On a night much like this one about 3 years ago, a friend of mine sent me a craigslist link. Little did I know, that link would contain one of the best guitars I would ever play. The moment I laid my eyes on it I knew I had to have it. The 2005 Ibanez RG 2620  Prestige quickly became my control when testing out other gear, in my eyes it is the epitome of how a guitar should feel and sound. Today, I’ll be reviewing it!

 

Let me begin with some features.

 

Features:

– Basswood Body

– Hand-Stamped Cubed Blue Satin Finish

– Maple/Walnut Wizard Prestige Neck

– Bolt On Neck

– Rosewood Fretboard

– 25.5” Scale Length

– 24 Jumbo Frets

– Small Dot Inlays

– Edge Pro Trem

– Cosmo Black Hardware

– Gotoh Tuners

– DiMarzio IBZ RG Pickups

– Volume/Tone/5-way switch

The neck of this guitar is one of the better playing and feeling necks I have ever played. It is phenomenally fast and thin. The flat profile makes it very comfortable when fingering huge chords or shredding! This satin neck is also the same neck featured on the illustrious RGA 121.

The 2006 version of this guitar is identical barring the finish, which is a Hand-Stamped Cubed Black Pewter Satin Finish.

Tone:

My favorite things about this guitar are how light it is and how well-balanced the tone is. The Basswood body makes for a clear low and a strong mid range. These factors result in a crystal clear tone that just “feels” good. You can feel every note as the body vibrates, which is a very important factor for me when playing a guitar.

The pickups are a set of Dimarzio designed Ibanez humbuckers. They have nice treble and mid range response that makes for a good clear pickup for rock and metal. While they do help to balance some of the lows out in the Basswood body, they are unfortunately pretty generic sounding. I will probably change them out eventually to something voiced closer to a tone zone/air norton sound.

Build Quality:

I cannot say enough good things about the build quality of this guitar. Everything has been made with the utmost attention to detail. The best feature of this guitar is definitely the beautiful blue finish. Every cube has been hand stamped and makes for a great texture to the top of the guitar. The sides and back of the guitar are powder blue with an excellent satin finish. The headstock is black and also features a satin finish.

The fretwork stays consistent with most other Prestige Ibanez’s I’ve played. No sharps ends or dead frets makes this guitar a dream to play. The frets are also very smooth which makes bending a breeze. Even with my action extremely low I have no issues with fret buzz.

This guitar features a fantastic Edge Pro bridge. It is a double locking bridge that has one of the lowest profiles of any bridge Gotoh has designed. Even after hours of abuse this bridge stays in tune without any issues. I do, however, dislike how long it takes to set up this bridge. It definitely take some time and without proper knowledge you can easily makes this guitar almost completely unplayable until it is readjusted. However, that problem comes with any floating style bridge.

If you want to read more about the Edge Pro (probably our favorite tremolo), we have an interesting article called, 5 Cool Things About the Ibanez Edge Trem.

Final Verdict:

I have owned this guitar for quite some time now and have put countless hours into playing it. It is everything you will expect from a well made Japanese-made Ibanez guitar, plus a few extras that make it quite unique. The neat features and attention to detail make this guitar my favorite of the 3 Ibanez Prestige guitars I own.

New, these guitars costed about $1500, I lucked out and got mine used for $600. I can say with certainty that every penny was well spent on this beast of a guitar. If I could make any changes, it would be to install locking tuners, a fixed bridge, and better pickups.

8-10-9

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This review was written by community contributor Jeffrey DePuy.

To see more about this particular guitar check out Jeffrey’s Youtube Channel!

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