Ibanez Artstar AS113 Brown Sunburst Semi-Acoustic Guitar with Case

I've been looking for a decent semi hollow for a while and had done a fair amount of research. I'd have been happy with a number of guitars on my shortlist but this one was available at an extremely fair price especially when compared with other sites. It was about £620 or so when the best price I'd seen elsewhere for a new one was about £810. There was a discount offer of 7% too and a little more off because this was B Stock.

One mandatory requirement was a hard case being included. From what I can see, these cost about £150 new so it made no sense to me to look for a second hand AS 113 or similar especially when many come without cases.

The top of the range version of this guitar is about £2000 and IMO, this has all that you need. It's got good pickups and the electrics are the same configuration. It appears to be quite difficult to pin point the differences with the pickups used in the various models but for me that's of zero relevance because you go by what you hear from the instrument not what you read.

I prefer the style of the smaller headstock of the JS models but this one doesn't look as bulky as I thought and it's the one used on my of the Ibanez models.

The hardware looks fine but I can see that this is one area where economies have been made but that's not the end of the world if they tarnish. The tuners are also economy versions but they work fine and far better than the ones on my 1975 Strat.

The neck, finish, binding, frets etc are all spot on. It's a different neck profile from my other guitars but all of them are different so it's never bothered me that much but you will need to check one out because players have their own preferences.

The one problem I did have was with the nut. There was clearly an issue with it related to the tuning. I raised this with the service desk and we agreed that it was ok to polish the slots and it would not invalidate the warranty. This only needed a few passes with 800 grit paper.

The intonation needed adjusting but that's nearly always the case.

All in all, a good choice. At this price, I have a 3 year warranty and could get most of my money back if I later decided to go for a higher end model.

Well finished, good neck, good pickups. The action is a little high, but I will adjust that. Strings are 10 - 52, I may change these to 10- 46

Zeer goede gitaar die kan tippen in hogere prijsklasse ! Mijn eerste gitaar die flageolets juist speelt op de V positie , top en veelzijdig in gebruik