Ibanez Artcore AS53 - Transparent Black Flat Review

Probably the best guitar for the price you can get

First off, Sweetwater is awesome, service, shipping, everything top notch. As to the guitar, it punches way above its weight. It is extremely well built, sounds amazing, and plays beautifully. This is probably the best first guitar someone could buy. It punches way above its weight class. It looks sharp in person, plays great, and sounds great. Now, why is someone like me that has… read more played for years and has a rack of expensive guitars buying one? I didn't have a hollow body and wanted to try and nail some jazz and blues tones. I was surprised to find not only do I like hollow body guitars, but I love this guitar. In fact, I'm playing it quite a bit, passing up many much more expensive guitars in my rack to grab it. Now, it's not all good, there are some negatives. The tuning machines are not great, it stays in tune well enough for a session, but I tend to have to tune it every time I pick it up. I'll probably replace these tuners. The Infinity Rpickups that come stock are cheap ceramic pickups, but they sound surprisingly good. I'm on the fence about a pickup upgrade, because the pickups I would put in cost more than the guitar. But, if you step back and view this as an upgrade platform, maybe this will be a great guitar. Also, the frets are on the small side, intonation is great, but the action is low and makes contact with fretboard.

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Good stuff all around!

First off, the whole gear-buying experience was first-class, from the ease of selection, to communication during the process, to the actual receipt of the gear - buying a guitar online can feel dodgy at times, but the minute I received the picture of the ACTUAL guitar I was going to receive (serial number and all!) I knew this was able to relax and just wait for it to arrive. They… read more know how to safely pack a guitar for shipping, and I needed to tweak nothing except apply my chosen tuning when I unboxed it. Jacob's attention to detail and affability reminded me of going to my favorite (now-defunct) guitar shop in college - no worries, and I felt like more than an average online shopper. But I've come to see this as the rule with these guys, rather than the exception. And the guitar itself is unbelievable at the sub-$300 price point. Beautiful, infinitely playable, and sounds amazing. It's everything I wanted and more! My only niggle in the entire experience was this weird little three-day dosido it made back and forth between Lincolnton and Charlotte (3x) and Durham (2x), but that was all FedEx, and over a holiday weekend; for what I got when it arrived, that gets a total pass, and should serve as no reflection on the quality of the Sweetwater experience. If you're wondering or concerned, don't be - I'll be returning for everything I conceivably can in the future! Thanks for everything!

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Very happy

You guys are great ! Love the guitar ! Thank you ! All I have to buy now is talent !

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