@@eduardolorandi3628 The issue is that it just doesn't fit his high-gain skillset, so in a way, it's a skill issue. "Skill" as a concept isn't a linear or one-dimensional thing, and so he's clearly good at guitar in general but it's just a mismatch of attributes between him and the guitar but yea when people usually say 'skill issue', it's usually not that deep loll
@@eduardolorandi3628 Maybe they're saying that he doesn't have the skills to EQ the pickups to his liking. The truth is, just by using parametric EQ, you can make humbuckers sound like single coils, and vice versa. The main thing you can't fix via EQ is articulation and string separation.
they literally make an identical guitar in both HH and HSS lol. Different finishes and the HH has no pickguard but that's it. Like hwy would he not buy one of those
Pretty much. But I think according to the tones I hear in the video, cleans, high gain, driven sounds are all good. To me personally I'd get evertune bridge.
I mean this is literally the embodiment of how different guitars excel in specific genres. Trying to find something that fits all of your musical interests will usually end up with you sounding "okay" in multiple styles but sometimes that isn't good enough for most players. This is why I literally just have different guitars-to fit the context of what it is I'm trying to play.
That's me. I tried to make my guitar "do it all" with using split coil humbuckers. It was close but never sounded exactly like a true single coil. Then later a standard strat solved all my sound chasing problems
wtf. I thought I was watching a channel with at least 300k subs until i checked. Keep up the great work man. Looking forward to see and hear more from you! :D
Additional review for Q54. Basically ichika guitar with a HSS instead of SSS. Love the tuners. Amazing tuning stability compared to my 2000$ custom. Qc is abit off tho have a rounded screw in one of my pickups. Felt like i got a b stock for full price
It’s interesting that you used the kadinja guitarist as an example of a single coil tone, but in the example video you ran he was playing through the humbucker. There is now a 7 string version with SSH pickup configuration. And all of the Ibanez quest series with 2 humbckers all have split/ single coil options thanks to the dynamix switch.
Thank you man! It's really good to see a review. I wanted to buy that guitar but it's way to special. You have to have the style for this guitar. And now I have an Ibanez AZES40. I would have regretted the ICHI10. So as an really good hint, take a closer look on that AZES40. Definitely not only the price but even more because you have the HSS then you have a 5-way and the knob to set different pick up styles with the hum. Then you have a twangy like Tele, a strat sound goes into Hendrix, srv vibe sounds, you have like a John Mayer voice and so much more.. And that's about 350$ ✌🏻
guitar youtubers need more attention man, like this video was so well made i thought for sure he had atleast hundreds of thousands of subs, keep it up man
I have two of these. Easily the best guitar for live shows ive ever seen. To be fair, i dont play metal. Clean tones, some funk, some classic rock type stuff. It survives road life better than my other guitars have, holds tune, easy on my back, tone options are great.
Nice vid. Things I would add to this video would be: the first version of the Quest series and ICHI10 uses Jescar EVO Gold frets, hence the gold colour. The current version, let's just called it version 2, uses stainless steel frets. Reason being, Jescar stop producing EVO Gold frets, because the material/metal manufacturer no longer produce that particular metal, from what I could gather. Ibanez didn't announced the change, so they just quietly changed it late last year. I'm a big fan of this series, and have been following it and have checking a lot of videos about them, ever since it was announced and released. Just don't have the cash to get them, yet. 😅
@@kessensuru IIRC, it was from Phillip McKnight's Kiesel factory tour, Jeff Kiesel mentioned it in the video. A quick Google search showed results from as early as February 2023.
As for how I know about the change on the Quest series, well, I always have a tab of the Q54 opened on my browser (for like 2 years now), just to stare at it, like the broke boi I am. And as soon as I heard about the Jescar EVO Gold discontinuation thingy, I refresh the tab once a day since and sure enough, the image of the guitar changed and the specs entry for the frets changed, from "Jumbo Jescar EVO Gold" to "Jumbo Stainless Steel"
Nice review. Actually, you might want to slap some hotrails if you haven't sent it back yet. That may change your mind about returning it if you want that humbucker tone. Did the same with my strat and I have no intention of routing the wood so yeah.
Thank you. Had actually thought about slapping on a hotrail but I ended up returning because I wanted a tremolo too. If I could afford both guitars would definitely keep both tho
@@kessensuru fair enough. Yeah, this guitar isn't exactly cheap I reckon. It looks really cool too, but if it's just missing the things you need, probably best to have it sent back.
I did about a year of research before I bought my guitar. It didn't have a humbucker I wanted, so I bought it seperately and had it installed. You've got learn to figure things out in order to be a great guitarist. This is a skills and research issue.
for sure, i think that every musician could benefit from a strat or a tele lying around. I've used mine for clean tones and leads on top of stuff that I've tracked with regular guitars
i dont mean to sound condescending but ichika doesnt play high gain stuff much. its made for his play style not yours that doesnt seem like an issue with the guitar but with the player. idk maybe im out of line here
if you don't want it can I have it? lol Yeah it's a tone chasing issue. Honestly, I suck at it too. I bought vintage tele japan pickups to get a sound I was looking for and I ended up getting said sound out of a $50 squire somehow lmao I'm sure you can get the sound you're looking for but it's probably some mic placement or something that the example you gave did.
One pain point for me that I forgot to mention was there are more single coil sounds that I like more than humbucker sounds. However the R1 pickups not only cannot do high gain well, they also do not do single coil well. Its very nitpicky from my side but thats how I feel
@@kessensuru For like $1000 you deserve to be nitpicky. Still, I liked the sounds you displayed with it so this might be something worth picking up for me. Great video!
hey Friend! thanks a lot for the review! please don't forget that you can change your bridge single coil for a humbucker that is single coil size. pretty easy switch. you can also add a coil split. I had a tele with a hot rail. it sounded great on metal, but I've switched to vintage style single and was even happier because of how unique it sounded. but yeah, strat bridge pickup can be tricky to dial, so the easiest option would be to just change the bridge pickup
Just put two Seymour Duncan Hot Rails on it and you are good to go. You can even remove the midle pick up for some Fenderesque Mustang look, it will look sick. If you want to keep the single coil looks and still get hum canceling, try the Yngwie Malmsteen pick ups, also from Seymour Duncan.
Damn, I would love to see a review about the ichi100(his talman sig) because there are also no proper reviews on this guitar either. I think even less than for the ichi10. Great video!!
I considered this guitar, but purchased the Q52. It has 10 pickup settings vs the Nito's 8 and has dual humbuckers. My only gripe about the Q series is the lack of a floating trem option, Thankfully, I have my Jacksons with FR. I plan to sell my Q52 because of the lack of a trem. My hardtail, dual humbucker of choice are my Ibanez PS (I have two PS60, one PS120 and a PS10). Ibanez really missed the mark with the Q series, they're great guitars but need a floating trem IMO.
Great video, man! It's kinda odd going from humbuckers to single coils when you play high gain stuff, but I really dig the way high gain amps interect with single coils and I got used to it really quick. If I'm not mistaken, AJ Rebollo from Issues uses a lot and sounds great. How long have you been playing this Ibanez? Hope the single coils can win you over.
Single coils work better in low tunings for high gain stuff imo. But then I'm running Rio Grande humbucker sized P90s in a strat tuned to drop B mostly. It's chunky. P90 style pickups are brutal actually. They are often more powerful than a lot of humbuckers, without the high end loss you get with humbuckers.
there are modles of the q series with 2 humbuckers (like the QX52-MGM which is a silver colour) and ones with 2 single coils and 1 humbucker. So I would look into those if you want a headless ibanez with different pickups.
Hahahah that was the goal.. for guitarists with well over 5 guitars with different purposes each I think this guitar would be a good buy. Like just specifically for JRPG ahh music
Hey Kessen! New sub here. I thought I might make a recommendation or two since it seems like, other than the bridge pickup, you're a fan of almost everything the guitar has to offer: 1.) HSS is, to me, the best and most versatile pickup setup there is. If it were me, I'd swap the bridge pickup for a single-coil sized humbucker. I had the same issue with the single coil when I got my first strat. In my case, I chunked the bridge pickup for a DiMarzio Tone Zone S. DiMarzio in general makes some amazing pickups in this config, you've got lots of options to choose from, but the Tone Zone S seemed to be the best pickup for the job as a high gain player. Also, aesthetically, you can get them in cool metal platings like silver, which won't mess with the look like a white Duncan JB Jr might. My Tone Zone is all gold plated with gold rails and sounds amazing. 2.) If you do this, make sure you switch the pots to 500k to get the most out of it. In the beginning, I was using 250k at first and it sounded kinda muddy. I wasn't sure if I even liked the Tone Zone until I made this change. If you wanna get into the weeds about wiring, you can buy a stacked pot (or get nerdier and use resistors on a single pot) so that the humbucker "sees" a 500k pot while the single coils "see" 250k. 3.) With wiring, you might be able to repurpose the Dynamix-8 (for 3 singles) to a Dynamix-9 (for HSS), but I just don't know enough about the switch to say for sure. If you can, do it! I've always loved the Dynamix options. If you can't, I'd probably wire it where one pot is a push pull to split the humbucker, auto-split in position 2 for bridge-single/middle, and then repurpose the dynamix switch hole for a regular toggle switch as a "neck-on" switch where you can turn the neck pickup on in any position, since the bridge-split/neck combo is really good for math rock type tele sounds. As a high gain player, you could also turn the other knob into a push-pull for the "neck" on switch and wire the toggle as a blower switch where your pickups ignore the controls entirely (even when the knobs are at 10, they still affect the sound just a little bit) and it's basically like turning to 11. 4.) Lastly, I always recommend replacing your standard input jack with a PureTone multi-contact jack. Not for any reason other than I just think the feeling of it clicking into place is really satisfying. Anyway, you didn't ask for any of this, but as a tech, these would be my recommendations if you brought it to me and asked what I could do to make you love this guitar.
These are some gold advice! Appreciate it a lot. I have now moved on to an Ibanez AZ which was the versatility I needed on the guitar all along. Though the headless still definitely beats it in terms of looks 😂
i knew it this guitar doesn't fit for high gain when i listen to ichika in his Demo Vid. But it would be really work for Japanese Style Alternative Rock that using lit overdrive and funky-like wet sound.
Swap the bridge pickup to a mini humbucker and you are good to go man! Keep the switchero thing to split it if you want the single coil sound at some point.
Nice video, great production quality. I think your main mistake was expected to get pristine metal tones with an SSS setup. I have the HSS version of that guitar and its sounds so good with gain. It would surprise me if you could get really good rhythm tones, but for lead tones doing neck and middle split gets some great results. With that said, the high gain tone that you showed sounds decent, it needs some EQ (as you mentioned) and probably needs to be adjusted in terms of gain, drive and distortion, based on the difference between the pickups that you made the present with and the SSS pickups. The upshot is that if you really hate the guitar, they still resell for ~$900 so you're not entirely out of pocket.
I got the Q54 this past month, absolutely love it. HH on the QX model if I’m not mistaken but its a great guitar especially for the price, smokes my 2k fender I’ve had for about 5 years.
im sorry m8, but when you played those compressed cleans with tapping parts it sounded EXACTLY like ichika's tone. and he's tone is just awful. don't know what you expected lol. I think there are a lot of better single coil options out there
Kadinja sounds so great with their tone cuz Vola guitars use in house pickups which are just amazing. Theyre made in Japan and destroy Ibanez prestige pricing. Vola > Ibanez all day long
Why just not change pickups for what you like? That is singles, they couldn't do what you want from them. They are even not P90 with their versatility..
lol few years ago i did the same thing i don't know what's going on in my head, but I just bought a strat and search for tutorials about how to play metal on single coil 🤣🤣
You do know when you showed the clip example of what you meant with the red tele style guitar he was using his humbucker and not his single coils right?
Might be a great guitar but maybe not match for you, that’s just how it goes sometimes. I played one of this guitars at a shop and noticed the pickups are low output and articulate. Before you sell it, you should try it in bridge single coil with a boost pedal like a Boss SD1. You can get a lot of that output back with a boost and it sounds better than high output pickups imo. Good playing!
Didn't like video but love video style. Well done actually! Defo got a sub out of me, can't wait to see what kind of videos you make in the future!!! :)
bro, gear doesnt matter this much, just change your setup. skill issue. a lot of the best music ever was made in shit gear, it doesnt matter, what matters is how you use it.
It might just be that your presets didn't suit those pickups. You probably could have installed a stacked humbucker in the bridge and it would have been a more versatile instrument. I think that guitar is meant to be more or a modern fusion-y take on a vintage stratocaster, and not necessarily a metal guitar, at least not in the stock configuration. Nice video though!
bro try with other amps.. if you want hi gain tones with single coils you need more mids and need more compresion!... :D meabe messa type amp can be great :D (sorry for my inglish jajaja im from venezuela XD)
Roll your treble on the guitar back and that will help. I would also turn the bass and mid up a bit on the amp/modeler/plugin. Roll presence back as well.
Definitely “bad at tone chasing”. Ichika has particularly warm single coils, which is better for high gain tones. That whole “plays a Gibson and it’s too muddy” thing tells me everything. You can get tonal relatively on any pickup set. You’re either applying too much or too little gain, basically.
Thats totally right, I was in the same mindset before getting the guitar and of course its possible, but I don't wanna work extra hard to get tones I want :)
I don't understand how no one in this comment section can comprehend that the dude already acknowledged it's not his kind of guitar. He's returning it anyways. He made an honest review around the build and quality of the guitar and acknowledged its use for other styles, and just said that it wasn't for him. Ya'll gotta chill.
Just put a Seymour Duncan JB junior pickup in the bridge position. Boom problem solved....now you have a high gain friendly headless guitar. I swap out the bridge pickup in most of my guitars because I am a pickup snob.
"it's stays in tune really well. i'm not shilling, but it does." okay? no one thought you were until now. but, pro tip: you can say nice things about products without being paid by them. it's allowed.
So why didn't you get my Q-52, it's the humbucker version and sounds so good, articulate, powerful, great for either Jazz, Metal, everything. It's the best guitar ever for the ease of playing. Older models have Jascar gold frets, newer ones have Stainless frets. Ohh just saw the cat so cute!
I bought the same guitar and I composed a couple of songs which sound Ichika, but then I ventured into some heavier stuff and this guitar isn't the best for it. I used to live in a tight college dorm and wanted something light, and this guitar is just perfect in that regard because it's headless, but it's a pain to change the tuning oreven just tuning an out of tune guitar. I wouldn't suggest having this as your only guitar, but if you have a humbucker for heavy stuff, then this is a great option for clean stuff
If you didn't sell this guitar yet, I'd try raising the height of the bridge pick up, might get a little thicker of a tone for playing heavier stuff. If you want a single coil sound that works well with metal, get yourself a telecaster!
Skill issue. Literally.
What do you mean by that? That he's not skilled enough for the guitar lol?
@@eduardolorandi3628 The issue is that it just doesn't fit his high-gain skillset, so in a way, it's a skill issue. "Skill" as a concept isn't a linear or one-dimensional thing, and so he's clearly good at guitar in general but it's just a mismatch of attributes between him and the guitar
but yea when people usually say 'skill issue', it's usually not that deep loll
@@jonathanyun7817 That's not what skill issue means. It just means the user doesn't have enough skills to use something properly.
@@eduardolorandi3628 Maybe they're saying that he doesn't have the skills to EQ the pickups to his liking.
The truth is, just by using parametric EQ, you can make humbuckers sound like single coils, and vice versa. The main thing you can't fix via EQ is articulation and string separation.
😂
I'd assumed that it didn't play well, but it's just a guy that wanted humbuckers from a single coil
lmao Im crying
they literally make an identical guitar in both HH and HSS lol. Different finishes and the HH has no pickguard but that's it. Like hwy would he not buy one of those
Wants humbucker tone, didn't buy humbucker guitar.
I think I can see the issue.
😂😂😂
He even mentioned Pierre Danel who uses HSS pickup config 😂
Pretty much. But I think according to the tones I hear in the video, cleans, high gain, driven sounds are all good. To me personally I'd get evertune bridge.
Oh no! Single coils sound like single coils... what we gonna do? 😲
I mean this is literally the embodiment of how different guitars excel in specific genres. Trying to find something that fits all of your musical interests will usually end up with you sounding "okay" in multiple styles but sometimes that isn't good enough for most players. This is why I literally just have different guitars-to fit the context of what it is I'm trying to play.
That's me. I tried to make my guitar "do it all" with using split coil humbuckers. It was close but never sounded exactly like a true single coil. Then later a standard strat solved all my sound chasing problems
The tones are pretty good in the video.
“This basketball doesn’t work well as a soccer ball”
wtf. I thought I was watching a channel with at least 300k subs until i checked. Keep up the great work man. Looking forward to see and hear more from you! :D
Me too lol
Made my whole year man! Ill make sure to keep up the 300k facade till I actually do have 300k 😎
ngl same xD
SAME!
Same over here as well xD
if you don't like single coils then get a guitar with humbuckers??? the fuck do you expect
Additional review for Q54. Basically ichika guitar with a HSS instead of SSS. Love the tuners. Amazing tuning stability compared to my 2000$ custom. Qc is abit off tho have a rounded screw in one of my pickups. Felt like i got a b stock for full price
"Felt like i got a b stock for full price" should be Ibanez's tagline
@@thelongvirtuesignal8551 LOL
That's why you should get the made in Japan versions, not Indonesia.
love the time i used to honestly be able l to say "just get an ltd at that price point"@@MelkMan7
@@MelkMan7 no choice for me because i live in singapore. Its literally right next to indonesia so it only makes sense to get it from there
It’s interesting that you used the kadinja guitarist as an example of a single coil tone, but in the example video you ran he was playing through the humbucker.
There is now a 7 string version with SSH pickup configuration. And all of the Ibanez quest series with 2 humbckers all have split/ single coil options thanks to the dynamix switch.
I might be wrong but it sounds to me like a coil split! Great sound nonetheless.. and his new sig Vola guitars are the best looking 7s ive ever seen
@@kessensuruI suppose he could have just left it at the first position for the video footage.
@@kessensuruto be fair, coil splits and single coils do not sound the same….
Thank you man! It's really good to see a review.
I wanted to buy that guitar but it's way to special. You have to have the style for this guitar. And now I have an Ibanez AZES40.
I would have regretted the ICHI10.
So as an really good hint, take a closer look on that AZES40. Definitely not only the price but even more because you have the HSS then you have a 5-way and the knob to set different pick up styles with the hum.
Then you have a twangy like Tele, a strat sound goes into Hendrix, srv vibe sounds, you have like a John Mayer voice and so much more.. And that's about 350$ ✌🏻
guitar youtubers need more attention man, like this video was so well made i thought for sure he had atleast hundreds of thousands of subs, keep it up man
I have two of these. Easily the best guitar for live shows ive ever seen. To be fair, i dont play metal. Clean tones, some funk, some classic rock type stuff.
It survives road life better than my other guitars have, holds tune, easy on my back, tone options are great.
my brother in christ you need humbuckers
Nice vid. Things I would add to this video would be: the first version of the Quest series and ICHI10 uses Jescar EVO Gold frets, hence the gold colour. The current version, let's just called it version 2, uses stainless steel frets. Reason being, Jescar stop producing EVO Gold frets, because the material/metal manufacturer no longer produce that particular metal, from what I could gather. Ibanez didn't announced the change, so they just quietly changed it late last year.
I'm a big fan of this series, and have been following it and have checking a lot of videos about them, ever since it was announced and released. Just don't have the cash to get them, yet. 😅
yooo legend! where did u hear about this?
@@kessensuru IIRC, it was from Phillip McKnight's Kiesel factory tour, Jeff Kiesel mentioned it in the video.
A quick Google search showed results from as early as February 2023.
As for how I know about the change on the Quest series, well, I always have a tab of the Q54 opened on my browser (for like 2 years now), just to stare at it, like the broke boi I am.
And as soon as I heard about the Jescar EVO Gold discontinuation thingy, I refresh the tab once a day since and sure enough, the image of the guitar changed and the specs entry for the frets changed, from "Jumbo Jescar EVO Gold" to "Jumbo Stainless Steel"
Nice review. Actually, you might want to slap some hotrails if you haven't sent it back yet. That may change your mind about returning it if you want that humbucker tone. Did the same with my strat and I have no intention of routing the wood so yeah.
Thank you. Had actually thought about slapping on a hotrail but I ended up returning because I wanted a tremolo too. If I could afford both guitars would definitely keep both tho
@@kessensuru fair enough. Yeah, this guitar isn't exactly cheap I reckon. It looks really cool too, but if it's just missing the things you need, probably best to have it sent back.
I did about a year of research before I bought my guitar. It didn't have a humbucker I wanted, so I bought it seperately and had it installed. You've got learn to figure things out in order to be a great guitarist. This is a skills and research issue.
I'm sorry man, you play metal and bought a strat. You've been silly.
Man idk how you haven't blown up keep doing what you are doing man
i know you said youre not a collector but maybe keeping a guitar like this around might inspire you to write something different from time to time.
for sure, i think that every musician could benefit from a strat or a tele lying around. I've used mine for clean tones and leads on top of stuff that I've tracked with regular guitars
You can also install a Seymour Duncan hot rail in the bridge
The guitar does not let you play anything that lasts over 15s HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
i dont mean to sound condescending but ichika doesnt play high gain stuff much. its made for his play style not yours that doesnt seem like an issue with the guitar but with the player. idk maybe im out of line here
if you don't want it can I have it? lol
Yeah it's a tone chasing issue. Honestly, I suck at it too.
I bought vintage tele japan pickups to get a sound I was looking for and I ended up getting said sound out of a $50 squire somehow lmao
I'm sure you can get the sound you're looking for but it's probably some mic placement or something that the example you gave did.
One pain point for me that I forgot to mention was there are more single coil sounds that I like more than humbucker sounds. However the R1 pickups not only cannot do high gain well, they also do not do single coil well. Its very nitpicky from my side but thats how I feel
@@kessensuru For like $1000 you deserve to be nitpicky. Still, I liked the sounds you displayed with it so this might be something worth picking up for me.
Great video!
@@kessensuru would have loved to hear more about this, how did you find the R1s as single coils lacking?
Its so weird to watch the sub count with a video with this technical quality
hey Friend! thanks a lot for the review! please don't forget that you can change your bridge single coil for a humbucker that is single coil size. pretty easy switch. you can also add a coil split. I had a tele with a hot rail. it sounded great on metal, but I've switched to vintage style single and was even happier because of how unique it sounded. but yeah, strat bridge pickup can be tricky to dial, so the easiest option would be to just change the bridge pickup
I think I totally wouldve been happy with this switch.. But I ended up getting an AZ because of the trem :)
that's cool too. congrats on the new guitar@@kessensuru
Just put two Seymour Duncan Hot Rails on it and you are good to go. You can even remove the midle pick up for some Fenderesque Mustang look, it will look sick. If you want to keep the single coil looks and still get hum canceling, try the Yngwie Malmsteen pick ups, also from Seymour Duncan.
If you don't like it, you can send it to me😁 i'm just joking, it's a beautiful and amazing guitar, but it's okay to dislike it
Damn, I would love to see a review about the ichi100(his talman sig) because there are also no proper reviews on this guitar either. I think even less than for the ichi10. Great video!!
I considered this guitar, but purchased the Q52. It has 10 pickup settings vs the Nito's 8 and has dual humbuckers.
My only gripe about the Q series is the lack of a floating trem option, Thankfully, I have my Jacksons with FR. I plan to sell my Q52 because of the lack of a trem. My hardtail, dual humbucker of choice are my Ibanez PS (I have two PS60, one PS120 and a PS10).
Ibanez really missed the mark with the Q series, they're great guitars but need a floating trem IMO.
Completely agree - ended up with an AZ after this vid. Its a bad decision on my part judging by looks but if I could keep both I would definitely
Great video, man! It's kinda odd going from humbuckers to single coils when you play high gain stuff, but I really dig the way high gain amps interect with single coils and I got used to it really quick. If I'm not mistaken, AJ Rebollo from Issues uses a lot and sounds great. How long have you been playing this Ibanez? Hope the single coils can win you over.
Yeah I agree. I find that compressors help a ton. It gets you closer to the dynamics of a higher output pickup.
Thanks dude! Don’t get me wrong, I was able to get a decent sound out of em as you heard in the vid.. but I guess my taste was too specific
also single coils sound way different (and better in my opinion) with fuzzes
Single coils work better in low tunings for high gain stuff imo. But then I'm running Rio Grande humbucker sized P90s in a strat tuned to drop B mostly. It's chunky.
P90 style pickups are brutal actually. They are often more powerful than a lot of humbuckers, without the high end loss you get with humbuckers.
there are modles of the q series with 2 humbuckers (like the QX52-MGM which is a silver colour) and ones with 2 single coils and 1 humbucker. So I would look into those if you want a headless ibanez with different pickups.
only useful if you are a master at final fantasy ahh music lol
Hahahah that was the goal.. for guitarists with well over 5 guitars with different purposes each I think this guitar would be a good buy. Like just specifically for JRPG ahh music
Someone needs to spend more time Practicing.
You can try to roll off the tone a little bit, might help. Else, replace with a mini humbucker in the bridge.
give it to me then😅
Hey Kessen! New sub here. I thought I might make a recommendation or two since it seems like, other than the bridge pickup, you're a fan of almost everything the guitar has to offer:
1.) HSS is, to me, the best and most versatile pickup setup there is. If it were me, I'd swap the bridge pickup for a single-coil sized humbucker. I had the same issue with the single coil when I got my first strat. In my case, I chunked the bridge pickup for a DiMarzio Tone Zone S. DiMarzio in general makes some amazing pickups in this config, you've got lots of options to choose from, but the Tone Zone S seemed to be the best pickup for the job as a high gain player. Also, aesthetically, you can get them in cool metal platings like silver, which won't mess with the look like a white Duncan JB Jr might. My Tone Zone is all gold plated with gold rails and sounds amazing.
2.) If you do this, make sure you switch the pots to 500k to get the most out of it. In the beginning, I was using 250k at first and it sounded kinda muddy. I wasn't sure if I even liked the Tone Zone until I made this change. If you wanna get into the weeds about wiring, you can buy a stacked pot (or get nerdier and use resistors on a single pot) so that the humbucker "sees" a 500k pot while the single coils "see" 250k.
3.) With wiring, you might be able to repurpose the Dynamix-8 (for 3 singles) to a Dynamix-9 (for HSS), but I just don't know enough about the switch to say for sure. If you can, do it! I've always loved the Dynamix options. If you can't, I'd probably wire it where one pot is a push pull to split the humbucker, auto-split in position 2 for bridge-single/middle, and then repurpose the dynamix switch hole for a regular toggle switch as a "neck-on" switch where you can turn the neck pickup on in any position, since the bridge-split/neck combo is really good for math rock type tele sounds. As a high gain player, you could also turn the other knob into a push-pull for the "neck" on switch and wire the toggle as a blower switch where your pickups ignore the controls entirely (even when the knobs are at 10, they still affect the sound just a little bit) and it's basically like turning to 11.
4.) Lastly, I always recommend replacing your standard input jack with a PureTone multi-contact jack. Not for any reason other than I just think the feeling of it clicking into place is really satisfying.
Anyway, you didn't ask for any of this, but as a tech, these would be my recommendations if you brought it to me and asked what I could do to make you love this guitar.
These are some gold advice! Appreciate it a lot. I have now moved on to an Ibanez AZ which was the versatility I needed on the guitar all along. Though the headless still definitely beats it in terms of looks 😂
i knew it
this guitar doesn't fit for high gain when i listen to ichika in his Demo Vid. But it would be really work for Japanese Style Alternative Rock that using lit overdrive and funky-like wet sound.
Swap the bridge pickup to a mini humbucker and you are good to go man! Keep the switchero thing to split it if you want the single coil sound at some point.
Nice video, great production quality. I think your main mistake was expected to get pristine metal tones with an SSS setup. I have the HSS version of that guitar and its sounds so good with gain. It would surprise me if you could get really good rhythm tones, but for lead tones doing neck and middle split gets some great results. With that said, the high gain tone that you showed sounds decent, it needs some EQ (as you mentioned) and probably needs to be adjusted in terms of gain, drive and distortion, based on the difference between the pickups that you made the present with and the SSS pickups. The upshot is that if you really hate the guitar, they still resell for ~$900 so you're not entirely out of pocket.
I got the Q54 this past month, absolutely love it. HH on the QX model if I’m not mistaken but its a great guitar especially for the price, smokes my 2k fender I’ve had for about 5 years.
im sorry m8, but when you played those compressed cleans with tapping parts it sounded EXACTLY like ichika's tone. and he's tone is just awful. don't know what you expected lol. I think there are a lot of better single coil options out there
Honestly It seems a lot more versatile than i thought lol
Kind of a lame video title for you being the problem. You can see it has single coils. You can’t be disappointed by expecting the impossible.
+ 1 subscriber, Good Playing man😎
Kadinja sounds so great with their tone cuz Vola guitars use in house pickups which are just amazing.
Theyre made in Japan and destroy Ibanez prestige pricing.
Vola > Ibanez all day long
Really high quality videos man!! Keep making more!!!
Why just not change pickups for what you like?
That is singles, they couldn't do what you want from them.
They are even not P90 with their versatility..
lol few years ago i did the same thing i don't know what's going on in my head, but I just bought a strat and search for tutorials about how to play metal on single coil 🤣🤣
jackson slsmg soloist for 20ish year love it, so fluid and light
seymour duncan invader distortion necktru
(and i use 0$ disto lol)
Throw some stacked pups in that bad boy lol. It looks like a nice guitar, so it might be worth it?... Those frets look killer- good luck.
You do know when you showed the clip example of what you meant with the red tele style guitar he was using his humbucker and not his single coils right?
Might be a great guitar but maybe not match for you, that’s just how it goes sometimes. I played one of this guitars at a shop and noticed the pickups are low output and articulate. Before you sell it, you should try it in bridge single coil with a boost pedal like a Boss SD1. You can get a lot of that output back with a boost and it sounds better than high output pickups imo. Good playing!
Just put a hot rail single coil size or another single coil size humbucker. Or emg single coils. Those ones are just low gain. Not hot.
Didn't like video but love video style. Well done actually! Defo got a sub out of me, can't wait to see what kind of videos you make in the future!!! :)
To buy this guitar being a metal guitarist. Idk but it was a bad decision from it's start. God luck with other instruments, thanks for the video
this could be why the Boden Essential was just announced
TBH you should've considered the HSS from the Q line up instead.
bro, gear doesnt matter this much, just change your setup. skill issue. a lot of the best music ever was made in shit gear, it doesnt matter, what matters is how you use it.
Bro, you plug into a computer. Just mess with plugins and sims until it sounds like whatever the hell you want it to.
Probably to late but why don't you keep it and learn more let the guitar tech you
It might just be that your presets didn't suit those pickups. You probably could have installed a stacked humbucker in the bridge and it would have been a more versatile instrument. I think that guitar is meant to be more or a modern fusion-y take on a vintage stratocaster, and not necessarily a metal guitar, at least not in the stock configuration. Nice video though!
This video is pretty stupid.. why would you expect single coil pickups to sound like humbuckers?
it's a different metal riff sound, it might really shine on certain riffs
just change the bridge pup with something like JB junior.
you need an elnico whatever it's called for the tone you're chasing because it has a high output
bro try with other amps.. if you want hi gain tones with single coils you need more mids and need more compresion!... :D meabe messa type amp can be great :D (sorry for my inglish jajaja im from venezuela XD)
Roll your treble on the guitar back and that will help. I would also turn the bass and mid up a bit on the amp/modeler/plugin. Roll presence back as well.
The frets are literally gold why would you think they are stainless lol
they are stainless actually
@@edgarkurm8148No they aren't I have a Q52, they are jescar "evo gold"
I look and i want but 3 single coils spoil the fun. Its what im thinking..
Definitely “bad at tone chasing”. Ichika has particularly warm single coils, which is better for high gain tones. That whole “plays a Gibson and it’s too muddy” thing tells me everything. You can get tonal relatively on any pickup set. You’re either applying too much or too little gain, basically.
Thats totally right, I was in the same mindset before getting the guitar and of course its possible, but I don't wanna work extra hard to get tones I want :)
Sell it and save money for a strandberg or a kiesel I think they have insane humbucker tones
i think the action is too low so in your clean sound it was really buzzing
well keep the singles and swap for hot rails lol
I don't understand how no one in this comment section can comprehend that the dude already acknowledged it's not his kind of guitar. He's returning it anyways. He made an honest review around the build and quality of the guitar and acknowledged its use for other styles, and just said that it wasn't for him. Ya'll gotta chill.
THANK YOU. Lol
Just put a Seymour Duncan JB junior pickup in the bridge position. Boom problem solved....now you have a high gain friendly headless guitar. I swap out the bridge pickup in most of my guitars because I am a pickup snob.
"it's stays in tune really well. i'm not shilling, but it does."
okay? no one thought you were until now.
but, pro tip: you can say nice things about products without being paid by them. it's allowed.
Haha. Maybe its just me but the gear side on YT lately has been extra shilly, even smaller channels. So I had to reassure everyone haha
Oh shit, i bought Kia Picanto and can't get through offroad on it😢
You just dont know how to setup sound for single coil high gain
Just put a Seymour Duncan Hotrails in it.
A single coil sized humbucker from Seymour Duncan or Dimarzio will get you everything youre after...
jeskar evo gold stainless fret, sadly discontinued for QSERIES model
Hey ill buy it off you for tree fiddy if you dont want it!
Should have just gotten the Q52!
You should build your own Les Paul. Like a partscaster on Guitar Fetish
Idk why but I prefer HSS/HS/HH
And yes… very informative video.
Thank you for watching! AZ's HH config is perfect but i'm yet to try an HSH haha.
Frets are Jescar Evo Gold
EVO Gold alloy frets.
dude just get hotrails
Chicken needle guitar
bruh it's a strat look at it
I’ll take it. Sell it cheap.
get to know boost pedals, don't need humbuggies
So why didn't you get my Q-52, it's the humbucker version and sounds so good, articulate, powerful, great for either Jazz, Metal, everything. It's the best guitar ever for the ease of playing. Older models have Jascar gold frets, newer ones have Stainless frets. Ohh just saw the cat so cute!
bruh Shake my head
woo! you deserved way mroe subscriber, keep the good work, bu the way, would you be interested in getting a guitar?
Put some emgs in it.
Dude, how did you get that tone? It sounds AWESOME!
I bought the same guitar and I composed a couple of songs which sound Ichika, but then I ventured into some heavier stuff and this guitar isn't the best for it. I used to live in a tight college dorm and wanted something light, and this guitar is just perfect in that regard because it's headless, but it's a pain to change the tuning oreven just tuning an out of tune guitar. I wouldn't suggest having this as your only guitar, but if you have a humbucker for heavy stuff, then this is a great option for clean stuff
If you didn't sell this guitar yet, I'd try raising the height of the bridge pick up, might get a little thicker of a tone for playing heavier stuff. If you want a single coil sound that works well with metal, get yourself a telecaster!