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I really like this guitar. Not a fan of black finishes but it does check a lot of boxes.
Now, my question is this: how is it possible that this other Ibanez AM2000 guitar retails for 4 times the price of the AMH90?
OK, wood choices, tuners, electronics, immaculate craftsmanship, MIJ, I get it.
But 4 times? Does it play 4 times better?
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03-25-2021 09:27 AM
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Originally Posted by eblydian
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Originally Posted by eblydian
It doesn't have to play 4 times better .. to me it's worth it if it just plays twice as good and I suspect it does
That is life in all things sold .. a $20 bottle of wine is not four times as good as a $5 bottle, but there is no doubt that it is a good deal better.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
15" thinline full hollow with a maple block beneath the bridge coupling the vibration to the back.
The last photo shows the bridge block on the right side, coupling block to the left glued to the back which is a maple laminate. Blocks look to be maple.
A really nice guitar, same width as a George Benson, resonant and quite solidly resistant to feedback.
They don't make them any more though, I'm pretty sure.
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d'angelico excel ss was designed by bill comins....look at his imported line! he tweaks every guitar himself before sending them out...
cheers
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Originally Posted by neatomic
I know they come equipped with Kent Armstrong pickups. I sold one and the customer wanted Duncan pickups. I think a Seth Lover and maybe a JB or something. So I switched them out for him. That guitar, which I really liked out of the box, became a really high end seriously inspiring instrument.
Yeah, they were nice
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I knew I shouldn't have come here in the first place... now after 10min of research I'm sold on this guitar...
Was waiting for an Eastman Romeo LA as what another reply says, but this one checks all the boxes I have here: hollow, thinline, light weight < 5.5 lbs, small size body, and <$1.5k. I also think basswood is cool. Plus it's only half of the price of a Romeo LA!!!
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Yea I'm sold on this one too! But I checked the prices in China is like more than $1000! Shite.
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Alright, just had mine delivered today.
It's heavier and bigger than what I thought. Weighs exactly at 6 lbs. Some of the higher frets could be dressed better. The factory set-up isn't very good (>2.5mm at the 12th) And one of the tritone positions didn't work out of the box.
Now... aside from those there's truly nothing else I can complain about. Straight neck, overall build quality is good (except for those couple of frets), intonation and actions are good once set up to my preference. I pulled the switch out and the tritone thing is magically fixed...
As of the sound, for a laminated guitar there's nothing much to say on the unplugged sound. And I don't really have anything to do a head to head comparison. It has a scooped mid or a "flat" sound comparing to my ER2 or a Carvin SH645 I had a while ago. But the harmonic richness is still there I feel.
Plugged in, this is where I think the super 58s shine. Pretty good clarity and has an "airy" sound. And yes it can handle overdrive blues sounds very well. Tritone can also be quite useful to dial in more sounds.
I was actually thinking of whether I should return it, as it will definitely not going to be my #1. Also 6 lbs is the upper limit for me these days. But.. heck it's less than $600 with a regular 15% off discount... And it does scratch the itch to have a thinline hollowbody to do both jazz and blues. So guess I will keep it and if it gets enough love in the future I will refret it with ss frets and call it done.
Btw, yes it's hollow, with a block under the bridge and another one at the tail, and some braces in between.
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6 lbs is light!
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I'm spoiled by Eastman
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Does it have neck dive btw?
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Yes, a little bit. But better than my ER2. With a cotton strap it's not a big deal to me.
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Is it gig worthy you think? It's not gonna fall apart on you, I mean some of the cheap guitars have that feeling?
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absolutely!
aside from a few minor issues it's really very well built. since I only had it for less than a day, can't say it's built like a tank, but seems the neck is pretty stable. And the tuners are fine. I played some blues with a lots of bendings and it stayed in tune. Likely I will put on 11-50s in the weekends and will know more on how the neck reacts.
It doesn't give me that "cheap" feeling. Oh, did I say the knobs are ebony?
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The wood dust on the fingerboard was quite bothering... so I had to clean it up this morning and also put on a new set of strings.
Again, very stable neck and to my surprise the basswood is somewhat resistance to dents. I accidentally let the tailpiece fell onto the body, and was expecting some dents, but nothing... For another basswood body guitar I have, literally I can dent it with just my fingernails.
With 11-50s it plays quite nice. Unplugged it sounds fuller. I think it makes a good basis to do further mods.
This is how the neck looks like with strings off - still pretty straight with no obvious back bow
The inside of the hollowbody
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So I just picked one of these up, and it seems to have a major design or build flaw -- even with the bridge all the way down and the neck perfectly straight, the action is basically at 6/64" on the 12th fret low E string, which is unacceptable for me. It seems to be a neck angle issue.
jjk140: how low are you able to get the action on yours? Unless I can get it resolved it will have to go back; I have a hard time believing the guitar was designed this way, so perhaps I just got a bum one?
Originally Posted by jjk1407
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Originally Posted by steinny
Sorry to hear this. Where was that guitar made?
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Mine is set to 1.9mm on low E, my own preference. Sounds like you got a defective one... I'd send it back.
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Originally Posted by steinny
Good luck
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Originally Posted by steinny
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AMH90 looks like a nice guitar.
I already have 2 thinline hollow bodies (albeit both have a small brace under the bridge) - Epiphone Johnny A and Godin Montreal Premiere but the Ibanez would scratch that itch.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
They're built with a wood that weighs in pretty solidly, and by the time they sat in the warehouse, got shipped, inspected and shelved before distribution to the retailer, they've lost a lot of water. Ever see a sponge change shape when it dries out? Think of a guitar losing tropical water mass, add a hundred pounds of string pull and ... hey this potato chip was nice and flat before...
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Originally Posted by steinny
i had planned to replace all gold-plated hardware with black-plated one anyway, and had planned to replace the pickups anyway, too, so i took it all apart on day one, and have little by little completed the "conversion" in the last days – to my full satisfaction, finally.
to start with, mine was shipped with the trussrod entirely unloaded, like... it took three full turns before it even had any purchase on the neck.
this was easy, and it brought the action into manageable ball-park – and the (black-plated) bridge i chose has its own (black-plated) inserts, which have a thinner upper lip to sit on the top, about 1mm lower, and the bridge itself is about 1mm lower... seeing how i've had to raise both thumbwheels for about 2.5mm, i can only guess that setting the trussrod to effective tension has put neck and fretboard on their respective right course, in the end.
fret edges of mine, on both sides of the 'board, fell victim to lunch break, if ever craftspeople at the Indonesian plant even have a break during their shift, let alone lunch...
not one of them, not one, had been crowned and rounded, despite the whole 'board being surrounded by a perfectly polished (and glass-like smooth) faux-ivory binding – just a tad shy of razor barbwire, they were, and i spent the best of an afternoon to crown them soft and round, then polishing them mirror-like with abrasive rubber-erasers and a final beauty massage with Gorgomyte.
with the whole electronics replaced, and the new hardware in place... i replaced the only other original bit left on the strings' path, which was originally cut with utmost care – the plastic nut... some exact piece that was installed on my most recent AG95, except this one was made right (and that of the AG95 totally wrong) – now it has a zero fret like all other guitars i have around here, just a habit of mine i'm so keen to keep alive.
took me a couple of minutes to assess why this is more neck-heavy than the AG95... scale is the same, body shape is the same, only the depth isn't, and then the weight isn't, either – but the AMH90 neck is set at 18th fret into the body, while the AG95 is set it at the 14th, hence pushing the strap hanging point in line with your shoulder some extra 3-4 centimeters on a neck "out-there", with a less favourable lever of balance (to the player)... couple this to a flat/satin finish, over a body significantly lower in weight... and choose a leather strap with unlined backside, so that the neck-heavy feeling is completely countered!
i also changed the looky-looking dot markers on the fretboard: they were a lovely shade of green abalone, indeed classy, but they lacked enough contrast over the ebony hue to be spotted in a low light setting at first glance, to my eye at least. they now have a fake mother-of-pearl sticker thing in place, looking more silver-ish, not half as classy but four times more visible – which suits my tired sight way better.
of course, before you ask, was this worth the exercise?
had all of these adjustments have to be billed by a skilled luthier, no, definitely not – the price premium on the upper-range AM2000 model would have simply disappeared, no question – and since in my project the guitar was sort of a workbench in its "factory state", i saw no sense in claiming the 30-days money-back guarantee that Thomann kindly honored before without even flinching, my project involved time and labour anyway, and i can only admit i enjoy the task.
do i like the final result, then?
yes - in a certain way: it's a comfy, neatly engineered, feather-light guitar, and pretty resonant, and responsive, even more so in light of its diminished body depth.
my only reservation to it, is it doesn't seem to take the higher tension of .012-.052 strings too well, as it becomes kind of too stiff, too taut with them – so i've resolved to installing .011-.049s on it.
out of personal experience, it's not the first time that i see this happening, and it does not surprise me – it's just a fact that i've yet to find a way to predict before an actual purchase with full restring.
just as example: my most recent AG95 has the same "physical" specs, came with the very same factory-installed strings as this AMH90, but takes .012-.052 strings without feeling choked by them, and will then have .012-.052 on it for life, while i doubt my AMH90 ever will (unless i want to keep wrapping new .012-.052 strings on it, and decide they respond more like climbing rope than harmonic strings the very moment i've tuned them to pitch, just a second before discarding them again, which i just can't afford once more).
again, as a difference with my AG95, the length of string behind the bridge with the standard trapeze-shaped tailpiece is much lower on the AG95 than it is on the AMH90.
i've installed a shorter trapeze on the former, and bought a short one for the latter anyway... but in the end i doubt the trouble of a short trapeze (with more wobbly dissonance for the increased string length behind the bridge) is worth the effort, in light of maybe only a 1" difference in the end...
as last note to curious readers here, over a matter you can only assess when removing the pickups: it's hollow, yes, as there is no center-block running along its whole body length indeed – but a block there is, nonetheless, joining top and bottom, about 1" in width, onto which the bridge thimbles are press-fit. even with it inside, it's a good 250g lighter than the (block-less) AG95, which at about 2.5kg is by all means still a lot lighter the 1989 Gibson ES-175D, and the 1999 Ibanez PM20 i had until a recent while.
(ps: new bone nut pictured at its original factory size, before i trimmed its edges – abalone dot markers on fretboard pictured before they were replaced by stick-on faux-pearl ones)Last edited by rbbrnck; 04-26-2021 at 09:02 AM. Reason: (forgot to add picts)
Wright SoloEtte Travel Guitar
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