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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Apr 8, 2019 8:33:32 GMT
I have been curious about these. They seem to be roughly equivalent in quality to your standard 130-160€ Harley Benton, like the S-620 or the R-456FR (with Floyd Rose licensed bridges of uncertain quality). Cheap wood (poplar), unfinished (?) one piece neck, even a simple 6 point vibrato bridge (not a bad thing, by the way), black back… Nothing fancy, everything is kept to basics but I don't see real reviews of them (as opposed to product presentations by shops). I'd like to know more about them.
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ttmax
Harley Benton Expert
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Post by ttmax on Apr 9, 2019 13:00:26 GMT
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Apr 9, 2019 14:00:28 GMT
I found no faults in any of my four Ibanez. With this I mean cosmetic flaws, cracks or skewed parts. Pots and switches were a little scratchy on two of them but it went away with usage. One has a tight jack which requires more pulling than I like. Fretwork is perfectly level on all of them. I had to remove some corrosion and tighten a couple of screws on the oldest one: the part holding the vibrato bar had come a little loose which made it shaky when used and I also tightened the screws holding the locking nut on the back of the neck. They are all of the first price level above the GIO line, nothing too fancy except maybe the one with the Zero Resistance bridge with Zero Point System. One day I'll learn to make cat noises with it.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Apr 9, 2019 16:54:29 GMT
At this point I would like to ask you if your ibanez (the second from the left) has a good balance of output in 4, 3, 2 position or even to you the single coil is definitely weaker than the 2 humbuckers? They are not balanced. The humbuckers have clearly higher output than the single coil and the intermediate positions (2 and 4) are even lower. That's normal physics, by the way, since the intermediate positions split the humbuckers and then put them in parallel to the single coil. I hear that some pricier guitars do something to compensate this sort of level imbalance but I do not know how it is done. Probably using some additional components that reduce the maximum output. The single coil has a very nice clear sound. The Infinity humbuckers are much lesser defined, with less high frequencies. They sound very different from the more recent Quantum humbuckers on the brown one. This is not so much a matter of quality as of choice made for these models.
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ttmax
Harley Benton Expert
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Post by ttmax on Apr 10, 2019 22:07:58 GMT
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Apr 11, 2019 2:41:33 GMT
It would be less imbalanced.
What you measure in positions 2 and 4 is exactly the resistance of these coils in parallel, when halving the humbuckers:
Pos 2: 1/(2/12,38+1/4,67)=2,6618 Pos 4: 1/(1/4,67+2/9,04)=2,2969
If you had the full humbuckers, the resistance values would be as follows:
Pos 2: 1/(1/12,38+1/4,67)=3,3909 Pos 4: 1/(1/4,67+1/9,04)=3,0793
I can check this on the SA, which has a coil split for the bridge humbucker (it's an older model, they don't have that anymore). Pos 2 with full humbucker has obviously lower output than Pos 1, but is similar to Pos 3 (middle single coil). It sounds "thicker" but still very much like an intermediate position, with less mid range than the humbucker alone, split or full. Pos 2 with split humbucker is then more like Pos 4 in volume (two single coils in parallel).
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Apr 11, 2019 10:39:23 GMT
The question I would have is why you need that balance in the first place. Do you, really? I know it's easy to think you do theoretically but will it really be so in practice? I suppose you would if you were playing clean in all positions and switching between them while playing.
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