Ibanez RG8. New Budget 8-string.

[Gram negative]

The links I posted are gone now but I see if you search eBay they still pop up. Nothing in the auction says they are B stocks. Either way for $325 who can complain about using it as a project platform even?

I just pulled the trigger on the blemished black one, so its gone! I got it for $299 plus shipping. I talked to the seller, he said thats all that was wrong with it. The guitar intonates, holds tune, neck straight, etc.

The scratches on the back of the guitar can probably be polished out. I had surface scratches on my other Ibanez, and a little polish brought it back to like-new finish.

Cant wait for thursday! Someone buy the white one!!

 

[rockstarazuri]

The guys who said it was better than the RG2228, is it really? Omg

 

[M3CHK1LLA]

Oh god, all this talk of returns and factory seconds, if I have to do any of what you're doing it'll be a nightmare for me, I'm buying from england...

just do what i did & tell them of the issues ppl are running into and have them chk it out before they ship it. im sure they will gladly do it cause it saves them all that shipping.

Mine too.

Removed the neck to add a shim and found two of these.
The factory seems to have taken a 1/2inch wide chips of mahogany and folded them into little tubes to replace 1/4inch dowel, pretty extreme cost-cutting /time saving practices going on.

yeah sounds like the same problem mine had.

The guys who said it was better than the RG2228, is it really? Omg

haha...that is funny. im sure we all know better.

 

[Konfyouzd]

Personal preference is an indication of quality.

 

[SUPERNASTY528]

That's weird, every rg2228 and rga8 that I've come across have had 2 truss rods. Different generations? Why the switch? Why put 2 truss rods in at all? Please help.

 

[MobiusR]

That's weird, every rg2228 and rga8 that I've come across have had 2 truss rods. Different generations? Why the switch? Why put 2 truss rods in at all? Please help.

dawg i think you're just tripping


My friends NAMM2007 RG2228 has 1, same for my RG8

 

[SUPERNASTY528]

Not trippin, Ibanez's website says they have rod(s) plural. Anyone have an rga8 that can confirm 2 rods?

 

[RV350ALSCYTHE]

My RG8 has 1 truss rod. No idea if it has stiffening rods. I can't imagine Ibanez putting the extra cost for more rods in such a cheap guitar.


I'm sending mine back for a replacement, though I'm still on the edge of whether or not to trust the next batch having any better quality control

 

[Khoi]

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/ex...1205-rg8-truss-rod-broke-my-capslock-key.html

 

[tsar nicholas]

Hey guys! I found my way over here from The Gear Page. I've recently become obsessed with the 8-string, wanting one for a fuller, more pianistic sound in solo / duo fake-jazz and New Age contexts. I checked out an RG8 for a good while today, and wrote up a review that I thought I'd add to this thread. The Dean referenced here is the R. Cooley model that I played last week during another G. Center excursion. Holla!

--



So, in today's news, I sent into G. Center again, to get some more play time in on the 8 and see if anything new is happening. Apparently, the $400 Ibanez model (the "RG8", it turns out) has been selling like hotcakes, because the one I checked out last week was gone, replaced by *three* new ones (plastic still on pickups). Two of these were in a white finish, which to my eyes looks much better than the black -- one of my pet peeves is light colored rosewood fingerboards on a black guitar, but the browny fingerboards on these look great with white. I immediately grabbed one of these white ones to see if I could get a better read on it than I did on the grungy one last week.

To my delight, the strings were new and the setup was quite good indeed, the only imperfection being a little buzz on the 8th string. I was able and pleased to check this thing out for a good 40+ minutes.

First off, the necks on these are incredible. Very comfortable asymmetrical carve that seems to gradually get uniform as you move past the 12th fret, a well-executed design. The construction is 5-piece (maple / dark mystery wood / maple) bolt-on with a contoured neck / body joint -- mighty nice. I strongly prefer multi-piece necks for their greater stability and stiffness -- especially on an extended-range or bass instrument. The only neck-related concern I had was that the back of the neck was minimally, if at all, finished, which I fear may reduce stability -- hard to say, though. It may have had a very thin satin finish, but it felt pretty much like bare wood; I know a lot of people prefer the feel of an unfinished neck, so this was probably due to player demand. Nicely sanded, though. Also, I love the "Iceman" style 4+4 headstock -- definitely the most attractive straight-pull 8 design I've seen. Also, these guitars have a volute-type bump at the neck/headstock transition, of which I'm a big fan. The neck radius still felt a little more curved than I'd like it to be, but overall, this is a very playable neck. I'd say it was close to the Dean in playability, and I actually liked the fret crowning, though not the board material, better.

The fretwork was outstanding for a guitar in this price range. The frets were fairly tall and well-crowned, and unlike most of the guitars I played last week, the fret ends weren't too 'slanted' in their filing. The only mildly sharp ends were on the treble side of frets 4 through 1, but the sharpness wasn't very pronounced and didn't really impact the playability. [note : I am *really* picky about fretwork]

The only thing I didn't really like about the setup on this instrument was that the F# string was a little floppy. The scale length looked to be the same as the Dean, which had fine tension (though I may be a little off), so I suspect that this is the result of having too light a string in place there. A higher-tension string would probably also have fixed the minor buzz that I noted earlier.

The place where the corners were most obviously cut on this instrument is on the body finishing. The pointy body was done in the same chintzy-looking and Mylar-feeling paint I noted last week, but the white rather than black finish made it much (much!) more attractive from arm's length. The detail work (in particular, in the countersunk bolt-holes where the neck connects) was rough and jackrabbit, with iffy sanding and some flaky paint remnants that maybe ought to have been scraped off. However, none of these imperfections impact the playability whatsoever, and none of them would be visible from 4 feet away, so to me when considering an instrument of this price, they are all in fact non-issues.

Other notes : One thing I really like about this guitar is that it has a 'normal' non-vibrato Strat type bridge, as opposed to the ridiculous Floyd-looking-but-non-whammy monstrostity that infests the higher-end Ibanez I checked out last time (the RGA8) as well as the $2000 RG2228 [notice how I looked at the model numbers on the tags this time?]. The 'normal' fixed bridge is a string-through design (with the 8th string ferrule cleverly set further back toward the endpin than the rest of the saddles, another very thoughtful touch) that has ye olde adjustable saddles and seems adequate, quality-wise, while not being overly bulky, ugly, or potentially a pain to deal with (unlike the pseudo-Floyd). One volume and one tone knob exist on this thing, both of which I ran dimed (wish they'd get rid of that tone knob) -- both pots were OK, though their abrupt taper reminded me of the not-so-smooth pots in my Gibsons (none of which I've bothered to change out). The tuning keys (still with plastic film on the backs!) actually looked and functioned perfectly fine and were in fact smooth, but felt a little cheap. No big deal there, I don't expect Grafs on a $400 axe. Also : tuners were spaced well, unlike on the cramped Schecter ATX I played last week.

So, I plugged the thing in, expecting the decent-not-great-but-really-not-bad sound I heard from the black one last week. [Note : I have an early-2000s Korean-made RG120, a similar bottom-range instrument, that I leave in the office for emergencies, and though that guitar has a very nice neck + good fit / finish, it sounds really bad and has some of the worst hardware imaginable].

Well, I guess clean strings and a decent setup really do work wonders, because the sound from this axe was very good indeed. The passive pickups probably contributed to a sound that I would call "very guitarry," exhibiting little of the synthy texture that I'd loved about the Dean with its EMGs, but having a very sweet-sounding timbre in the trebles that actually reminded me quite a bit of my Strat. Through the same cheapo Line 6 amp I used last time (run, as before, totally dry and starting with a flat EQ), this axe got very pleasant, classic-sounding guitar tones. It had that particular quality in the trebles where plucked notes seem to 'jump' out of the guitar, and I really like that. The midrange was pronounced without being too nasal or vocal (qualities I dislike when playing solo / duo, as I like a more even response in all registers when cutting through a large noisy group is not required). This instrument had sustain aplenty, which is a very desirable characteristic.

One significant difference between it and the Dean is that the bass response is *much* weaker on this instrument, with not too much of the fundamental coming through and an abundance of the octave harmonic. Unlike the 'dead' Schecter, however, the bass strings still responded lively, they just weren't very 'bassy.' This is kind of a mixed result -- on the one hand, the B and F# strings didn't have a tendency to 'boom' and demand a super-light touch, which is nice; but on the other hand, there wasn't much bass power on tap for when I wanted big keyboard-type chords or a serious thumping bass run. The F# string, had a little bit of an upright-bass sound in fact, a consequence of the slight buzz and the prominence of the harmonic. The low "B" string, I'll note, especially sounded and behaved like a 'guitar string,' rather than a sort of 'bass string' as the Dean's does. I'm not sure whether this is a result of the pickups or the construction. I'm also not sure whether the pickups would be easily swappable (for example, with DiMarzio's new Abasi-approved passives). All that said, the diminished bass response is something I could probably live with, especially when taking a more 'guitaristic' approach to the instrument -- when I cranked up the bass EQ on the amp, it started to kick a little more and I would call it adequate for a solo environment. [note : this issue may also be related to the string-gauge choice I mention above, in which case a simple string change may correct the issue. Can't say for sure though.]

Since I had some extra time, I flipped the channel on the amp to the so-called 'twang' channel and turned up the gain, so see what it sounded like in light, Chuck Berry / Tal Farlow type overdrive. It sounded really great, in fact -- brash, but not piercing, with good string balance. One wonders if maybe the thin bass response is intentional, because there wasn't any typical low-string 'woofy' overdrive sound to contend with.

One thing I should note : Most of my playing was done on the neck pickup as is my habit. The bridge pickup was OK, but nothing to write home about, and had pretty low output.

Something about the way this guitar played made me want to play in standard tuning and experiment with fingerings. As a result, I discovered quite a few very wonderful chord shapes that sort of give the illusion of a well-mannered guitar / upright duo when comping, or a piano. I freely admit to being a very lazy, grip-oriented player, and if I had a penny for every time I chose to use the bog-standard 1-3-b7 dominant grip, I'd be a millionaire -- so playing something that made me really desire to hunt for unusual grips was really a fun experience that I've not had in a while. One of the main cool things for a solo context is having the root be an octave (or two) down from the flavor notes -- it sounds like a guitarist who knows to lay off the root when playing with a bassist, and it also (as a result of the stretches that doing this in standard tuning seems to encourage) suggests inversions and note/string combinations that are outside the normal, heard-'em-all-a-thousand-times guitar cliches. Having all that space between the root and the garlic is very refreshing-sounding. I also delved more into one of the major advantageous characteristics of the 8, which is that, like the 5-string bass, more strings means less hand movement about the neck. I mean, you can pretty much play an entire song in a single position on the 8, if you want to -- and I *want to!*

^ *however, the Abasi "dropped-E" tuning allows one to get many of the same effects with minimal alteration of standard grip fingering -- I suggest playing around with both approaches if you're curious. I never understood why jazz 7 players tend to tune the 7th string to "A," but now I totally get it. It's the same deal as the "dropped-E."


So, the bottom line with this axe is that it is, as M. Davis might say, a mother@#$%er of an instrument for $400. For me, the main thing with pretty much any axe is the neck -- if you have a good neck, you're 65% of the way there. This thing has a *great* neck. The sound beat my expectations for a guitar in this price range, and I would have zero qualms about playing this thing live in the stock configuration. Ibanez really hit it right with this thing -- they kept it simple and concentrated on the important stuff, resulting in a well-throught-through, very playable, utilitarian instrument. Depending on your preferences for bass response (and disregarding string-gauge), this thing's tone is either 'quite good,' or 'very good indeed.' As a whole, it completely challenged / shattered my expectations of what a really cheap guitar can be. Ignoring price, between this and the Dean, I'd take the Dean because I prefer its "bigger / keyboardy" sound and smoother fretboard, but considering that this RG8 is less than half the price of the Dean, it presents a highly compelling case.


I predict that these inexpensive, but well-done, Indonesian-origin Ibanezes are going to catch on and get a whole lot of people 'hooked' on the 8. It's really kind of amazing what sort of quality, thoughtful design, and playability $400 buys these days. Any of you guys who are curious about the 8 -- I strongly advise you to go check one of these things out.

 

[NoMod]

Interesting read, thanks! ;-)

 

[jwade]

Pretty cool to hear a non-metal perspective on an 8, thanks for that.

 

[ImNotAhab]

Enjoyable review my man.

 

[Todes]

Im goin to get mine in January (stupid flights, customs... and humanitity for not have discovered teleportation yet hahaha), the guitar looks amazing and for the price I think its great. I ordered a white one, when i have it im goin to make tons of tests and a video review I think...

 

[MobiusR]

https://soundcloud.com/mobiusr/jupiter-1-1-001

Here is a better test of the RG8 imo.

Stock pickups and some new strings! I'm still using the factory stock 8 string as i feel the 80 is to big.


Anyone know what gauge it is?

 

[Draceius]

https://soundcloud.com/mobiusr/jupiter-1-1-001

Here is a better test of the RG8 imo.

Stock pickups and some new strings! I'm still using the factory stock 8 string as i feel the 80 is to big.


Anyone know what gauge it is?

This is great, awesome test dude

 

[kris_jammage]

So my mate Ed came over to my house last night to check out my completely re-vamped home set up. He was dying to try out my EVH 5150III. I've been mates with this guys for years and been in 3 bands with him. He's VERY stuborn, like he out right refused to try 7 Strings or any tunings other than Drop C when I was experimenting myself a couple of years ago.

So he walks into the room and straight away picks up my RG8 and drools. Asks if he can plug it in and before I know it its 2 hours later and he's still playing it! I ask him what he thinks and he says he's fallen in love! haha! He's a big guy and has shovels for hands so he says it just feels really comfortable to him, something he only feels when playing 5 or 6 string bass, which funnily enough he also refuses to invest in. He then says something I never though I'd hear from him in regards an ERG - "Where can I get one?"

WIN! I believe he's going to be shopping around for one today. I'm really surprised by this and it just goes to show how awesome these guitars are!

Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you guys cause I'm still shocked! Haha!

 

[M3CHK1LLA]

 

[tofumannen]

Any one know, what is the thickest string that'll fit the RG8 without drilling?

 

[MF_Kitten]

Any one know, what is the thickest string that'll fit the RG8 without drilling?

Just drill the tuner, dude. It's quick and easy. Or have it drilled by a pro.