Ibanez SA260FMAMB Guitar - Amber Burst

Incredible value and performance.

Ever wanted a guitar on a budget that provides the snappy twang of a Strat and the power of a Les Paul? Look no futher.

Body and Neck: This guitar weighs more than it may seem on first glance, helped along by the decently sized mahogany body. The join between the body and neck is really firm, and allows great access to the upper frets.

The action needed a little work to make it suitable to play, but after a quick trussrod adjustment, I found the relatively slim and flat neck to be a joy to use. While a little less comfortable at the nut to use than a typical Strat, the wider neck excels as you move up to the higher frets.

The tremolo is the best of both worlds. You are allowed the simplicity of a traditional strat trem, but the ease of use of a floating trem. You get about a tone upwards, and can make the strings nearly slacken off going downwards.

Pickups and Electronics: The main attraction to this guitar is the H-S-S combination of pickups. This is a pretty versatile pickup combination as it is, but Ibanez have taken it a step further with the True-Duo bridge pickup. One tug of the volume knob will effectively split the bridge pickup into a single coil. However this comes with none of the drawbacks of traditional splitting. A second, single coil is hidden below the humbucking pickup, allowing for true single coil sounds.

When in humbucking mode, the bridge pickup produces tones you would expect to find on a meaty Les Paul. This is probably due to the heavy body helping the huge sound along. This pickup loves to be overdriven, and can handle anything from a chilled out rock tone to over the top speed metal.

On the lighter side of things, splitting the bridge pickup and blending it with the middle pickup often produces the best tones. The typical nasal strat tone is present here, and across the other positions too.

One criticism of the pickups would be that the two single coils are Ibanez stock pickups, and lack a little of the grunt of the humbucker. As such, you may have to play around with volume levels.

Overall: 8/10. This guitar is amazing value, and will sit in my collection as a resource of great tones always. The only let down were the weak single coils provided by ibanez, which I have upgraded to a pair of Seymour Duncans.