Review: Ibanez JEM 555

I blame Ibanez. It’s all their fault. They owe a large number of people an apology. They owe all my ex-girlfriends an apology. They owe all my ex-bandmates an apology. And, most of all, they owe all the people who sat in the audience from 2001-2003 and heard me play an apology.

It all started innocently enough. I was in my second year of university, realising that I was having a good time with this guitar playing thing, in a somewhat sedate indie band, and that I needed a nice new guitar to take me to the next level. Now, knowing next to nothing about guitars, I took a peek through a magazine, and noticed that some Ibanez models had 24 frets, compared to my existing 22. 24 frets was, like, 9% more, and 9% more notes to play had to be a good thing (this is the kind of rigorous thinking that gets you a degree these days). So, I ordered something in fetching metallic purple with 24 frets that turned up the following week.

Like I said, it’s your fault, Ibanez. Before I picked up that guitar, I could strum my way through Radiohead covers without a care in the world, and certainly not any hint of a deranged competitive streak. But from the moment I experienced the wafer-thin neck and ultra-low action, with the silky-smooth fretboard that shrieked ‘play me!’, I was a man possessed. I could play loud, I could play fast. Really fast. I could play along to Gary Moore at his most mental. I could play even faster than that. I was going to play faster than anyone. Goodbye indie, hello progressive metal! That’s when I formed that band.

Perhaps I do share some of the blame for what happened next, but Ibanez made it possible. Now, when I said I could play fast, I do not imply that I could play accurately, tunefully, or indeed produce any sound with any aesthetic appeal whatsoever. I procured a tuition video featuring Michael Angelo Batio, a man who turned guitar playing into something resembling Formula One, in terms of both speed and sound quality. I hooked up with three other like-minded maniacs and formed the Princes of Insufficient Light.

We thought we sounded like Dream Theater. To gain an understanding of what we actually sounded like, you will need a cheap Casio keyboard, a cat (colour according to preference) and a tape recorder. Allow that cat to wander all over the keyboard, taking care to change the settings on the keyboard as erratically and as often as possible, especially through the drumkits and comedy sound effects. Record about 45 minutes of this, rewind the tape, and play it on fast forward, at at least five times the original speed. Add the worst singing in the known universe (the cat will also be ideal for this, especially if you tread on its tail) and you will come pretty close to recreating the whole audience experience.

Anyway, the guitar responsible for that atrocity was an RG series, the baby brother of the Steve Vai-endorsed JEM555 I have before me here (eventually, in a noble act of self-sacrifice worthy of a Purple Heart, the RG’s trem disintegrated after one dive-bomb too many). Ibanez may have branched out now into all manner of different guitars, some of which, notable its jazzy semis, are really rather good, but the spirit of shred haunts the company’s soul, like some big-haired, loud-shirted ghost of hair-metal past, widdling away for all eternity as a warning to others. Thin-necked, big-fretted speedsters are the bread and butter of Ibanez, so it’s important to see here if they have taken their eye off the ball in their efforts to diversify.

I’m sad to say that, in all honesty, they have, if this example is anything to go by. The first gripe here is the build quality. I am not Tom Morello. I do not want my wang bar to rattle in its socket, so I can make wacked-out clunking noises in an effort to bring down capitalism through broken-guitar weirdness. I want a guitar that when I press the whammy bar, gives me an instant trip to divebomb heaven, not a brief pause while the slack in the socket is taken up before the note starts to drop, and an even longer pause when I raise it again as the bar moves the other way in its socket. On this example, the microtuner on the 2nd string is so stiff it has to be adjusted with pliers, which is just what you need onstage (you don’t see Steve Vai doing that between numbers, do you?). The fretwork is shoddy, and so uneven you can’t lower the action to anything near the usual ultra-low speed setting without deadspots appearing all over the fretboard. Particularly infuriating is the jack socket, which is “stylishly” recessed into the body (so you can't use a 90 degree angled jack) and prone to working itself loose, so that your connection buzzes and pops until you unscrew the back (you can't get a spanner in the recess) and put it back. Until 2 weeks later, when it starts again, usually in the middle of your epic, played-on-a-cliff-and-filmed-from-a-circling-helicopter guitar solo. On a scale of 1 to annoying, this rates about Steve Guttenberg.

It’s hard to see how a Shred God like Steve Vai could put his name to an instrument so badly put together you can’t shred properly. My old RG played better than this, as do a great many other cheaper guitars. Perhaps Steve Vai looked at the prototype about 10 years ago, saw that it was good, and didn’t bother with the ‘cheap’ guitar in the JEM range any more, and the build quality started to drop – this model's move in production from Japan to Korea a few years back may have had something to do with it as well.

But this isn’t a ‘cheap’ guitar. The RRP on this thing is £900, and for that I expect at the very least a guitar that’s been through some kind of quality control. Yamaha can do this with even their cheapest models, so I can’t see why Ibanez can’t. Steve, if you can pull yourself away from the mirror for ten seconds, go to a music shop and play one of these things that has your name stamped into its 24th fret. Then tell Ibanez to get their act together. I know that £900 is about half your daily loud shirt budget, but most of your fans (and not the kind you use to blow your hair back on stage) are lucky if they can scrape that much spare cash together in a year.

Speaking of Vai’s taste in shirts, that brings me to the styling. Oh dear. This model, in black, is actually the more tasteful of the two styles available, and that’s not saying much. The scratchplate is finished in some kind of mother-of-pearl design in shades of grey, and whilst (unlike some of Italia’s more hideous offerings) you don’t actually feel that you’re playing some kind of customised toilet seat, it’s hardly the sort of thing that gives you any street cred in the modern metal fraternity. The same could be said of the ‘Tree of Life’ fretboard inlay, that manages to be both confusing (the positions of the leaves don’t match up with standard fretboard markings, but look as if they ought to) and in dubious taste. The alternative design is the same gaudy white and gold getup as is featured on the JEM7V that the man himself plays (Note to Ibanez: the last band to sell a lot of records dressed in bright white with gold hardware was Goldie Lookin’ Chain. Think about it.).

Unlike the RG series, which has had a major revamp in recent years, the JEMs have been pretty much unchanged for a decade or more, and they are looking tired and dated. Combine that with poor build quality for instruments at their price, and the reasons for metal guitarists to stay with Ibanez and not defect to rivals such as Maverick, Jackson and ESP are getting fewer and fewer. The only saving graces of this guitar are the astonishing DiMarzio Breed pickups, that deliver astonishing depth of tone and sustain, with a deep, throaty feel that is rare on a Floyd Rose equipped guitar. In fact, it sounds great, but so do a lot of other guitars at the £900 mark, and they have fewer flaws than this.

Sorry, Ibanez, this isn’t good enough. You’ve taken your eye off the ball and done the unthinkable, producing a near-£1000 speedster that isn’t much use at its intended purpose. With the market at this price bracket flooded with quality instruments from Maverick, Yamaha, Jackson and others, you can’t afford to trade on your big-name endorsements any more. Today’s young shred-monkeys don’t know who the hell Steve Vai is, and even those who do think he’s a freak from a bygone era who has declined with age. The same could be said of this guitar.

Verdict 2/5

Like Tom Petty, ugly, broke, but sounds ok.