Ibanez Prestige

review
IBANEZ AZ PRESTIGE & PREMIUM SERIES IBANEZ AZ PRESTIGE & PREMIUM SERIES
92
Guitarist auGust 2018
the Alter switch heading south we have:
neck humbucker, inner slug coils of both
in parallel, both humbuckers, outer screw
coils of both in parallel and, lastly, bridge
humbucker. In the upper position the
Alter switch offers us ‘tap’ mode. Here
‘Power Taps’ are used on the humbucker
selections (neck, both and bridge). Ibanez
tells us that the “Power Tap uses one single
coil plus a low signal from the other single
coil.” However, the DCR measurement
doesn’t change in this mode so it’s not a
coil-split, partial-tap or parallel linkage
of the two coils: the more ‘single coil-like’
sound appears to be achieved with a passive
RC (resistor and capacitor) filter on one
single coil that uses small surface mount
components placed on a PCB that’s fixed
to the five-way switch. The in-between
positions in this ‘tap’ mode voice the neck’s
slug coil and then the bridge’s screw coil.
Components differ too: the Premium
guitars use the smaller body Alpha 500k
pots; the Prestige’s are full-size plus we get
a full foil screen on the HSS scratchplate,
the Premium’s foil is just around the
control area. All have conductive paint in
the cavities, however, and switches appear
identical on both. The volume controls have
a treble bleed capacitor (330picofarad); the
tone capacitor is 0.022microfarad.
One final performance consideration is
the placement of the output jack – on the
guitar’s side, by the lower wide flange strap
button, and angled so you thread your lead
through your strap to secure it more easily.
There’s a considerable price difference
between the Prestige and Premium models
and that’s not just the construction costs
of the different countries. There’s also
the different woods and pickups and as
IBANEZ PRESTIGE AZ2402-TFF £1,779 (inc case)
CONTACT Headstock Distribution PHONE [phone] WEB www.ibanez.com
3. Playing with Gotoh’s
SG381 and the post
heights can be a bit
fiddly but it’ll be worth it
when it’s bang on
4. You’ll need to practise
a lot to uncover all the
different nuances of
the Ibanez/Seymour
Duncan Hyperion HH
pickups on the AZ2402-
TFF
3
4
GIT435.rev_ibanez.indd 92 14/06/2018 19:31