This is my in-depth look at the Ibanez AZES31, a new(ish!) and rather affordable guitar in the Ibanez AZES (AZ Essentials) family.

At Thomann: [ Ссылка ]
At Sweetwater: [ Ссылка ]

Designed by Ibanez in cooperation with iconic guitarist and teacher Tomo Fujita, the AZES range is intended to offer the tone, versatility and playability of the brand’s AZ series to students and players on a budget – and the €299/$299 AZES31 does that in spades!

The Stratocaster-esque AZES31 is definitely built with ease of playing in mind. It has a lightweight poplar body with a maple neck and a jatoba fingerboard, whose medium frets, 25” scale length and 250mm (9.84”) fingerboard radius have been chosen to make everything as comfortable for beginners and students as possible.

The pickups are Ibanez Essentials, and you get the standard 5-way Strat switching system plus an Alter Switch, which gives you more options – you can simulate bridge and neck humbucker tones, and in the middle position, you can either use the middle pickup, or the neck and bridge together.

There’s a couple of other cool twists too: the AZES31 has a hardtail bridge, so no whammy bar to take you out of tune here, and Ibanez have also added their own Mono-unit output jack, a one-piece, solid plastic jack socket that should be more durable than the standard metal ones you generally find on budget guitars.

So, all that said, how does the AZES31 fare compared to its natural competitors, the Squier Strat and the Yamaha Pacifica? Let’s find out! In this video, I play the AZES 31 in as many different styles as I can – from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal and more – to find out just how well this budget axe performs.

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:10 Introduction to the AZES31
01:09 Specs and info
02:31 Pickups and Alter Switch options
04:08 The neck
04:53 Today’s rig and plan

Clean Sounds
05:59 Clean tone reference chords on all pickups/Alter Switch options
06:36 Poppy barre chords
06:53 Blues progression
07:06 Ringing open indie pop chords
07:19 Country strummed chords
07:39 Country lead sound
07:47 Country ballad arpeggios
08:00 Indie art pop barre chords
08:12 Cowboy chords with tone control test
09:17 Droning indie chords
09:31 60s rock rhythm tone

Crunch Sounds (Clean Channel w/Greer Lightspeed)
09:41 Groovy classic rock riff
09:56 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
10:14 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
10:30 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
10:41 Classic rock riff
10:58 Another Hendrix inspired riff
11:15 Fat indie rhythm chords
11:31 Garage rock riff
11:48 Edgy indie rock chords
12:02 Indie rock barre chords
12:27 Volume control roll-off test
13:11 Indie octave chords riff
13:39 Droning indie open string riff on all pickups
14:20 Indie rock octave chords

Lead Channel Sounds
14:45 Classic hard rock riff
15:03 Hard rock riff
15:20 Glam rock riff
15:33 Hair metal rhythm sound
15:54 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
16:11 Alternative rock riff
16:25 Chunky alt rock chords
16:50 Pop punk riff
17:03 Pop punk melodic lead riff
17:20 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
17:33 Punk rock power chords
17:47 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
18:03 Modern rock palm-muted power chords (Drop D tuning)
18:28 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D tuning)

Clean Channel w/Revv G3 Distortion Pedal (all in Drop D tuning)
18:44 Metal chugging riff
19:00 Thrash metal riff
19:10 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
19:22 Rammstein inspired industrial metal riff
19:35 Lead sounds
19:46 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff

20:18 My thoughts
21:34 First impressions out of the box
21:46 Weight
22:10 Build quality and hardware
23:45 Playability and neck
24:35 Sounds and versatility
27:07 What’s the competition for the AZES31?
28:16 Final conclusions
29:19 Thanks and goodbye


My setup was as follows: I ran the AZES31 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, using my Greer Lightspeed for the overdrive and my Revv G3 for the heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 head: [ Ссылка ]
Greer Lightspeed: [ Ссылка ]
Revv G3: [ Ссылка ]
Focusrite 4i4 (the new 2i4): [ Ссылка ]
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Enjoy!

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Ibanez #IbanezGuitars #IbanezAZES


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@IbanezOfficial

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