Review : Ibanez Q Series Headless Guitars
Ibanez QX54QM in Blue Sphere Burst Matte
Hello readers. Before I get any further, a big shoutout to the folks at The Arts Music Store in Newmarket Ontario who arranged for the availability of two different Q series guitars for this review, QX52 and the QX54QM. We will talk about both of them as they are quite different in some ways and definitely bring different tones to bear.
Introduction
The Ibanez Q series are the latest releases in what I have called the resurgence of headless guitars. The idea here is that there is no traditional headstock, and the tuners are mounted to the body behind the bridge. The Q series come in models with traditionally aligned frets as well as slanted frets. Both models provided to me had the slanted frets. The QX 52 is equipped with a pair of humbuckers, the QX54QM has a humbucker in the bridge and a single coil in the middle and at the neck. Both offer a number of options for coil engagement that will be dealt with in their individual sections. The controls are a five way pickup selector, volume, tone and a switch referred to as the Alter switch, presumably because it alters which coils do what in each pickup selector position. Each instrument is different so I will include a graphic and a description of what is going on in each switch position. In lieu of the traditional headstock there is what Ibanez calls their Custom String Lock which looks like a locking nut to me. The tuners are body mounted behind the bridge as we would see on a Strandberg or Steinberger and provide excellent tuning control. For those wondering about a vibrato arm, these guitars only come available with fixed bridges. There are a variety of finishes available, although they are all matte finishes. Whether you like matte or not is a personal choice. I think it looks cheap and dislike them, but the finish has nothing to do with the tone once you push through an amplifier, where the body wood has much more influence than whether the finish is matte or gloss. Each of the models that I have reviewed have a roasted three piece maple/bubinga/maple neck with a roasted maple fingerboard. The neck is Ibanez’s Parallel Wizard design, so very thin and with a very flat radius.
QX52
Ibanez QX52 in Matte Black
The QX52 is the first guitar that I got for review. In Canada, the MAP price is $1399.99 It is an all Nyatoh body. Nyatoh is a common utility wood from India and the South Pacific. It can be hard on tools due to a higher silica content, is relatively straight grained and has larger pores. From an acoustic perspective, it favours the lows and mids. It needs to be sanded and sealed and is most often finished with an opaque finish. There are 24 Jescar Gold EVO frets. This fretwire is harder than nickel but not as hard as stainless steel. It is nickel free and the medium large frets feel good under your fingers. The fretboard is roasted birdseye maple, but my evaluation unit did not reveal any birdseye elements. The frets are slanted at 8 degrees. Having played a true multiscale fretboard on my Strandberg and on my Ibanez 5 string bass, I honestly cannot see a point or value to the slanting. Ibanez says that they chose this because headless players tend to have the guitar higher on their body and this angling is more convenient. To each his own. I keep my guitar straps short so when sitting, jacks are not pressing into my leg and in my case, I did not find any advantage to the slanted frets. Moreover, the jack position puts the jack in a perfect position to dig into your leg if you are sitting and playing the guitar with the increased neck angle Ibanez suggests is popular. The knee relief does not encourage the higher neck angle. It’s a partial step towards the incredible comfort of the Strandbergs in this regard.
The Q58 passive ceramic pickups are designed specifically for headless guitars according to the marketing materials. In truth, I do not know what specially designed means. They are not angled to align with the frets as on Ibanez’s multiscale basses or a Strandberg. Plugged into the REVV D20 I found them noisy, but that could be related to proximity to other equipment. They were very quiet when I had the guitar plugged into my Kemper Stage to record the samples. The switching is mostly intuitive until you engage the Alter switch, so I have pasted the diagram right from Ibanex to help those interested understand what the switch positions do.
Ibanez QX52 Pickup and Alter Switch Options
When looking at the chart, imagine the guitar is on a strap and that you are looking down towards it. So if the alter switch is pointing towards the neck, what Ibanez calls Power Tap is active and when the alter switch is pointing towards the bridge, power tap is off.
With Power Tap off, the five position switch delivers what you might expect of a guitar with two humbuckers and a five way switch. If the bridge position is #1 and the neck position is #5, you will find an audible volume drop in positions 2 and 4. I suppose that this could be expected, but other vendors have figured out how to compensate for volume loss when doing a coil tap and I would have hoped that Ibanez would have done so as well.
With Power Tap on as displayed in the above graphic, positions 2 and 4 disable one humbucker completely and tap one coil, neck for position 4 and bridge for position 2. In positions 1, 3 and 5 the Power Tap basically adds a high pass filter to the power tapped coil to give a single coil sound, along with single coil noise and regular tapped humbucker sound from the coil without the Power Tap. It took some research to discover that the Power Tap is a capacitor and resistor inserted into the circuit to create the high pass filter. Pickup selector positions are really personal choice items. You can listen to the clean samples and see if you can hear something that works for you.
My sample unit had an issue with the volume knob binding hard at about the 5 level but being smooth below and above the area where the knob was more difficult to turn. Rolling off the tone knob completely makes the instrument sound like mud, so no compensation is done when you roll the treble off completely. It’s a partial knob turn to get a usable tone.
I played the guitar through the REVV D20 which has a Two Notes Torpedo built into it and was using the Twin Reverb amplifier setup that I use quite often with the amp. The pickups are a higher output than a standard humbucker and will push the preamp into overdrive at 10, even with the amp set for regular humbuckers. The sound from the Fender cabinet that the REVV uses was very bright, loud and in the bridge position very ice picky. For the sample recordings, I used my Kemper Stage with a Two Rock Classic Reverb setup. I like this sound very much, and had better do so as the likelihood of me affording a real Two Rock is very small. The instrument lost the spikiness in this configuration and was more pleasant to listen to. It also revealed more tonal differences with the Power Tap and coil selection than I found in the REVV. I use the REVV D20 for a lot of recording and this is the first time, that I can say that I didn’t care for anything that I heard through it.
As much as I love the sound of the Kemper with the Two Rock model, it too didn’t blow my socks off. I found the tonality to be darker than other humbucker equipped guitars and lacking in openness. I do not know about the special design for headless guitars of these pickups but the humbuckers of my Steinberger GT-Pro sounded better to my ears in the same configuration.
The QX52 comes only in Black matte and to my eyes, looked like it needed a cleaning all the time. I have admitted that I do not like matte finishes on guitars period, so this is my personal opinion, you may love the look.
Example Tones
In this set of examples recorded with the QX52, I start with the Alter switch set off and with the pickup selector in position 1 and play a simple chord sequence. I repeat this for the next 4 positions in order 2-5. I then repeat the chord sequences with the Alter switch enabled aka Power Tap mode. Next I turn the Alter switch off and play a simple riff going from pickup switch positions 1 to 5. Finally I turn the Alter switch on and play the same riff again going from pickup switch positions 1 to 5.
QX54QM
While still part of the Q lineup the QX54Qm is priced highest of all the guitars that I could find in the family. In Canada, the MAP price is $1539.99 This is likely due to the quilted maple cap on the Nyatoh body. The phrase maple cap from the marketing materials is, in my opinion a bit misleading, if you, like me, equate the phrase “maple cap” with what you might find on a Les Paul or particularly a PRS. This maple cap looks more like a veneer to me and is paper thin. I don’t think it is printed and then applied as we find on most of the Fender Acoustasonics, but looks more like that than a thicker maple top. The nyatoh body is finished in a transparent stain and this may be a nicer piece of nyatoh because it looks quite nice. This model is only available in what Ibanez calls Blue Sphere Burst, a colour palette that we have seen before that is more like a tropical beach scene. It’s quite pretty despite being a matte finish. If it were gloss, it would look even better. Acoustically the guitar sounds brighter and more open than the QX52 which is to be expected considering the wood.
It’s a hum/single/single configuration with the 5 way pickup selector and the Alter switch. Because there are three pickups with two of them being single coil, the options in switch position result in different sounds than from the QX52. The humbucker is the same Q58 passive ceramic as in the QX52 and the two single coils are Ibanez R1 passive ceramics. Again, the docs say custom designed for headless guitars, whatever that means. As with the QX52, I will say that I do not find either pickup visually appealing. The following chart shows the various sounds delivered based on the position of the pickup selector and the alter switch.
Ibanez QX54QM Pickup and Alter Switch Options
The control layout is consistent across the Q line. Again, I really like the very precise tuners and the fact that you can use standard guitar strings on this guitar, no special double ball ends required. Unlike a true Multi Scale, you do not need special longer low strings. The scale length is 25.5 inches, the same as the QX52, but feels shorter due to the absence of a headstock. Again the frets are slanted at 8 degrees and again, I was unsuccessful in finding a point to this. The neck uses the same Jescar Gold EVO frets and is made of maple/bubinga/maple capped with a roasted birdseye maple fretboard. My evaluation unit did not show any evidence of birdseye.
Because of the body orientation, I found my pick bouncing off the cover of the neck pickup on the QX52. That issue does not happen with the QX54QM because my hand finds the natural picking position to be between the neck and the middle pickup. So for me, that makes the QX54QM a more playable choice.
This guitar had no issues with binding in any of the pots, so I have to put the issue found on the QX52 down to a solitary flaw. Personally I would like the volume control closer to the bridge pickup for simpler right hand volume swells, but that is purely a personal opinion.
As with the first guitar there was a long acclimatization period for me to get used to the very thing and flat neck. I am aware that shredders and metal aficionados really like the Ibanez Wizard necks. This is new to me, and I can get used to it, but if you, like me, come from the world of club necked Les Pauls or Wide Fat PRS necks, there is a transition period to get used to.
I recorded my samples as with the QX52. The guitar into the Kemper Stage, no effects other than a light reverb, using the Two Rock Classic Reverb rig. The Kemper goes out of a left and right XLR output to an Apollo TwinX with the left in channel one and the right in channel two. The Apollo connects to the MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt 3 and each side has its own track in Logic Pro. I used no UA effects in the TwinX and no effects plugins in Logic Pro, so the samples are as raw as I can make them.
Example Tones
For this set of examples, I play a chord sequence and a riff with the Alter switch off in each pickup selector switch position from 1 to 5. I then play the same chord sequence and riff with the Alter switch on using each pickup selector switch position from 1 to 5.
My Conclusions
It is my opinion that based on my time with these two Q series instruments that Ibanez has delivered a decent version one product. I would like to see the option of a vibrato arm on the bridge and either do a proper multi-scale or go to regular frets perpendicular to the fretboard edge. Nothing that I heard with the Alter switch engaged was compelling to me, and to be somewhat ruthless, I really did not like the sound of the pickups in general. I should be fair though, because I am not accustomed to ceramic pickups. Their design model and how ceramic magnets work favour lows and mids, higher output and better handling of distortion. As I rarely use fuzz or distortion and tend to prefer low output pickups and also favour more classic rock tones, I may not be the customer that this instrument is built for. I think that flat fretboard and those hot pickups would be very pleasing to a player of metal or one who engages in one or two handed tapping. As I don’t play metal and am limited in my use of tapping period, I would not want to negatively influence a player who does favour those things away from this guitar. My friend Brandon who is a much more talented player than I and who does a lot of two hand tapping loves his QX54QM. I can see the QX52 being a great “chugging” instrument, but I am the wrong guy to talk about chugging at all.
Given the styles that I play most often, if I were to purchase a Q series, it would be the QX54QM despite it’s higher price tag, not for the looks although I think it is better looking, but for the tone options. While I credit Ibanez for their work, neither guitar is likely to end up in my studio.
For what I play, I would prefer a more versatile headless guitar, so if Ibanez happened to see this and listen (but seriously that’s unlikely) I would love to see a version like a Strandberg Boden Standard NX6 Tremolo.
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