling. This is different from my other guitars where high A position is well accessible.

Another thing I observed is that the neck comes in very high relative to the body so the distance from the strings to the body top is unusually high, possibly interfering with finger style picking where one finger on the body would stabilize the hand.

Lowering the action helped the situation slightly.

I would prefer to swap the position of the pickup selector and the volume button to have it similar to the ES-335 setup.

Very well built guitar but strange how the neck joins the body, possibly interfering with playability on higher notes. Stay low!

Beautiful and playful guitar

I bought this guitar for my daughter and she enjoys playing it every day, because the guitar is easy to play. Also it looks great. The neck and fret work is exceptional for this class of guitar. The machines hold the tune. The body is not heavy and there is no neck-dive in a standing position. Magnets faithfully transmits sound and pots make a sufficient choice in this class of guitars. The guitar is immediately playable and no special setup is required. In addition to being easy to play, the guitar seems to attract attention and everyone who saw it wanted to hold it...

Love it

I especially love that its visual style suits multiple genres. Its sound is great for blues/jazz, and I like the unplugged sound as well. Materials feel decent. The feeling of the frets are a little different than what I'm personally used to, but it's not a problem. Keep in mind that international shipping (to Turkey in my case) can take time but it arrived safely.

Very good deal for the price

I bought this guitar as my first hollow body. I immediately connected with the instrument and realised that for the price it's a really good instrument. The guitar has a slim neck and a nice wide nut, so it's easy to play and very comfortable to hold as it's fairly light and portable. I think that in this sense Ibanez guitars are offering a lot of value even in price ranges under 300 euros. I would advise to buy this instrument to both beginners looking for an affordable instrument as well as professionals, looking for a spare. The fact that it's semi hollow also carries additional benefits, you can play it without an amp and still have sufficient volume to practice.

The one issue I have with it is that you only have two knobs (one for each pickup) without the knobs for tone. This limits in my opinion the sounds you can get out of the instrument, but of course this can be adjusted down the signal path. In all honesty I think it's possible to have great guitars nowadays for 500 euros or less and this is certainly a great example of this. I recommend it very warmly!

Ok guitar for the value

overall nice guitar for the money. I like the body and the neck but the pickups sounds average. I was expecting a warmer sound.