I don't remember the last time I looked at Ibanez guitars. I remember I got so frustrated with their line-up ages ago cause they never had guitars that have maple fretboards. When they finally did, they released them with the old neck joint and I was just like whattt man

Anyway, I went to their website and checked out all the guitars and I still feel kind of disappointed. Is it just me? They don't have much options now and I really don't like it when guitars with maple fretboards have headstocks that match the body color (just my opinion at least). I'm happy they finally put in fixed bridge options for SOME guitars but the bridge looks like ass. Anything lower than the Edge Pro will never ever be stable. I don't know why they keep forcing it? Also, no maple fretboard options for the fixed bridge guitars.

I went to ibanezrules and I stared at photos of the AT100 and the PGM401 and they look so amazing. I wish they had those guitars on their normal line-up, even cheaper ones that aren't signature models.

That's when the lawsuit guitars come into play

Do you even play ibanez?

Uh. Yes? I don't understand why you asked that. I didn't say anything about playability I was just asking if it's just me who's disappointed with the lack of maple fretboard options, fixed bridges, and PGM401/AT100 looking guitars.

Well, most Ibanez fixed bridge guitars aren't of the RG shape. Most of the other lines are full of fixed bridges.

Oh right I didn't verify that sorry I guess I'm talking about the RGs mostly. Which reminds me, didn't they have a guitar that had a similar body to the S but with a regular trem/almost fixed bridge that had had split coilings and what not?

I think that was the SA series. Havent seen many of them over here. Only one i have played was a friends and i wasnt really impressed.

Their best guitars are definitely the artcore series and the AT-100. The old Petrucci model and the PGMs are great too. So many of their standard production and japanese made RGs/S series sound so thin and weak nowadays. I don't know why, but a lot of the models went from sounding warm and fat to sounding really thin and sterile. Their guitars built in the 90's were dope

Come to think of it, maple fretboards are pretty uncommon anyway.
Why the hell is that?

I think they must cost more money to utilise. Maple is a much harder wood than say rosewood, so setting the frets, etc. would be a much more arduous task.

At least that's what makes sense to me...

It depends on the model of guitar. Fender offers a decent amount of teles and strats with maple necks. Gibson recently started using baked maple on some of their cheaper models like the melody maker and the les paul studio 60's tribute models.

Maybe you have a point. I always thought it was the way you described, but with Ebony fretboards, anyway.

Are one piece maple fretboards (neck then fretboard combined without cutting a maple fretboard out separately) cheaper to make vs maple neck then cutting a separate rosewood? Just curious. I think the maple is more expensive argument could possibly be the reason why rosewood is preferred.

I would think a 1 piece neck and fret board would lead to other problems. You might not be able to use a truss rod. The 1 piece neck might make routing the channel and installation difficult.

Yep, I know that's definitely the case with ebony. It's meant to be a nightmare to fret ebony fretboards purely because it's such a hard (but brittle) wood.

One piece necks have the truss rod installed from the back.

That´s why I changed to MusicMan guitars...

They´re so awesome...