Ibanez RG550

I'm not going to be specific in whether it's the original model or the 20th anniversary model, both had the same specs, other than the updated neck on the anniversary RG550 model, because of problems with the neck warping with the original model. So other than that, they're both the same guitar, which makes them both brilliant! I love this guitar, and I really want to get hold of one. It's the top of the range RG model, with all the top hardware. The other sublime feature about this guitar is that awesome paint job. The RG550 only came in three colours, Desert Yellow, Road Flare Red and Black, all of a matte finish, which took away the shine and made the guitars look fantastic on stage. There's a Paul Gilbert video on youtube introducing the RG550XX anniversary model (The XX signifies it's the anniversary model). He speaks about the power the original 550's had on stage, and how cool they looked back in the 80's, and how cool they still look today, even more so if you have an original RG550 with all that character, one of the early models, you're going to be the real envy of all your friends. Now, the travesty here is that the RG550 model has been discontinued a long time now, and the anniversary models are limited, but this should just increase your desire, if you can get hold of one of these, its value is only going to increase from the day you get it.


So lets talk about the defining features that made the original RG550 such a popular and fantastic guitar to play and own. The RG550 had a Basswood body, which made it very light, despite its size. Well how great is that? There's more guitar to own, without it weighing you down during live performances. This means they haven't had to compromise the looks of the 550 to make it play well and sound great. The Basswood gives a very unique tone, which made the RG550 so popular. I seem to drop his name a lot these days, but you can learn so much from him, Paul Gilbert uses a stock, off the shelf RG550 in the Road Flare Red, he used it for the whole of the Mr. Big reunion tour, it's the one with all the stickers on it, you've hopefully seen it before. Well when a top musician takes a stock instrument on tour and uses it regularly, you can clearly see it's a very good instrument. I'd certainly love to take one on a tour of the local area, aha.

The RG550 has a 5-piece wizard prestige bolt on neck, in maple, which looks fantastic with both the red and the yellow, personally I'm not a fan of black guitars in general, but whatever floats your boat. With the two really striking colours available, I couldn't imagine buying the black. I've mentioned before my preference for maple necks. From my perspective, they feel better, and they feel like they play a little quicker and smoother, but this again is only my personal preference, and despite this I don't actually own a guitar with a maple neck, because a lot of the time guitars with maple necks look a bit odd, but the RG550 really doesn't, not with the headstock that matches the body colour, it looks ace. The neck has 24 Jumbo frets, which is great, I always prefer to have 24, because it means you've got a whole octave on every string, rather than on a 22 where the last two notes are absent. The RG550 also has a Humbucker, Single, Humbucker combination, which combined with a 5-way pickup selector gives you great range and versatility. If you watch that Paul Gilbert 20th anniversary video, you'll see the quality and difference between each pickup combination. The pickups in the 550 are Ibanez pickups, the V1 in the neck, S1 in the middle and V2 in the bridge position. These are the top range of Ibanez pickups, but you may still want to change them out for DiMarzio's or EMG's as there are slightly better pickups out there, but not much better, the stock pickups are the best pickups Ibanez have to offer.

The RG550 also had the Edge Pro tremolo, which is fantastic and not to be confused with the Edge III Pro trem, which is prone to breakage and other problems. The Edge Pro is one of the finest trems Ibanez offer, a real sturdy and resolute tremolo. The RG550 also has a ultra thin carve on the back of the neck near the high frets to give easy access, this is what had to be addressed on the 20th anniversary models, but only a few original 550's suffered from warping, those that didn't are fantastic, and the anniversary models are beautiful and play perfectly.

This is one of the best RG models available, it's fantastic, it looks the part and plays the part, it has so much history behind it, and so much class, and is still a very sought after instrument today, which is constantly increasing in value. So what is your opinion on the RG550? Were you ever lucky enough to own one, or still do? Post some comments guys, what colour would you have this guitar in, what do you think of it? I hope you enjoyed the article, thanks.

Spear NF-Z

Right then, here we have the guitar I should of bought last time around, with hindsight. I'm now playing a lot of indie music, and this is a very indie looking guitar. To my eyes, it's a wonderful looking guitar, I love the Walnut/Mahogany body, naturally finished, which combined with the gold hardware looks fantastic. It looks like something Pete Doherty would play, which if you're in an indie band makes it top-notch. The pickups are standard Spear brand pickups, this could therefore cause a slight problem. The pickups look great because they're gold like the rest of the hardware, but if they don't sound good, you might want to switch them out, and then you'll have to find gold pickups to replace them with, too keep that fantastic look. The pickups could however be decent, combined with the guitar being a set-in neck, the sustain of this guitar should be very solid. It is also a semi-hollow body, which is fantastic, good versatility and great tone. That means it has the two swirls cut out of the body, which is just classic, like a Gibson ES or Paul Gilbert's PGM-301, I love this on guitars, I think it's really interesting and brings real class to the finished product.

The NF-Z offers you 2 volume controls, 2 tone controls and a 3-way pickup selector in the form of a toggle switch, giving you the ability to find the most accurate sounds and tones you want to create. Combined with a decent pair of pickups, this would be a brilliant guitar, for both looks and sound. Another thing I love about this guitar is the neck and the fret inlays. It's classic Les Paul, with those shiny Abalon Squares and it has 22 frets, which is standard. The gold machine heads also complete the hardware in the best possible fashion.

There are some little preferences I would've preferred if I designed the guitar. I like a whole guitar to fit together as one, so I like having the headstock the same colour as the body, and even the back of the neck if possible, unless you have something like a fender neck that is all maple. I know some people though really don't like having the back of the neck made of a body wood or painted. A lot of guitars don't have matching headstocks, but some do, and this is just a personal preference, the RG range from Ibanez is a good example, it has the best of both, and I think when you get an RG in a striking colour, with matching headstock it looks much better, unfortunately with my S470, the headstock doesn't match the body. With the spear, if the headstock was the same colour as the body, this guitar would look absolutely perfect, as it is, it's only 95% perfect, which still means I'd really love to own one. The NF-Z also has binding, like a Les Paul, this makes a guitar look a lot better in my opinion, it's like the icing on the cake.

This is a beautiful guitar, and should I start to take my indie playing into a band, it's a guitar I will be eager to acquire. Luckily, my local shop, Langdons is a Spear dealership. Spear make some guitars which are personal taste, but I believe this one is very universal, it's a classic design, it looks really classy and natural. So good people, do you love this guitar as much as I do? What do you think of all Spear Guitars? Please do leave comments, thanks!

Ibanez S470

So, here's a more hands on review of the Ibanez S470, why? Because it's my primary guitar, I've been playing it a long time now and know it well. I still love this guitar like the day I first bought it, because it does everything. I bought this guitar just after Christmas 08, and play it by the day, and it still plays like it did when it was new. I bought this guitar because of its range and versatility, I wanted to have all the most modern and technical features I could, so this was the only guitar that was in my price range and had all these things available to me. It cost me £380, which is its standard retail price here in the UK. So, what're all those features that make this guitar so great? Well, where to start... The S470 has a ZR tremolo (ZR stands for Zero Resistance). This is a recently developed tremolo from Ibanez, it's called a Zero Resistance tremolo because it runs on ball-bearings rather than a knife edge like the trems of past, such as the Ibanez Edge III Pro or a standard Floyd Rose. This gave it extra smoothness, tuning stability and reliability. The Edge III tremolo's are quite prone to breakage, search through the Ultimate Guitar forums or Jemsite and it probably won't take you any more than 5 minutes to find a thread about someone's broken Edge III trem. The Knife edge is how it sounds, the strings run on a sharp edge, this meant strings could also be easily broken by an overly vicious pull up on the whammy bar. The ball-bearings cancel this out, they run really smoothly, which also adds to the quality of the sound when using the trem for Vibrato or tricks. The ZR trem also has a stopping bar in it, which decreases the range of the Tremolo, in exchange for tuning stability. As a live musician, this was a great selling point for myself. One of the key facts about the ZR bridge, which I can confirm is true is that if you break a string, all the other strings will still remain perfectly in tune, which can be a savour in a live situation, and I can confirm, it really is! Now you may be thinking, well ok, but then I can't do some of those crazy divebombs and flutters, not true. That stopping bar in the ZR can be removed, which then makes the tremolo just like any other, you can start doing mad things with it, just be careful or your string bill might start costing the same as your gas and electricity bills.

Other major selling points? Well, the S470 has a Humbucker, Single, Humbucker pickup combination with a 5-way pickup selector. This gives you great range, for all styles of music, and can save you a fortune on pedals and effects. The bridge humbucker gives you a really raw heavy sound, but when you flick up to the neck pickup, you get a beautiful clean sound, it's like strumming an acoustic, it's wonderful. The pickups that come as standard are Ibanez Infinity pickups. Now I'm an honest guy, these pickups aren't great, and I would recommend changing them out for something like DiMarzio's or EMG's, when it comes to quality of parts, Ibanez perhaps aren't the finest ambassadors. The Infinity's are good for a beginner, or someone just stepping up to their second guitar, but if you're an experienced guitarist, who often plays live and loud, you may notice lots of noise at high volumes, which is far from ideal. Don't let this put you off though, changing pickups is very easy, and not really all that expensive if you're patient and do your research.

The S470 also has other things you'd expect, it has a Wizard II neck, which is great for soloing, it has shark tooth inlays, which look great. It has a locking nut, classic Ibanez headstock, volume and tone controls and 22 frets. The last major selling point of this guitar from my perspective was how thin and light it was, yet how despite this, it doesn't lose any tone or sustain. It's made from mahogany, so you still get that great thick tone, but it's very thin and light, which is great live, you come off stage at the end of a gig with your shoulder still mobile. It also makes the guitar look very sleek. I consider this guitar like buying a new gadget, I saw it as the top gadget in the guitar market, like those more nerdy of you that like I want an iPhone because of all the extras it gives you over a normal mobile, all those things that you don't really need, but you want to have anyway, so once in a while, you can use them. This guitar has all the top range parts, and I wanted the most guitar I could get for my money, with the least limitations, and this was the best value item I could find, by quite a margin.


I've got the Cool Ice Blue finish, because it was slightly cheaper, but you can get a Blue Moon Burst or Red Viking finish, which is quilted maple top, and both look fantastic, looking back I should of saved up more and got one of those. I highly recommend this guitar, especially to anyone stepping up to their second guitar, it's fantastic and allows you to play all genres of music, it's the least restricting guitar on the market, in my opinion. It just has so much to it, allowing you to play anything.

So good people, what do you think of the Ibanez S470, or any guitar from the S Series range? Some of those prestiges look and play fantastic, if only I were richer. Leave comments and give opinions, I'd love to hear it, thanks.

Paul Gilbert: Technical Difficulties and PGM-30

Now then, I'm a huge fan of most of the shred virtuoso's we all know about, and they all have great songs. I've picked this one out specifically because I've been listening to it so much lately. I don't know what gets me about this song, there are much quicker and much more flashy instrumentals out there, but this one has that great riff. Take away a lot of the quick sweep work, and you have a fairly basic riff, so he's combined technical playing, with a solid riff that everyone can recognise, which really sits great with me. This is somewhat of a personal call out to Gilbert. I've watched many of his videos over the years, and the common trend amongst all of his videos is that he's a really decent down to earth guy, who is genuinely helpful. He's made some great songs, and all us players should be grateful for that when we eventually get good enough to try and learn them, I know that Technical Difficulties will be right up the top of my songs to learn chart (I should stick that chart on my wall).



I also love Gilbert's signature model. That Ibanez PGM-301, with the reverse headstock, and the body that looks like a semi-hollow body, it's wonderful, and really unique. It's also not a very flashy guitar, and I think guitars in white look great, combined with a maple neck, it looks so pure. I always wanted a Fender Stratocaster Standard in the Olympic White, with the maple neck, the model Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys was playing for a while, beautiful guitar, and not too flash either, would get you noticed on stage, but for being classy rather than eccentric. Paul's signature has a Humbucker, Single, Humbucker combination, which is fantastic, it's what I have on my Ibanez S470, if you can have that extra range and versatility, why not? That reverse headstock is definitely the stand out for me though, I must try a PGM-301 sometime, I think I might fall in love with it and not leave the shop until I've purchased it, with a ton of debt from using credit. That volume toggle that sits on the swirl of the hollow body patterns, that's very smart, I love that, and it also has the 5-way pickup selector in the middle, very clever, good man Paul.

So, what do you think of Gilbert and the PGM-301? Also, what songs make your top songs to learn someday list? I'd love to know guys, keep it all coming my way. :)

Timeless playing

That's not a reference to some video of a virtuoso playing an all-time classic, it's literally playing guitar as if time doesn't exist. So, it's almost 9am here in the UK, and I've been up since 2pm yesterday, so I've been up a long time. I haven't been sleeping right lately, and tonight I just gave up, decided I'll tire myself out, and get a great sleep tonight. One of the reasons I have been up all night is the reasoning behind this posted, my curiosity has been aroused. I've been up all night (Snap on the name of the first Razorlight album, good album that) because I lost track of time playing guitar, and my body didn't tell me I was tired, it must've been adrenaline from the shredding. One thing is feeling tired now though, well, 8 things, my fingers. They're torn, I literally bled from playing, I've been playing for about 9 hours straight, since about midnight, there's really nothing better to do in the early hours. Now, you're probably thinking, what an idiot! stop playing, get some sleep, you're not doing yourself any favours. Now why this is almost certainly true, I felt compelled to carry on playing. And this is where my curiosity was aroused, by two questions I have for all other guitarists.

The first question is, do you produce better material at night?
Right, I ask this, mainly on the evidence that I do. I can't explain it, maybe it's just being more relaxed or being completely undisturbed, but I always produce my best material at night. Be it riffs, solos or lyrics, I only churn out the good stuff past midnight. Many inspired nights, I have watched a video on youtube of one of my guitar idols, and then been compelled to play the night away, almost aimlessly improvising, and it always results in a riff or rythmn section that I'm really happy with. If I was happy to play with my own sanity through insomnia a bit more, I'd probably be able to write albums filled with good material (From a personal perspective anyway) unfortunately, I'm a man, and 1/3 of my routine of eat, sleep and guitar is sleep, so therefore, I need it. So, do any of you experience this composing release at the most ridiculous of hours? Or have specific times or places that are the only environment in which you can write?

The second is about your material, or what you're playing. When you find something that you think is really catchy, but you've been playing for hours, and you should probably sleep, or eat, or do whatever you need to do, do you continue and try and add more to it and make it a song, or do you put your guitar down and come back to it? I ask because the second is an option that I just can't take. Once I find something I like, I can't stop playing. This leads to why I've just played 9 hours straight and my fingers are bleeding (I can see a bit of blood on the D string). I found something that I really like, possibly the greatest riff I've ever stumbled upon, in my own playing days, I love it, and so I just couldn't stop playing it, perfecting it, adding more to it, making a song around it, and god knows what else, just to idolise this riff I'd made. When you're enjoying your playing, because you've found something great, guitar becomes like an addiction. Despite a glance at the clock, and seeing I should have been asleep long ago, I just couldn't stop playing. So, the second question to you guys, when you're onto the next big thing, do you find it impossible to stop playing?

Typing this blog, you can see I've now finally stopped playing, just out of sheer exhaustion, I can see this is gonna be a heavy day, but It has been worth it, I've just got down about 3 songs in the past 9 hours, that can all be perfected and then hopefully hit with some lyrics and performed.

Please do share your own experiences or any similarities to these questions. :)