Ibanez RGA Prestige...
Beautiful and Deadly

The Ibanez RGA Prestige Series consists of one guitar - the Ibanez RGA420Z. The RGA420Z provides power, sustain, beauty and fabulous playability for the Metal player who demands the best. One of the coolest features of the Ibanez RGA420Z is the arched top(hence the "A" designation) which makes it easy to lay down heavy riffs and power chords without worrying about hitting the top of the guitar and scratching it up. In addition, the RGA420Z's body is lightweight and well contoured which makes it very easy for players to prowl around the stage - we all know that's a favorite performance tactic of Metal players. Let's take a closer look at the features of the Ibanez RGA420Z.

The neck...

The Ibanez RGA Prestige RGA420Z has a potent sound as we'll see as we discuss its features. One of the best features from the perspective of a Metal player is the lightning fast and ultra playable Wizard Prestige HP neck. The neck starts with Ibanez's 5-piece Maple/Walnut construction for superior strength and durability. The Wizard Prestige neck is a shredder's delight due to its thin, wide construction. It has a scale length of 25.5" and is 43mm wide at the nut, 58mm wide at the last fret, 18mm thick at the first fret and 20mm thick at the 12^th. The fingerboard is a dream. To begin with, it's rosewood which produces a nice, dark sound. It continues with jumbo frets which make chording, power riffing and string bending an absolute breeze. On top of that, the fingerboard's radius is 430mm. That's about as flat as it gets. This the stuff that we MetalHeads' dreams are made of.

The Body...

The Ibanez RGA Prestige RGA420Z features a mahogany body for even more dark Metal tone. The body sports a gorgeous AAA Flamed Maple top with the headstock matching it. Adding to the package, as we mentioned above, the body is lightweight and very well contoured which makes it both comfortable and easy to play so that we MetalHead wildmen can make like Angus Young without having to fight the guitar.

The Pickups...

Even with the best neck in the world and the best tonewoods an electric guitar needs great pickups or you've lost all the advantages the construction and materials gave you. The RGA420Z doesn't fall down on the job. Sporting Ibanez's own LZ4 ceramic magnet humbuckers(an LZ4 B at the bridge and an LZ4 N at the neck), the RGA420Z is a screamer. The LZ4's have a wide dynamic range that goes from fat and heavy to bright and loud. In addition, they're active pickups which makes them virtually noiseless. The combination of the body, the neck and the pickups makes this thing a Metal Monster!

The Controls...

Naturally, you need a way to shape and control this Metal beast's sound and tone. The Ibanez RGA Prestige RGA420Z gives you exactly what you need to craft your sound and tone just the way you want it. To begin with, the RGA420Z provides you with black chrome master voulme and tone controls and a black tipped 3-way pickup selector switch. The tonal variations you can get out of this beauty are virtually endless.

The Bridge...

To finish things out we come to the bridge. Everything else can be perfect but if you have a crappy bridge you're shot down. A crappy bridge will not only destroy your tone and sustain but the guitar won't stay in tune for more than a few seconds. Ibanez doesn't let you down here, either. They are famous for their innovative and fantastic bridges. They've endowed the RGA420Z with their Edge Zero bridge, the newest of their knife-edge tremolo bridge designs.



The Edge Zero features both locking studs and their ZPS3 spring system which allows you to pull off the most radical tremolo gymnastics without knocking the guitar out of tune.

In addition, the Edge Zero features an onboard intonation screw that makes adjusting your intonation on the fly a breeze. All you have to do is unscrew the intonation tool from the base, loosen the locking studs(you can see from the picture of the bridge that the locking studs are offset from the strings so you don't have to remove the strings to loosen them), screw the tool into the bottom of each saddle, adjust the intonation, tighten the locking studs and you're done. Slick, eh?

So there you have it. The Ibanez RGA420Z is a beautiful, super sounding, superbly playing Metal monster. What more could you ask for?