Trade made, Ibanez no. 2 comes home

The new Ibanez RG3EXFM1.

Last weekend, I finally got around to taking a trip to Guitar Center to see about trading in my Les Paul Junior Lite for a new Ibanez. Well, as you can tell from the title and the picture on the right, the trade was a go and the new guitar came home with me.

My original goal was to come out of there with a guitar, a case, and a strap. Luckily I was able to do that, but not without a little help from some dead presidents.

You see, it was President's Day weekend here in the good ol' U.S. of A. which means, in the proper American tradition, that retailers everywhere held sales and specials in order to separate the masses from their hard-earned cash. Guitar Center was no exception, and fortunately for me, the very guitar I wanted was on sale for the ridiculous price of $279, a whole $70 off regular price.

It's fortunate because I ended up not getting as much as I'd originally hoped for my Gibson. Originally I thought I could get about $500 for it, but I noticed right away when I was cleaning it up for the trade that it had a lot of dings and scratches on it. I knew I probably wouldn't get what I thought, and I was right - they offered me $390 for it. Now normally I might not have went for the trade, but because of the serious sale, I pulled the trigger and was able to get the guitar, a hard case and a strap, plus about $24 in my pocket. Nice.

The two Ibani.

So I've been playing it a lot since then and I have to admit it's probably the best guitar I've ever played. Even though it's almost identical to my other Ibanez, there are two major differences - first, it has a hardtail, which I like better, and second, it has different pickups. Instead of the HSH setup on Triumph, it has an HH setup with Ibanez' V7 and V8 pickups. These are the same pickups that were in the purple Ibanez I played last year and they sounded as good as I remembered. The V stands for "Vintage" and they are voiced much more like a vintage PAF but with a little more power. Suffice it to say, I like them much better than the INF pickups that Triumph has.

I haven't named this guitar yet, but it has quickly become my desert island guitar - the one guitar I'd pick if I were stranded on a desert island. If I were to have a signature Ibanez, this would be it. I can easily say it was the best trade I've ever made.

And yes, I picked the transparent black one. It looked so much better in person than on Guitar Center's Web site.