This is my first hollow body guitar. I've wanted one for a while and was checking out several brands including PRS SE (lost me on the Chinese lack of quality), The Dangelico DC (Felt kind of dead sounding) and finally my go to Ibanez.
This is my 10th Ibanez guitar I've ever owned, and I own 4 Ibanez guitar including this one right now. Ibanez was always on point when it comes to quality, but that's only when you buy the Japanese instruments as with the Indonesian guitars it's a bit of a different story.
The Indonesian factory delivers a mix bag or quality, and this guitar is not exception, but this one is on the good side.
The good:
-Overall built quality, the Makassar ebony body looks great in pictures but even better in person.
-The neck is one of the most comfortable "chunky" necks I've played. It reminds me of a Telecaster in a way.
-The pickups are the same pickups you get in the higher end Japanese guitars, so that's an A++ for this one.
-The rest of the electronics are also solid, the knobs on the pots are amazing.
-Ergonomics: this is not a full sized hollow body like an ES335 or an Epiphone dot or Sheraton, which in this guitar's case is a huge plus for people like me who are used to the size of regular guitars like RG's Strats and Les Pauls.
-Play-ability is nothing short of what you'd expect from the brand.
-Sound is also up there with anything built at the Fujigen plant in Japan, this is a 500$ guitar with a 5000$ sound as far as I'm concerned.
Now the bad:
*Keep in mind that this is a 800$ guitar with great pickups and great wood work, so cuts had to be made somewhere.
-The hardware is cheap, I'm talking China levels of cheap:
Machine heads are no brand almost aliexpress levels of cheap, so is the bridge and tail piece, so the first upgrade I would do is to change out that hardware for something a bit better like Gotoh or Graphtec.
The fretwork is OKAY, but nothing to right home about, the fret edges stick out just a little bit that you feel them very well when you run your fingers on the side of the neck, but not to the point of cutting into your fingers.
Inlays are just as well, you can see places where the routed slot is larger than the inlay and they just used glue to fill the gaps. They are nice and smooth, but don't expect top luthier craftsmanship.
In conclusion: the AS93 is a value for money jazz/blues/rock/ambient machine. You can tell that Ibanez knew what to save when making it as pretty much all of the problems that you can have with this guitars can simply be fixed with a simple hardware upgrade that you can do at home without having to pay a professional.
I can safely recommend this to anyone buying their first hollow body on a budget. With a simple hardware update this guitar will play and sound even better.
