An Amazing Rock Machine - A Review of the Ibanez S521
As I do when I need a good mental health break, I went to spend some time with my good friend and sometimes co-host Cody Shaw. As some of you may know, Cody has a position at The Arts Music Store and sees everything that comes through the doors. He’s also a really talented musician and recording engineer. His tastes run to the more metal side where I tend to fall more on the classic rock side but we see the value in understanding different music genres. One of the items that came up was my perception that it was very hard to get a great rock guitar for under $600 for people starting out, or simply working on a budget like most of us are. I’ve reviewed a number of Epiphones and Squiers that I think are fine instruments but the cost is getting up there. I said it would be great if there was a real guitar that was incredibly well put together, that played great right of the box and that could deliver on serious rock tones without having to drop a ton of cash on pedals and amplifiers to get that real rock sound.
Enormous thanks to the people at The Arts Music Store for arranging the guitar for this review. You should check them out!
Cody suggested that I had missed something, which is often possible and certain in this case. I do not like heavy guitars. Goodness knows I own lots that are really heavy, coincidentally the heaviest being my 70’s Ibanez Artist Double Neck made famous by the brilliant John McLaughlin. I can no longer play it standing for any serious length of time because of the weight, although it sounds amazing and plays a charm still as it nears 50 years old. I say coincidence because Cody pulled down and handed me a reddish metallic Ibanez six string. It was incredibly lightweight. so light that I knew that I could play for hours standing and not get any shoulder or back pain. Younger folks may not think about pain, but folks of my vintage often do. I checked the headstock and discovered it was an Ibanez S521m, made in Indonesia. A bit of web search revealed that the beautiful rich paint is called Blackberry Burst. When I saw the tag at $559.99 CAD, I have to admit being surprised. The maple neck was perfectly straight, the way I like them, and there was absolutely NO fret sprout. As I commonly find fret sprout on US made guitars costing over $3000 this was a great thing, particularly considering that this instrument made it to my town starting its trip in a sea container in a cardboard box. I was also surprised that I did not find the neck too thin in my short handling time, a bit of a change from some prior Ibanez experiences. I also noted simple controls. Two humbuckers, a five way switch, a single volume, a single tone and the output jack inlaid into the top of the very thin body. Cody knows that I can be suspicious and cynical and knew before I asked that I was wondering if this was a unicorn. He took the guitar from me and pulled down one in a blue metallic fade that I now know is called Ocean Fade Metallic. While I often harp on the accurate but utterly confusing naming of Japan built and designed instruments, their colour naming is typically on the money. So I was able to work with the shop to arrange a short term instrument for the purposes of review. Both finishes were a deep rich gloss. Ibanez does offer models in a matte finish if you prefer that sort of thing. Matte always looks like an unfinished project to me, and I really dislike that look, but you should buy whatever you like.
The Ibanez S521
The S 521 is a representative of Ibanez’s S series of electric guitars. It has a Wizard III neck which surprised me at its playability for someone who favours the old PRS Wide Fat most often. It’s a C carve but not so shallow as to cause me any pain. The scale is 25.5 inches and the nut width is 43mm. For someone lacking fingers that are long and lean like my guitar hero Mr. Buddy Guy, I find this spacing incredibly easy to play with no muting happening. It is a massive difference from say the nut width and spacing of any of my Rickenbacker guitars for example. The frets were perfectly finished out of the box and the guitar was strung with D’Addario EXL 110 strings in 10 to 46 gauge. The bridge is Ibanez’s own F105 bridge. For those unfamiliar think of a Strat style hardtail with individually adjustable intonation and saddle height. More importantly not made out of cheap pot metal. The action was fine for me right out of the box but I tinkered and the saddle movement is very smooth. The tuners are non locking but have no bind or lash. A measurement of the nut slot depth found them to be perfect. The neck is a very smooth satin finished maple and the fret board is legitimate rosewood. No substitutes here. There are 24 jumbo threats and both the cutaway and the 4 bolt neck joint are carved to make access to the high frets easy, even for folks with shorter fingers. The specs are for a 400mm radius which is pretty close to a 16 inch radius so a pretty flat fingerboard.
The body is made of Meranti. For folks outside of Asia, this may mean nothing but there are five species of Meranti found in Asia. It is a very readily available wood, and while there is a higher than average silica content which is tough on cutting tools, the wood works very well. It is an open pore wood like a real mahogany so pore fillers are used to make it level. In some places, Meranti is called Philippine Mahogany but the big difference is how light it is. There is a common perception that a heavier or denser body has better resonance, but in reality, density is only one of the factors impacting resonance. In a tap test I found a common resonance of on average NN seconds. Not the 45 seconds that a certain Mr. Paul Reed Smith says qualifies as really resonant but considering the overall sound and that it is under $560 CAD retail, it’s really good. I really like the finish of the body with no sharp edges and smooth curves, including on the back. The paint is beautiful.
But here is the best part, and I mean best. This guitar weighs in at FIVE pounds ELEVEN ounces! The body rings quite nicely and you will not get tired with it handing around your neck.
The pickups are Ibanez’s Quantum H family using their bridge and neck configuration specifically. The Quantums are a passive ceramic build and if one finds that ceramics have a different sound than a traditional magnetic pickup, I will not argue. The volume pot tapers off nicely and rolling the tone off does not send the sound into the mud. I did find that for my preference, the bridge pickup was a bit too high, so I dropped it 1 ⅓ turns and this improved the overall sustain and made it less midrange pokey. I have recorded samples later on in the review that give a good sense of these pickups, which is better than my first impression which was that they were a bit woofy in the bass and jangly in the 247 Hz area of the open B string. I believe that you have to play an instrument for an extended period to really get a sense of what kind of sound it produces. I found that a wipedown of the strings and leaving the guitar out in a properly humidified room, opened it up considerably.
Considering everything that you get for that under $560 CAD, my specification and basic feel assessment says that this is a killer guitar, and at a price where to get similar performance and build quality you would typically add another $500 to. The factory provided images show a light metal colour for the fittings but the specifications and the actual guitar I am using have cosmo black metal parts. Personally I think it looks better, but of course has no impact on the tone.
Playability
For me, while I often have to play more quietly, I had the opportunity to play the way I prefer during this review. This means into a Marshall 2550 Silver 100w head and 4x12 cabinet. I use an original Empress Effects compressor on the front end for neutral gain and gentle compression and then it runs to the rest of the board. There is a Decimator Noise Gate in the chain, but I took it out of the path because I did not need it. I have played the guitar direct and with a JAM Rattler and a Cornerstone Gladio into the front and when I let the Marshall go, or as much as I will let the UA OX let the Marshall go, the sound is really superb. This particular setup is dry wet with the Marshall getting the dry sound and the fabulous Koch 100w Multitone getting the wet signal. On the wet side I added a Wampler Metaverse for a light tape delay and a Wampler Terraform for really light chorus widening. The glass in the windows did shake a bit at volume, but I must say it was really wonderful sounding.
While I like D’Addario products very much, I would change the strings on this guitar. It is so well suited to rock and even for those who go down the shredding path, that with what Ibanez calls jumbo frets, it would be even faster with 8s or 8.5s. It’s not my guitar, so I won’t be doing that change, but each week I find myself liking 8s more and more. It’s required a change in left hand pressure, but as time is progressing I find it for the better because I am now just touching the string to the fret and never down to the fretboard at all. That is a process change on me, and has nothing to do with the instrument although the frets on this Ibanez are also tall enough to make that a breeze. While I have never played an instrument with a scalloped fretboard, I am seeing in practical terms the rationale of the idea. The pickups have really good bass response, and if you drop D, it works without being flappy.
There is only one thing that bugs me and that is the output jack is recessed and the insert area is paint and not a metal protector. I can see this area of the guitar getting damaged as users plug cables in and pull them out. If it were my guitar, I would get a piece of clear automotive hood edge protector and cut a piece to fit in there.
Recorded Samples
For recording the samples, I used the Ibanez S521 into my Marshall Silver 2550 100 watt head and took the feed from that through my Universal Audio OX. On the OX I chose the GB25 Punch Cab Simulation, which is very much like the Silver 4x12 cabinet that the head plugs to. I used two mikes on the virtual cabinet a U67 Condenser off axis and a R121 Ribbon on axis with the same input levels. I turned the virtual room mikes off. The OX includes the UA 1176 compressor and a UA Plate Reverb as options which I used with the 1176SE set to 4:1 compression during recording and the plate reverb to 1.5 s with 30ms predelay and the mix at 20% wet. There are also a Digital Delay and an outboard EQ available as options but I did not use those during recording. Post recording I used a Precision Maximizer to add a tiny bit of punch and used the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor for final master.
The first set is a just a simple bend using neck, parallel neck humbucker, middle, middle/bridge and bridge pickup selections. The second clip is bridge, volume at 8 tone at 10. The final is volume at 5 middle pickup selection and tone at 10.
Wrapping It Up
Cody was 100% right. I have tried and I have not found a better guitar at this price point. It kills everything else that I have tried out of the box. No it’s not made in Japan like the high end Ibanez instruments, but it is made in Indonesia, home of two of the finest builder companies in Asia, World Music and Cort. I’d say that the fit and finish and out of the box quality compares to a much more expensive PRS SE and despite really good work is far beyond either Epiphone or Squier. The great thing about this guitar is that you could start with it whether you were ten or seventy and be very happy with the sound and its versatility. With the big names regularly jacking their prices and dropping quality (except PRS in my personal experience) if playability and tone were deliverables, you cannot go wrong by spending $560 on the Ibanez R521. They do models at similar or slightly higher price points with the Ibanez version of the Floyd Rose vibrato if you want that kind of thing as well, so lots of choice for not much money. In fact, my next guitar review will be the Ibanez RG470DX 2023 version as the 2024 version with the new vibrato and new colours is not available to me at this time.
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