Its worth a quick review on Ibanez itself, now known widely and used by highly skilled guitarists like Joe Satriani, Herman Li, Pual Stanley, and Tosin Abasi. The company was founded in 1957 by Hoshino Gakki in Nagoya, Japan—although its origins reach all the way back to 1908 when the Hoshino Gakki Company was the instrument branch of a bookstore by the name of Hoshino Shoten. The Ibanez name first appeared in 1929, but the company’s unique style as we know it today didn’t take form until 1957.
During the early 1990s, Ibanez released the JEM and Universe models, thanks to a friendly collaboration with guitarist Steve Vai. Soon thereafter, the RG series was released as a cheaper alternative to the JEM.
In 1997, Ibanez decided to begin contributing seriously to the budget guitar industry with its release of the GIO series (which replaced its predecessor, the Cimar). Today there are 10 guitars in the GIO line, which are all available for reasonable prices.
Most of the guitars in the GIO line are similar in a lot of ways, but the GRX70QA sticks out as being a particularly versatile instrument—and its looks are classic and show well on any stage.
The GRX70QA —which we’ll just call the GRX from now on, for brevity’s sake—was introduced in 2011. Its constructed in China and Indonesia with a poplar body and quilted maple art grain top. Poplar is a less expensive tonewood, known for being similar to alder but with a bump in the midrange response.
Overall, poplar is similar to basswood in the sense that it’s quite soft which leaves it susceptible to dents and dings. The body’s quilted maple top is gorgeous, with a shimmery texture that looks great on stage, and it comes in black, red, green, and blue transparent sunburst finishes.
Note this is a budget friendly guitar so if you put side by side with a top end guitar you will notice the GRX's notice clear finish being slightly duller and subdued.
The guitar’s scale length is 25.5”, which is typical of leading guitar lines like Fender.
The GRX neck is made of maple and has a rosewood fretboard with pearl dot inlays. Maple and rosewood necks are very common due to their great tone response. The neck contributes some warmth and nice overtones to the guitar’s overall tone and adds some presence to the midrange.
The neck is thin and smooth and has medium-sized frets, and it’s overall very comfortable and fast to play as Ibanez is known for. The stock action does tend to be a bit low, with common complaints about fret buzz.
The stock pickups in production years 2011-2014 were Powersound pickups, which have passive ceramic ferrite magnets.
These magnets provide a raw, punchy sound, as compared to the clear, bell-like tone that may come from other pickups, such as Alnico 5’s. From neck to bridge, the pickups used are the PSND1, PSND-S, and PSND2.
In 2015, the GIO line switched to Infinity pickups. These are passive ceramic pickups, with Infinity R in bridge and Infinity RS in the neck.
The pickups’ arrangement with the 5-way selector switch is also interesting, as positions 2 and 4 both split the humbuckers, meaning half the humbucker and the middle single coil will be active simultaneously, rather than the entire humbucker and the single coil being active together. We’ll discuss the pickups more in the “So, how does it sound?” section below.
The hardware on the GRX is good quality for the price. The tuners are non-locking and do detune pretty quickly, which is unfortunate. Other than that, the Fat-6 tremolo bridge is fine, although it feels a tad bit on the cheap side. Heavy tremolo usage will cause extra detuning, but normal usage should be fine. Often guitarists will anchor down the tremolo.
The individually adjustable bridge saddles are a nice touch, and the 5-way pickup selector switch feels quite solid and, as described above, splits the humbuckers in positions 2 and 4. Control wise, the GRX comes with the very basics, just a volume knob and a tone knob. Both seem to work fine, just as volume and tone knobs should.
Reminder this is a budget friendly guitar, so it will not compete with guitars in even a higher price bracket, the Ibanez GRX has a decent sound and a level of quality that a beginning guitarist can appreciate. While the neck feels good in the hand and the body’s quilted maple top looks pretty nice, the pickups noticeably lack some character, however one could upgrade the sound immensely by adding aftermarket pickups.
The Infinity pickups do have some power behind them, especially with the inclusion of double humbuckers, but the single coil is lacking and sounds tinny and thin. All of the pickups lack some harmonic response and sound a bit bland, although they are dynamically responsive and loud.
That said, these pickups are suitable for a
The fact that the body is made of poplar would not be a huge problem in and of itself, but when paired with the cheap pickups, the body’s midrange spike becomes extra noticeable and provides a large contrast to the lows and highs. Keep this in mind and depending on your music style, this could be used as a positive or offset by the tone settings on the guitar and pedals.
The GRX is a versatile guitar and can be played well across a variety of different genres, from rock to pop, jazz to country, although the pickup arrangement and slim neck profile suggest that it’s optimized for metal and hard rock.
The neck is quite fast and works well for speedy soloing and the humbuckers are responsive enough to pick up on the finer details, even if the tone it delivers isn’t the greatest.
Overall, I give the Ibanez GRX70QA a rating of: 3.6 out of 5.
Ibanez did some good things with this guitar, by including a humbucker setup, a tremolo bar, and a nice, quick neck, not to mention a sleek body shape with an attractive maple top. Most of the hardware (with the exception of the tuners) seems reliable, and the body shape is nice and comfortable.
However, there are a few negatives in the design that need to be understood.
The pickups are probably the biggest issue—being quite cheap ceramics—and produce a tone that is quite thin and harmonically uninteresting. The midrange has too much of a strong boost thanks to both the poplar body tonewood and the pickups’ ceramic magnets.
Correspondingly, the lows lack balance, and the highs are thin and bland. That said, the pickups are not such an enormous problem when it is considered that the GRX (and the whole GIO line, for that matter) is intended for new guitar players.
Beginners just don’t need high-end pickups—a concept that shows in this guitar.
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I got a trem socket damage model otherwise like new at $125 delivered. It is easily a $125 value, since I blocked the tremolo steel block anyway, so no trem use. A cutting die might replace the damaged threads if you want it. To me, it is versatile, needs the nut slots deepened by a skilled person and pickup height/angle touched a bit to make it sound and play best. Tuners are not bad, but nothing special and need the knobs snugged up and lubrication where the knobs turn on the shafts. But it is well-made and neat and I shimmed the rear of the neck pocket with 1 business card of cardboard to make the action drop 1/32" inch to perfect (2/32" at fret 12 gap). Frets were clean and the board (rosewood) can use a wipe of fretboard oil. 1-piece maple neck is nice and I replaced the strap button washers with better felt ones. For $125 delivered... if you can do basic setup work and have the tools (I do), this is a very good value: light, plays fast, sounds pretty good into a Princeton Reverb, and can always be sold off to get most all my money easily. With a used set of pickups (even 2 good Artec humbuckers), this is NOT a shabby guitar. Cheap and basic, but a quality guitar for VERY cheap ca$h. Don't sneer and walk away... some guys can do a lot with a cheap H S H fairly good guitar.
I broke the nut. Does it has a ready replacement for TUSQ XL Nuts? Any link will be useful.