Review - Ibanez 25h Anniversary Edition S1XXV

What up good people. A blog on request here from SwopCovers on our YouTube channel - remember if you want our opinion on any gear we'll check it out and let you know what we think! On with today's review though - the Ibanez S1XXV (£450)

What we have here is a truly different guitar. Ibanez are rather good at making unique looking guitars - anyone familiar with the Steve Vai signature range will know this all too well. These special editions are no exception  so lets take a closer look and see what we're really playing with.

Body & Neck - Solid mahogany body with Ibanez's Wizard III maple neck which looks pretty thing so you'll be able to get up some good speed. Jumbo frets as well and a handy 24 of them. Something that you will have noticed as well - this guitar comes with florescent strings and a florescent paint job on the body and the headstock. Its all personal preference but I can't say I'm a fan. For me, it's just going to get annoying having a glow-in-the-dark guitar and to be perfectly honest with you I think you'll look at it one day and think "why the heck did I buy this?". The strings though are nothing to worry about as you can easily change them to a nicer set and to be honest the paint will quickly come off them anyway.

Pickups & tone - maybe the reason you bought this guitar is then simply because of its tone. And there you certainly have a decent point - this guitar has that 'Ibanez' sound. The mahogany body and maple neck work brilliantly with Ibanez's Infinity pick up series in. You've got two humbuckers and a single coil to play with - more is better? I'll leave that up to you, but the INF pickups are at the heart of Ibanez's S series so they can't be too shabby. In my opinion though they lack some clarity and punch and are too bottom endy so they'll get lost when you start cranking an amp. If you're a beginner/intermediate player they'll do you great but I think it won't be long before you're going to want to look at putting a Dimarzio, Duncan or EMG in there. Like I say though its all personal preference and a lot will depend on what you play and the amp you're plugging into.

Bridge - a locking tremolo system here, not an actual Floyd bridge but a good tremolo nonetheless. This bridge is pretty highly regarded and from what I can see it stays in tune fairly well. It also has the added advantage of being altered to a floating trem if you so desire. Also you can easily adjust the tension of the springs without an operation worthy of a master surgeon. The guitar sustains pretty nice too from what've heard.

Overall? - this guitar ain't my cup of tea if you want my honest opinion. I'm not an Ibanez found, they've always sounded a bit fake to me. BUT what I say is far from the bottom line and you need to try this guitar before you buy it (as you should with any really). I should also say having never actually played this guitar I'm by no means a good judge but having checked the specs and heard it plenty on videos this is my honest opinion. I'd rate it 6/10.

One last thing - this is a great review from Rob Chapman (review of the RG1XXV as well) - Its a great laugh to watch as well even if you're not thinking of buying this axe.

Any questions just drop a comment below or on one of our videos. Thanks for reading as ever

Peace, Linus

Cheap & Cheerful SS Amps for under £100 - Bargain!

Now then. Hello all. Having read the title of this blog you may be thinking one of two things:

"£100? For an amp? Well it'll be terrible!!" 

Or

"I've never heard of them before, I want a Marshall, everyone uses Marshall, so they'll be better than everything else, end of" 

However I'm here to tell you all that, even if you're an advance player looking for a portable bedroom/practice amp, help is at hand, oh yes! Here are my top 3 cheap and cheerful less than £100 SS (this stands for solid state by the way, i.e. there are no valves/tubes to worry about) combo amps! These are in particular order it should be said.

Orange Crush Series - the one over in the picture is the 30w version. I own a 15w version from the previous series (still called the crush) and I couldn't believe how 'real' it sounded! Having heard plenty of Jim's Tiny Terror I thought Orange would struggle to get a sound even half as good - sure enough they have done. Its an 8" speaker inside the wicked orange casing. One thing I love about this little amp is, unlike a lot of SS small amps, it really has some character and life to it. Sure it doesn't have the same kind of clarity and texture of a tube amp, but when its up towards 11 it still sounds amazing. The cleans are really pretty vibrant and with a little bit of overdrive you can dial in a sweet 'classic' rock tone. Couple of other nice features - its got a solid back but a small hole so you can threat the power cable in so its not hanging out. Nice and light and if you're playing on single coils it sounds brilliant - top amp this one. Kudos Orange.

Crate FW Series - another one I own (but its the 65w version) which is really rather impressive. The one on your right is the baby of the series, the 15w version First off its so simple to use. You've got 2 channels (clean and overdrive) with a volume, high, mid, and low tone gages. Along with that you've got a really handy headphone socked for when you want to still play but your neighbours have been round to tell you to pack it in. 8" speaker again in this one with an open back for a couple of leads and a pedal or two. In terms of sound? Well the 3 band EQ gives you a nice variety of tones. The cleans are good and bottom end'y so if you want to run a distortion pedal infront of the amp, you'll still have a nice beefy sound (that is one drawback of the orange above - it can get a little aggressive in the top-end). What about the overdrive? That's got a really good tone to it as well for a SS. Lovely little amp to have tucked in the corner of your bedroom for when you wanna do a little practice - probably don't carry it out with you at a big gig though - it might get a little scared! 

Roland Cube XL Series - we're looking at the 15w version here because you can get one for under £100. I've played on this one a couple of times in shops and it's so awesome I actually spent a lot of time (where I was trying out guitars), playing with the amp! This one is a little bit more 'gismo'ed up' compared with the others so its a fraction more expensive £85ish. You've got a huge variety of tones and the 'select' button on the electrics allows you to chose from 4 different overdrive/distortion tones. I shall admit the 'extreme' tone is rather nasty, but the rest sound pretty reasonable given the price. Its seriously sturdy (albeit its not much of a looker) and the main thing is you've got a huge variety of tones. Only drawback I would say is that in comparison with particularly the orange, its not as loud. But I suppose when you're just practising that's actually an advantage as oppose to an issue. 

So there you go! Proof you don't need to spend big money on big names to get a decent sound! Any questions just post below and I'll get back to you. 

Peace, Linus

1 Year Anniversary

A fairly short blog this week but nevertheless an extremely important one for Jim, Adam and I.

We've now been in the virtual world for almost a year to the day and for us its been a lot of and actually, pretty successful. Up on youtube we've made a lot of progress. From 1 video this time last year, we've gone to 24. Up there we've got 15 detailed and HQ reviews of pedals including BOSS's famous DS-1 and EHX's Big Muff. Also we've produced several vlogs and tutorials along with some videos showing the production of my band's latest single.

On the blog I've covered a wide variety of topics and have learnt a bit doing some investigations and research of my own to tell you good people.

All in all its been pretty good fun for us and we've racked up an amazing 60,000 views in 12 months which works out at someone viewing one of our videos once every 10 minutes. Along with that we've hit 164 subs (as I'm writing this) which is awesome for us.

What's to come? Well more reviews, more blogs, more tutorials and hopefully some new ideas. So all that is left is to say a massive thank you to everyone who has viewed any of our videos or read this blog. We didn't really set out with any ambitions so its all a bonus for us.

And on that note I wish you Happy Easter!

Peace, Linus