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| Photo by me |
This is the guitar I bought most recently, so it doesn't have that many stories associated with it. I think I got it about 3 years ago.
The best thing about this guitar is that my sons really like to play 'rock out' on it. I think it's good to have an instrument around that children are going to gravitate towards and want to play on, no matter how ridiculous it looks.
I've played a couple of shows with this guitar, and inevitably there were comments about Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, the famous guitar widdle-merchants and Ibanez endorsees. Such comments are entirely warranted.
I can't play complex widdly-widdly guitar featuring furious guitar solos at impossible speeds that defy reason. There's something quite gratifying about playing an instrument that looks totally unsuited to the style of music being played. I don't mind the Steve Vai and Joe Satriani comments.
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| Photo by White Ape |
I really like the colour orange, and the colour of this guitar complements orange really well. So, wearing an orange t-shirt with this guitar is a good look. Often it's really difficult to know what to wear with a guitar, which is why black is usually a good bet. Those expensive guitars with the fancy woods and brightly-coloured translucent finishes are really hard to dress with, in addition to being fucking hideous in their own right.
My Ibanez Gio is very cheap. I wouldn't have bought it from the internet solely on the basis of the colour without trying it out if it wasn't cheap. This guitar is also pretty shitty, in addition to being cheap. Not all cheap guitars are shitty.
The hardware (switches, tuning machines, volume and tone controls) is low quality and the humbucker pickups don't really have any character, although they are fairly loud which is something. The input jack is functional but slightly broken and having opened the guitar up it's clear that is a result of poor workmanship when it was being put together.
The neck is fine though. It is flat and slim and actually rather comfortable to play. All in all, I think the neck is the most important thing in a guitar.
Apart from wanting a radical shred machine to go along with the other guitars I own, I thought that the bright blue / green colour would add 'mojo' to the album that my band was writing at the time that I bought it. The album was about swimming, and I thought the vague evocation of water would add a certain something to the record via the writing process. Reflecting on it, this is one of the most idiotic things I've ever done. I don't know if the approach worked, but I do know that I didn't play this guitar on that record at all, because it is a bit rubbish and when you're in a recording studio you need to play your best things because time and money are tight and you shouldn't mess about.
Despite this, I am still very fond of this guitar and I play it regularly. I could always have the cheap bits upgraded, after all.
