Ibanez AZ Standard: Setup, Re-String & Play Test

This Chinese made AZ Standard was purchased new at my local Guitar Center. It was the only one they had in stock. The neck felt EXACTLY like my AZ Prestige but the setup was horrendous: VERY high action with a ton of relief in the neck, frets felt super rough and the string height at the nut was extreme. There were also sharp fret ends from about fret 15 on up. The fingerboard (a wood called Jatoba) was bone dry.

I removed the neck and hit all the fret edges with a Stew Mac 1175 file, then masked the fingerboard and polished the frets with progressive papers (600, 800, 1000, 2000, 0000 steel wood and polishing compound).

I used Ballistol on the fingerboard to moisturize it, which worked well.

It was then restrung with Ernie Ball RPS strings (9 - 42) and I then went to work filing the nut slots to achieve an ideal height above the first fret. I adjusted the truss rod and the neck is almost pin straight (my personal preference). I got the string height above just below a 16th of an inch at the 24th fret (High E) and followed suit with the rest of the strings - the action is very low and comfortable.

The intonation was set by matching the pitch of each string compared at the 3rd and the 15th frets.

It came out really nice but took a lot of time and elbow grease.

PROS:

Nice neck profile
Jumbo Stainless Frets
Locking Tuners
Lightweight & balances well
Good looks (imo)
LOW price

CONS:

Terrible setup from the factory
ROUGH frets
Pickups are “Ok” sounding
Tapped tones are sub par
Tremolo bridge is sub par
Cheap pots, switch, input jack

The guitar comes without a case or gig bag.

Bottom Line: If you’re willing to spend some time doing the full setup these guitars will need, you’ll get a pretty nice sounding guitar that plays like lightning. For a guitar at the $500 range this thing looks and plays excellent (at least it does after a proper setup), and it does have some good tones on “tap” (some squeaky, hollow tones, also). Get one if you like to tinker and modify guitars but you’ll have to get past the shocking factory setup and sandpaper frets. If you can deal with that, it’s a great guitar for the $$$

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