Ibanez AF95FB – Semi Hollows On a Budget

Body And Neck:
Electronics:
Hardware:
Sound:
Value:

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The Ibanez AF95FB guitar is a part of the company's Artcore series, a serious contender for the title of the best jazz guitar at a reasonable price, and one seriously classy gentleman.

This instrument's sonic attack is driven by a distinctive combination of tonewood and electronics that turned out to work like a charm! Read on for the full Ibanez guitar review and our final summary.

Body and Neck

The first thing that makes this puppy stand out is the use of exotic tonewood – the highly prized bubinga! We are looking at a hard wood that's also dense, thick and fully on the bright side. An adventurous choice and a good move towards getting a sound to stand out from the rest.

The neck is a mixture of maple and mahogany, it's strong and quite playable, giving a chunky feel on the lower frets and a more slim and comfortable feel on the high registry, which is of course perfect for soloing. The instrument sports a bound rosewood fingerboard with a set of 20 frets and cool pearl block fret inlays.

Apart from the distinctive sound, bubinga also looks very nice with its natural dark and glossy vibe.

Hardware

The guitar utilizes gold hardware, which matches the dark wood vibe to a tee in our opinion. We are looking at an ART-1 bridge, a VT06 tailpiece and a set of decent strong tuners that will keep the tuning in proper shape for several hours of constant strumming.

Electronics

The electronic department is driven by a pair of Super 58 Custom humbucker pickups, each packing a set of individual control knobs for Tone and Volume. For further tonal experiment, the manufacturer threw in a standard three-way switch for pickup selection.

What we like about these electronics is how amazingly responsive they are, making the guitar articulate and versatile. But more on that in the Sound segment!

Sound

So, the sound of this Ibanez jazz guitar will always remain natural and organic, with a bright and warm sonic foundation you can spice up with a variety of effects or an extra punch of gain.

With proper sound alterations, you can essentially take this fella from super clean and crispy to roaring overdrive tones of heavy blues and rock. If we were to bring up specific bands, Led Zeppelin stands out as one of the roughest acts this fella can handle with ease.

Despite being a hollow-body guitar for jazz, the AF95FB offers a slightly underwhelming performance when unplugged. It's not bad, but we'll just say that the electric mode is where it's at with this fella!

Value/Conclusion

Great band for the buck and a strong contender for the title of the best guitar for jazz music these days. The looks are amazing, the plugged-in sound is great, the durability is high, but perhaps most importantly – this fella has a unique charm, and not a lot of guitars under 1000 bucks can offer that. Good stuff, a thumbs up from here!

For more info about the Ibanez AF95FB, click here.
For more Jazz electric guitars, click here.