You don't see many guitar reviews in these here parts. (Ibanez AEL Series Guitars)

Name: hillcrestsan

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Product:	Ibanez AEL Series Guitars
Date:	14/03/08 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks and sounds good

Disadvantages: Not a gibson but who gives a.....

Few people know that I am a rock star. Don't feel bad or uninformed about that, my wife doesn't even know it and she's heard me. I say 'I rock' and she says I'm something that rhymes with 'rock'. After 23 years plucking you've got to be good haven't you?

My head says yes but my audience votes with their feet. Sadly, since the age of 17, I haven't really got better. For this, I used to blame my instrument. It wasn't very good. Recently though, I have been more blessed and actually have a guitar I'm proud of. And then I play it and it all goes horribly wrong, but that, alas, is down to my ineptitude and I will have to live with it.

The guitar was a present from my beloved. This was the stuff of sacrifice to be fair. She can't stand the squeaky noises it makes as I slide my fingers expertly up the neck. Cool - sounds like slightly gynaecological porn. Anyway, I am banished to the garage to sing badly to a vague tune. Sacrifice it truly was. It would be on a par with me buying her a megaphone and a period for her birthday. My own suffering would be on a biblical scale.

The upshot is that I love my guitar. It would be my 'Desert island Disc'. I want to be buried with it. And that is genuinely for sentimental reasons.

In general
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I'm not a guitar buff. Some guitary folk talk about guitars in terms of 'bass tones' and 'rough bottom ends'. Oh wait, that's shepherds. They know about 'nuances' and detail. I don't and I suspect neither do you so I won't go on much about the sound. It's frankly a bit of a dull subject.

Ibanez are a well known brand in the guitar world. It's not up there with Fender or Gibson, more the middle range. But, they do have a positive reputation and some well known models.
The AEL range is their 'Acoustic Electric' range. In other words, they are, and look, like normal acoustic guitars but they have a pick-up inside the sound-box (the hollow bit) so you can plug them into an amp and annoy people wherever they hide.

My guitar
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My guitar is a gorgeous red (see pic). A warm cherry colour with mother-of-pearl inlay around the hole. This is matched on the head (the bit the strings attach to at the top) with white ivory nuts (If you turn my nuts, you affect the sound I make hahahahahahahaha). The bodywork is in maple and the neck is mahogany. All-in-all, it looked beautiful in the shop and I knew I wanted it straight away.

The sound
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Unplugged

To non-guitarists, I suspect all guitars sort of sound the same. When you are a guitarist you know as soon as you hit it that it is good or bad. You can just hear it. To me, this Ibanez sounded angelic. Remember, I have little pedigree with good guitars and I've always played whatever my dad had in the house. The first time I strummed this it was like have some scales lifted and I thought I was actually a good guitarist. Everything I did sounded a million times better than had gone before.

The action (height of the strings above the fret board), was low and I found playing it to be so easy. The strings resonated tunefully and the volume of the soundbox was full and boomy and yet plucking could be done as delicately as you like.

I have no ear, take the above with a pinch of salt but I loved it. Oh, and I do have an ear by the way.

Plugged in
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The Ibanez uses a Fishman Sonicore Pickup with Ibanez AEQ-SST Shape ShifterTM Preamp with Onboard Tuner. Nope, I don't know what it means either. Fishman Pickups are well known and much respected though. The top end of the body houses a compartment for the pre-amps battery and the electronics are modified by a basic equaliser with slide controls and a 'bass boost' type button.

The cable to the amp, as is normal, sticks into the socket on the bottom edge.

Beyond that it is hard to comment. It all works well but the actual sound is due to the amp more than the guitar and I'll save that for another day. Suffice to say that I love playing it loud and I rock.

The conclusion
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Ok, so I love my guitar and it is something very precious to me but is it actually, in the cold light of day, any good. Well, I have played a few guitars in my time and this is certainly up there with the better ones. But I don't do detail and I know that there will be the experts out there who would pull it apart with ease. Most of us aren't such experts and want something that will make them look cool and sound half decent and this certainly does it for me. I will get a new guitar one day, but I'll never get rid of this one. I cart it to school every week to play in assembly so kids hero-worship me and my head gets bigger. I have dropped it, bashed it and generally abused it. It has chips and scratches galore but to me this makes it all the more loveable.

The details are here :

http://www.ibanez.com/acoustic/guitar.aspx?m=AE L20ETRS

Thanks for reading.
May also be on other review sites

Summary: It's the joy of my life.