Guitar
Ibanez JEM 7VP
The JEM7V for the rest of us. These are part of Ibanez’ Indonesian-made Premium Line. This is a great recording guitar; it’s as comfortable as anything, the original Edge tremolo is terrific for expression, and the Evolution pickups were designed to work with modern signal processing techniques.
Ibanez JS1000
In my view, one of the all time classic guitar designs. It’s incredibly light and comfortable, and the neck is, in my opinion, the best Strat-style neck ever made, including Fender guitars. Although Joe himself mostly seems to play the 24-fret models these days, this version looks cooler and, importantly, was far less expensive.
Solar A1.8C
Eight-string guitar with an Evertune bridge and Duncan Solar pickups. The Evertune is amazing for maintaining intonation everywhere on the neck at once, which makes this a perfect instrument for low, distorted rhythm. It has a beautiful satin finish on the set neck, making it surprisingly easy to play despite the giant fretboard and 27-inch scale length.
This thing weighs a metric ton.
Ibanez S540FM
The classic Ibanez S-shape before they kind of ruined it trying to turn the Sabre into a 24-fret guitar. The S is extremely comfortable with the straightest neck and lowest action of pretty much anything. This one has a FRED in the bridge position and a stacked humbucker in the middle because the original single coil was pretty noisy. I got this secondhand for a song back when Ibanez was at its least fashionable.
Ibanez ARZ800
One of the relatively few Ibanez guitars with active EMGs, in the classic setup of an EMG81 in the bridge and EMG60 in the neck position. This model doesn’t have a great reputation as one of the early Chinese models, but it looks great, plays great and sounds great. It’s like a Les Paul, but the pickups are pure Metallica, it has a superior 25.5″ scale length, and also the headstock tends to stay attached.
BASS
Ibanez SRX700
Extremely dependable through-neck bass with active pickups. This model doesn’t appear to have been as popular as the regular Soundgear bass line, but it’s very versatile and appears on pretty much everything I’ve ever recorded.
I’ve had this thing basically forever and have changed the strings on it exactly once