Review : Ibanez RG470DX A Very Shred Ready Beauty
This is the followup to my review of the Ibanez S521 that I said is a killer deal at $559 CAD but catering more to the player who wants both to shred more and add the capability of a whammy. And I mean whammy. No subtle wiggle stick on this critter.
Again, the suggestion came from Cody Shaw as we talked about awesome guitars for not awesome money, so blame him if your wallet is getting light. The model I reviewed is the 2023 version as it was what was available. I will talk about what changes in the 2024 model at the end.
Massive thanks to the people at The Arts Music Store for arranging the short term access for this review. You should check them out!
Initial Take
Like the S521, this guitar was ready to go out of the box. The neck was great, no fret sprout and the action was as low as you would go with a diving vibrato as found here. The Quantum pickups are as on the S521 but I think that it’s a bit brighter at the outset. I admit I struggled at first because while it has the same 16” radius as the S521, this neck is really skinny. It took me a good half hour to find a grip that works for me, but once done, I can easily move from this to my more common ball bat necks on my Les Pauls and back without issue. It’s my first long time play with a neck this thin, and while it’s probably not my overall preference, there is nothing wrong with the playability. I did struggle at first keeping it in tune, but I spent some time with my Stewmac String Stretcher and was able to get the stock D’Addaro EXL 120 strings to settle down and hold tune, even after some dives and pull ups on the very smooth vibrato arm.
From the Specs
I really appreciate that Ibanez makes it easy to learn about their guitars. The first image is their specification page.
As with the S521 the body is made of Meranti, a common wood in Asia, sometimes called Philippine Mahogany, but it is not from the mahogany family. Interestingly, while the body is only nominally larger than the S521, it is a lot heavier, so it is possible that Meranti boards, like Ash boards can vary wildly in weight. The fingerboard is Jatoba, and I like the orangey look considerably less than a rosewood or ebony. It is sourced from Central and South America, and is sometimes called South American Cherry. It has no relation to actual cherry, the poor naming comes from the natural colour. Jatoba is however a really good wood for fingerboards. It is extremely hard and according to my woodworking guild, is very hard to cut and to plane because the grain is so tightly interlocked. It has large pores so needs a pore filler but is incredibly resistant to rot and decay. I imagine that routing the cutouts for the shark tooth inlays is pretty hard on the cutting heads.
Do note that the model I played did not have the Edge-Zero II bridge. This new bridge lowers the position of the micro tuners so they are not as high. I don’t play with my hands back there so could not tell you if that’s a serious advantage or not. While the Floyd Rose like bridge is very smooth, I did find the micro tuners a bit stiff. If it were my guitar, on the next string change, I would remove them and give them a good brushing to remove grit and add some beeswax to the threads to increase smoothness. The whammy is of the push in and screw down type which I prefer to generic push ins. There was a tiny bit of lash in the factory setup but again, this is right out of the box and perfectly playable.
The factory nines are ok, although on a guitar built to wango tango like this is, I’d restring it with eights myself, perhaps some Curt Mangan Balanced Tension strings that I find work so well with floating vibrato bridges.
Next I used their pickup table for your ease of understanding
It’s a nice simple layout and works as you would expect a HSH layout to work. There are no coil splits or taps on the volume or tone knobs and that’s fine with mbbbe. Rolling off the volume doesn’t turn into a tone suck and you can really roll back the tone and not get all muddy.
The body is what I guess shredder guitars are like. It’s got the curves in the pictures but all the edges are pretty hard, no sculpting here. It’s thicker than the S521 and I confess I liked that body and neck more myself, but you have to choose what suits you best. I’m not negative on the RG470DX in any way, it’s a darn fun guitar.
For 2024 the changes are the bridge, as mentioned, and a more limited set of colours. There is a gloss white and a stunning looking gloss deep purple called Tokyo Midnight. The finish on this model is quite nice, but looks better in the factory shots than live because it is in fact a very matte finish. I know some folks love matte, but in my opinion, it always looks like some steps were left out in the finishing room.
Putting the guitar on my scale, it comes in at 8.2 pounds with the whammy bar installed. I think that’s heavy, particularly compared to the very similar S521, so I might encourage you when dealing with your guitar shop to see if they a lighter version in the colour that you prefer.
Playability
Playability of the RG470DX is excellent. The guitar does not fight you in any way. Unlike the S521 the output jack is on the lower rear edge as is more common, and while I like the front position of the jack on the S521, I think that this one is less likely to result in any surface scarring. I did clean the strings when I got the guitar home and as noted, the factory strings needed that as well as a stretching. There is nothing wrong with the frets although they were a bit rougher than the frets on the S521, easily dealt with on the first string change as I would do on any guitar. No buzzes, no high frets and no fret sprout. Thus better than some $3000 guitars made in the US. The pickups go to raunch pretty quickly, which I think is fair considering the target buyer. They sounded great into the Marshall driving well without any pedals in the front. I also played it into a Strymon Iridium using their Marshall sim and it’s quite good, and unsurprisingly it pairs really well with my handy Spark GO. It was, I will say, much better than the S521 using the Spark’s hi gain amplifier options.
Samples
There is no way to put this simply. This guitar is best loud, and comes across best with not simple overdrive, but serious distortion. I’m not a fuzz person but expect that those who like fuzz would find this sounds decent in that regard. However that doesn’t mean that it cannot be played clean. I have compiled some short samples to give you a sense of what it can do.
The first sample is using a Boss Katana 50 Mk II with the Clean amp and a Boss Compressor, Boss Chorus and Boss Room Reverb, all from within the Katana itself. No post processing was done.
The next sample is still using the Katana, this time with the Crunch amp, and only BOSS Room Reverb. No post processing
This next sample is using the Katana with the Lead amp, adding BOSS Comp in Sustainer mode, BOSS Tape Echo and BOSS Room Reverb
Good To Go Kit
When getting started or even upgrading, there is often more to the success than just the guitar, so I have decided to include a Good To Go recommendation kit. For this guitar, here’s my kit list.
Ibanez RG 470DX
Spark Amp OR BOSS Katana 50 Mk II - if the player does not have an amp, or is not happy with what they have. Buyers will encounter people who want to go on at length about tubes vs solid state. You can safely ignore all of that stuff. There are differences, but with good amps, the differences are subtle and the cost of a tube amp will be MUCH higher than a solid state amp and it will have fewer built in features.
High quality guitar cable - 20ft or less. Good cables last and are quiet. Cheap cables are a horror show. Consult your sales professional for their recommendation but I like cables from Pig Hog, Ernie Ball, Digiflex and D’Addario. Avoid coiled cables, they look cool to some but are noise factories.
Gig Bag - Hard cases are terrific until you actually want to take them anywhere. Unless you are in a band on the road, in which case a regular hard case won’t do the job, a well padded gig bag is ideal. In my experience, the Profile or house name bags are better built with more functionality than the guitar maker’s bag. Many guitars these days do not include a gig bag. Make sure that there are pockets for your tuner, any tools that came with the guitar, like the truss rod wrench, space for the whammy if the guitar has it, and a set of spare strings, and a string winder / trimmer.
Guitar Stand - Hercules make the best stands but you can often get a house brand that will hold the guitar when it is not in its case and you are not holding it
Guitar Strap - Every guitar needs a strap and every player, even sitting should use a strap. Gravity always works and a strap will save your guitar at some point. Lots of choices. Avoid fabric straps where the edges are sharp which hurts, Seat belt material is cheap, but the edges can be rough. I recommend real leather that has suede on the inside, which helps rein in instruments that are neck heavy. I do not like the fake leather or “vegan” straps as they are hot and sticky vinyl and develop an “interesting” aroma. My favourite straps come from Walker and Williams, but Levy’s and D’Addario do some decent products, although I find that they can be overpriced in my opinion.
Tuner - No guitar is complete without a tuner that goes with it all the time. Pedal tuners are great, but every player needs an in case tuner, and the Snark tuners are hard to beat. I prefer the cheaper models that take clock batteries as for the difference in price to the rechargeable unit, you can order a sheet of batteries from Amazon, or you may find a card of them in the shop from D’Addario priced very low.
String Changing Tool - The D’Addario tools are great. One tool has a string winder, a string cutter and a bridge pin puller. Every guitarist needs this as every guitarist should learn to change his or her own strings. It’s not hard, and that quality guitar shop might even offer a free session on how to do string changes efficiently that you can attend live. Also, there will be about a zillion YouTube videos on the subject.
Floyd Rose Block - Changing strings on Floyd Rose style bridges is to be honest, a serious pain in the butt. I heartily recommend getting a Shredneck TremBlock from Solo Guitars at this link
Wrap Up
The RG470 is a really nice guitar for the money. It is definitely more oriented to the hard rock player or metal player, than the Ibanez S521 that I recently reviewed. While the pickups are ostensibly the same, they do sound different from the S521, not in a bad way and there are more options because of the HSH configuration. While I do not like matte finishes, they are a trend at this writing and to be blunt, its the playability and the sound that matters, and that matte finish is popular in the metal and hard rock crowd to some extent. I suspect that it will wear away in spots over time due to friction revealing a shine and most instruments are buffed and shiny before the matte top coat is applied. Jim DeLuca, who is one of Gibson’s top technical fellows, explained this in a video some time back. From a player perspective, one could start with this guitar and play it for years without needing to do a trade up or anything of the sort.
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