Ibanez RG7421 7-String Review

Awesome Axe

This is my first 7-strings guitar. Right out of the box, it was perfect. Action was little high for me and I lowered the saddles and intonation was still almost perfect. Guitar is light weight than my expectation and then I found out that the body is made out of Meranti (not Mahogany). Maybe the low price is due to that. Regardless, Meranti is a great wood as well for guitar… read more body. Pickups will need little getting used to but not bad at all. After getting used to playing 7, will move to 8 or 9 strings. Overall a great guitar at a low price and Sweet water does a great job packing and 55 points of inspection before shipping. Thanks go to Chris Goldbach for always being there.

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Decent entry for 7 string

I got demo version of this guitar from Sweetwater. For that price I think it is a pretty solid guitar. It feels light and balanced. The neck is smooth and thin. The cutout and neck design leaves easy access to the upper frets and is very smooth. The finish looks good and is consistent on the front. The back not so much. The fretboard looks and feels great. The frets themselves are… read more pretty standard for guitars in this price range and they are smooth along the edge. It could use a little work though. The nut looks sketchy. The slot for the 7th string is filed WAY down. The worst part are the pickups. They are very muddy. If you care about your tone at all you will want to replace these. When switching the pickups or using the tone knob I sometimes get poppy or scratchy noises at varying volume. The electronics cover on the back doesn't sit flush with the body. It looks like the 7th string is .059 inch thick. I think it needs to be thicker especially if you want to do non-standard tunings. I did a basic setup on it. The 7th string still feels a little floppy which is why I'm going to try a thicker string. The walnut color looks nice but it's easy to chip so be careful. My fingernail got under a cloth when I was pulling up the knobs and it was chipped easily. The pickups had some weird gluey gunk on the pickup tape that is pretty hard to remove. I have no idea what it is but it's in there good. Unfortunately no stores near me have the strings I want to use so I'm still waiting for those to replace the strings and tune it up again to see where it's at.I'm not sure how much of the cons I listed are "Ibanez's" fault or "used demo guitar" fault. All things considering I still really like the guitar. It looks nice, plays nice and it's well constructed. If it was any more expensive I probably would have given it 3 stars due to the poor sounding pickups. As it stands I think it's a good guitar to get if you want to see what 7 strings are all about. If you plan on playing this long term though I would count on investing in a new nut and pickups.

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Great Guitar Outstanding customer service!!!

Solid guitar! Ibanez does a really good job with making their guitars light and easy to play when It comes to the neck and the shape of the body. The pickups are pretty solid for stock ones. Sweetwater has the best customer service and went above and beyond to make sure I got the guitar that I needed and Shipped it immediately! I will definitely purchase all my music equipment from… read more them from now on!

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A great guitar.

A awesome guitar four under $500. They setup it up like a dream. Spend the money and let them set it up for you. It's worth it. ..

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Incredibly solid budget gateway into a new realm of guitar.

For the price point, this is an absolutely stellar instrument. The neck is super solid with very clean fretwork with no ragged edges to catch your hands (have had this issue out of the box with instruments three times the price), and the truss rod cover on a hinge is a nice little appointment. The only "real QC issue" with my guitar would be the sort of wonkily placed double side… read more dot at the 24th fret, which is maybe the most minor gripe I've ever had with a new instrument. Body is shockingly light, but the guitar is very well balanced and doesn't neck dive when standing. Electronics also seem very snugly set and cleanly wired, and very little "noise" save the strings gets transferred to the pickups while you're playing, unless you really knock on the guitar like a maniac. I also just want to use this space to beg you, if you're still reading, to never take any review seriously if it criticizes the "setup" out of the box, especially budget models. You're purchasing an instrument assembled to a set of "industry standards" which are almost never going to (and honestly shouldn't) perfectly match how you play, and you're probably going to suffer through some buzzy frets and weird action until you sit down with some hex wrenches and tinker for a few days. Granted, I purchased a guitar with 7 strings to tune it to AEACEAD so I knew a I was signing up for a higher level of tinkering than usual, but it plays like a dream and I love my new mahogany shovel.

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Good Starter

If you are looking for a low (money) commitment to see if 7 strings are for you, this is probably the best bang for the buck. Pin straight neck and overall great build quality. Frets were well dressed. The pickups are a little tubby but they do the job. Overall, the experience when dealing with Sweetwater was what made me smile the most. these folks are very accommodating and this… read more comes from after having a lackluster call to Guitar Center where there was a lack of product knowledge and a comment at the end of a getting nowhere call with the agent saying "good talk". Stick with Sweetwater folks and ask for Jared Kalish. Total pro!

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