This is my in-depth look at the Ibanez AZES40, a new(ish!) and rather affordable HSS Fender Stratocaster-influenced guitar in the Ibanez AZES (AZ Essentials) family.
At Thomann: bit.ly/AZES40rwm
At Sweetwater: sweetwater.sjv.io/an4dOb
Designed by Ibanez in cooperation with iconic guitarist and teacher Tomo Fujita, the AZES range aims to deliver the tone, versatility and playability of the brand’s AZ series to students and players on a budget - and the €329/$349 AZES40 totally succeeds in that mission!
The Strat-like AZES40 is built to be easy to play. It has a poplar body with a maple neck and a jatoba fingerboard. The guitar’s medium frets, 25” scale length and 250mm (10”) fingerboard radius have been chosen to make everything as comfortable for beginners and students as possible.
Being an HSS Strat-type, the AZES40 is incredibly versatile tonally too. You have two Ibanez Essentials single coil pickups and an Ibanez Accord humbucker at your disposal, plus an Alter Switch, which gives you even more tonal options - watch on to hear them all in action!
In the video, I play the AZES40 in as many different styles as I can - from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal and more - to find out just how well this budget axe performs, and to see if it stands up to its natural competitors in the affordable HSS world: the Squier Strat and the Yamaha Pacifica!
Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:
00:00 Hello!
00:13 Introduction to the AZES40
01:09 Specs and info
04:34 The neck
05:28 Today’s rig and plan
Clean Sounds
06:24 Clean tone reference chords on all pickups/Alter Switch options
07:03 Poppy barre chords
07:18 Blues progression
07:31 Ringing open indie pop chords
07:46 Country ballad arpeggios
07:59 Country lead sound
08:06 Ambient indie arpeggios
08:25 60s rock rhythm tone
08:36 Funky barre chords
08:50 Funky rhythm tone and vibrato test
09:11 Droning indie chords
09:26 Tone control test
10:20 Strummed folk chords
Crunch Sounds (Clean Channel w/Greer Lightspeed)
10:38 Groovy classic rock riff
11:05 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
11:23 Airbourne inspired classic rock riff
11:36 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
11:52 Classic rock riff
12:09 Indie octave chords riff
12:33 Indie rock rhythm sound
12:50 Edgy indie rock chords
13:04 Indie open string riff on all pickups
13:36 Indie rock barre chords
14:01 Volume control roll-off test
14:47 Fat indie rhythm chords
15:04 Indie rock octave chords
Lead Channel Sounds
15:33 Classic hard rock riff
15:50 Hard rock riff
16:07 Glam rock riff
16:24 Alternative rock riff
16:38 Pop punk riff
16:51 Pop punk melodic lead riff
17:07 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
17:21 Less Than Jake inspired punk riff
17:32 Punk rock power chords
17:46 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
18:02 Modern rock palm-muted power chords (Drop D tuning)
18:27 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D tuning)
Clean Channel w/Revv G3 Distortion Pedal (all in Drop D tuning)
18:43 Metal chugging riff
18:58 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
19:10 Hardcore punk riff
19:25 Thrash metal riff
19:36 My thoughts
20:29 First impressions out of the box
20:48 Weight
21:10 Setup and the vibrato bridge
21:55 Build quality and hardware
23:09 Playability and neck
23:43 Sounds and versatility
26:03 What’s the competition for the AZES40?
27:51 My conclusions on this guitar
29:47 Thanks and goodbye
Check out the AZES31 too, it’s awesome: bit.ly/IbanezAZES31rwm
My setup was as follows: I ran the AZES40 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, using my Greer Lightspeed for the overdrive and my Revv G3 for the heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.
Here’s some links to those bits of gear:
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H&K Black Spirit 200 head: bit.ly/HKBS200rwm
Greer Lightspeed: bit.ly/GreerLightspeedRWM
Revv G3: bit.ly/RevvG3RWM
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!): bit.ly/Scarlett414RWM
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Enjoy!
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Backing music from the RU-vid Audio Library: Duck In The Alley - TrackTribe.
#Ibanez #IbanezGuitars #IbanezAZES
*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*
@IbanezOfficial
7 апр 2022