Hey everyone, Dar here, and welcome to my first review. So about two months ago, on memorial day weekend, I went down to Guitar Center and got a good deal on a new Ibanez guitar for $129 (normally $199). Honestly, I was so amazed at the quality for the price that I just had to write a review for it! So stick around and give this a read if you’re curious about the GRG120bdx.
If you’re a musician on a tight budget like me, maybe you might want to get one of these.
Features
This guitar was only a month old when I had bought it. Now I would like to point out that these particular Ibanez guitars (part of the GIO series as evidenced by the headstock) are made either in China or Indonesia. So basically, I think the quality CAN vary a bit. I don’t know if I was just lucky or some people were unlucky (or just nitpick too much), but this particular guitar feels well-made to me for the price.
Anyways, let’s go over the materials and features. The body is constructed from basswood, the neck is made from maple, nut made of plastic, and a rosewood fretboard with sharktooth-style inlays. It also has two big and I mean BIG, strap buttons. It was a bit tough getting my new strap to fit on it at first, but anyways. Lastly, you’ve got your two knobs, one for volume and the other for controlling the bridge pickup.
Which now brings me to the pickups. Both are humbucking, Ibanez-made “Powersound” pickups. I’ve heard people describe them as “muddy” or “lifeless” and maybe they are, compared to more expensive humbuckers. HOWEVER, they sound fine and good enough to me, but I’ll get more into sound later in the next section.
The guitar also comes with an Ibanez FAT-6 tremolo bridge. I’ve also heard people complain about the bridge saying that using the tremolo bar will just cause everything to go out of tune, but to my surprise… When I got home and started putting the guitar through its paces, it stayed in tune just fine. I did lots of bends and played around with the tremolo bar a bunch and everything was fine.
Styles, Sound, and Pickups
I play Alt. rock, hard rock, alt. metal, and this guitar works well for what I do. If I use my Pod 2.0, I do notice this buzz on certain settings, this could be due to how they did the wiring for the pickups. But I don’t hear it at all in my other setups, so I don’t mind it. Besides, fixing that kind of stuff yourself isn’t too hard, there are plenty of guides out there.
Anyways, the pickups do sound a bit muddy on high-gain when playing rhythm, but its not like its unusable. I still manage to get a good rhythm sound out of it. Leads on this guitar sound warm and smooth, while still managing to have some ‘bite’ to the sound.
You can get some nice clean tones and dirty tones with this guitar too. However, you’ll want to roll the volume knob back a bit if you want to play clean. But if you want a tone with some dirt and overdrive, then leaving that knob full up at 11 will be fine :^).
Overall, this guitar sounds fine and works for me. But if you really want to, you can go put in new pickups if the stock pickups bother you.
Fit, Feel, and Finish
I hardly needed to tweak anything, the action and everything else was pretty much fine. The only thing I had to mess with was fixing the intonation by adjusting the saddles at the bridge. However the intonation was honestly good enough when I got it, I just felt the need to try tinkering with it.
This guitar feels very comfortable to play, It is VERY light and balanced. That was one of the first things I noticed when I was testing it at Guitar Center. Its funny actually, I had heard someone complain before about these guitars being “too heavy” but I found out that wasn’t the case, haha. This thing is much lighter than my American Fender Stratocaster.
The neck, while not glossy like my Stratocaster’s, is still nice, smooth, and comfortable to play with. It also feels easier to play faster riffs, and do double tapping too.
A problem that guitars in this price range usually have is that the frets sometimes tend to be sharp on the edges, but surprisingly the frets on this guitar were fine. I didn’t have any problems with fret buzz either, so I was pretty happy when I learned that when testing it.
Overall good comfortability and good playability.
Reliability & Durability
I can’t say for sure how reliable this guitar would be for gigging (since I haven’t played a gig yet). I would assume that it’d be good, or atleast good as a backup guitar. The guitar feels like it’ll last me for quite a while.
Some things I’d like to point out though. Some of you may have noticed I mentioned that the nut was made of plastic. I know that somewhere down the road, I’ll need to replace that whenever wears out. But I’m guessing that’ll probably be 2-3 years down the line, I guess. Even if its sooner than that, replacing the nut isn’t a big deal anyways. Just bear that in mind.
The 3-way pickup switch feels pretty solid, as well as the tuners/tuning pegs. Which reminds me, some other guitars I had been looking at in this price range had some serious problems with the tuning pegs. Things like the tuning pegs just straight up breaking apart or disintegrating.
So other than possibly needing to replace the nut in the future, this guitar is pretty solid. Just take care of it and I bet it’ll last you for quite a long time!
Conclusion
Like I said in the beginning, this guitar had left such a good impression on me that I just absolutely had to write a review for it. Heck, mine in particular had been made somewhere in China. For a while I had thought it was made in Indonesia, since I always have little faith in things with “Made In China” on them. Then one day I saw exactly that on the backside of the headstock, and was just like “Huh… well I’ll be.”
So in the end, I really recommend this guitar. Whether you’re a parent looking for a decent electric guitar for your kid, a hobbyist, a musician, or beginner, this is a nice guitar.
In my opinion, I honestly think this is as good as it gets for someone on a budget.
The Den of DAR 
what bar did you get for the tremolo?
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Not sure, it was just the tremolo arm that came with it in the box!
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