Guitar Review: Ibanez SV5470F NBL

When I saw this instrument on the rack at Andertons Music, in Guildford, I decided to give it a go, because I'd never played an instrument worth more than about £600. This guitar had a sticker on it that said "Reduced: £1400 - £1099"... At first I was sceptical, but I was assured by staff that the only problems were cosmetic. There were one or two very minor scratches that you can only see from very close up. It was also the demo model that was out on the shop floor... All in all though, practically zero fret wear and minimal signs of use. I plugged in, and had nothing but fun for about 20 minutes.

For me, it has the perfect feature list. Skinny neck, massive frets, carbon nut, locking tuners, no pointy bits to bang on things, pickup versatility and a non-locking fully floating trem (which you can lock to the body if you want to). Read on for more...



Playing
The SV5470 is truly a dream to play. That feature list sums up why this could be a perfect fit for a great number of players. Plus it played and sounded great in the shop. After a month of playing on this machine I noticed I was doing things that were simply out of reach on my old Mexican Strat. The speed of that matt finished, Prestige Wizard neck and the jumbo frets really mean that the whole playing experience is simply easier on your hands.

One of the main bonuses for me was that it had those extra three frets. I'm a big fan of rock and metal styels and with my old Mexican Strat only having 21 frets I found myself running out of fretboard when coming up against the solos from the likes of Metallica and Joe Satriani. The two octave neck is a great bonus, but particular attention needs to be paid to the string and action set up or you could be in for some dodgy notes down at the widdly-widdly end of the board.

Pickups & Sounds
Mounted directly to the body of the guitar in an HSH configuration, we have pickups of Ibanez' own design. The two Humbuckers are True Duo Blast, TDB2 and TDB3 and the single coil in the middle position is a Short Tracer, ST2. The system is designed for maximum tonal versatility. The True Duo Blast pickups are designed to have a true humbucker and a true single coil in a single pickup. This means you can get sparkly Strat single coil tones and those darker humbucker tones at the flick of a switch. That switch is a push-pull volume pot, and switches between the single and humbucking tones.

The sounds are definitely there. The pickups are quite high output, but with a great range of volume roll off, so you can get all the way from smooth blues to some pretty extreme metal tones. The overall character is bright though, so some tweaking of the tone knob is advised. Tweaking away, you really can get close to those real Strat single coil sounds too and the single coil of the neck pickup has a really great character.

Negatives?
With all these features I had been thinking "Best guitar ever!", but it's not without its foibles. The pickup selector five way blade seems to be an unorthodox design that occasionally sticks or can go loose if adjusted incorrectly. The bridge appears to stick a little under heavy vibrato use and heavy string bend based music. It's nothing a bit of "nut sauce" won't help fix, but it leaves you wondering why Ibanez would design such a beautiful floating, non-locking bridge system and not address the issues that plague many other designs.

What else is out there?
Looking at recent HSH guitar designs, I think only a few can come close to the versatility and playability of this guitar or it's locking bridged sibling, the Ibanez S5470. I would like very much to get my hands on a Suhr Modern, and the imminent Guthrie Govan Charvel to compare notes though, as I assume from reading reviews of both they are superb. Maybe there's an ESP/LTD out there that I've missed too...

You think I'm biased?
Well you might be right, you might not. But I've had this guitar on my wall since 2012, and I've not found another guitar for similar money that meets my needs and my play style quite like this does. As such, this is still my favourite guitar and probably will be for some time into the future.