- Excellent beginner guitar
- Very high consistency with the build quality
- Possibly one of the best beginners' guitars
- Extremely versatile HSH configuration
- At this price tag, tremolo is not really needed
Hello there and welcome back to the review series with another killer value-for-money electric guitar from many years ago. Also, I believe it will stay the same in the following years: Ibanez GRG170DX! As you know, Ibanez has been well known for its edgy, modern and super-strat style electric guitars for decades. For most people, the Ibanez brand equals RG model electric guitars, which are very unique in the guitarists’ world.
Table of Contents
About Ibanez
For those who have never heard of the Ibanez brand, here’s a quick introduction. Ibanez is a Japanese guitar brand owned by the Hoshino Gakki company in Nagoya, Japan. Formerly known as Hoshino Shoten, the company began as a bookstore in Japan that also sold sheet music in 1908. They quickly started selling musical instruments under the Hoshino Gakki company and also importing guitars made by a Spanish luthier, Salvador Ibanez. In 1957, they decided to use Ibanez as the brand name, thus becoming one of the biggest musical instrument companies in the world. Just like many other huge guitar brands in the early stages, Ibanez also didn’t have a factory of their own in the beginning and acted as a guitar trading company. Fender was also in the same situation until the company was sold to CBS, as well, and Gibson had a similar relationship with its parent company, Chicago Musical Instruments.
Interestingly, this was true for Ibanez until a much more recent era. Around the mid-60s, the Fujigen factory, which was manufacturing guitars for Ibanez, had grown rapidly, and in 1965, the company built a new factory in Matsumoto. During the 60s, it was one of the first guitar and musical instrument companies that made a massive impact in the USA and Europe with its clone guitars (which is called the lawsuit era). They eventually created guitar designs that are considered classics today.
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Short History of Ibanez RG Guitars
As Gibson brought suit against Ibanez due to their clone guitars, Hoshino Gakki did not want to fight against it, as the company could be in the same situation not just with Gibson but also with other guitar manufacturers. This era was the triggering moment for Ibanez to take a look at the company’s long-term ambition in the guitar business. Through the 70s, Ibanez worked with various artists who featured Ibanez’s original designs, such as Paul Stanley, Steve Miller, George Benson and Bob Weir. However, moving forward with the 80s shredders era, they still had issues with their brand identity. What Ibanez wanted was someone like Eddie Van Halen, and what he did for the Kramer brand. Ibanez had already worked with legendary guitar players such as Lee Ritenour, Joe Pass, Steve Lukather and Alan Holdsworth, but the company was missing a rockstar image that could boost the brand’s identity.
After having long discussions and meetings, they decided to go to Steve Vai! Vai was already getting a lot of attention when he joined Frank Zappa at the age of 20 years old. Later, he replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz and also released his debut album. Around 1985, he joined David Lee Roth’s band, taking giant steps into the rock music scene. Vai was already cooperating with other guitar brands such as Kramer and Yamaha, but his customisation needs were usually neglected, and he ended up with pretty much the same standard models that these companies manufactured with some tweaks for him. 
Ibanez eventually managed to contact Steve Vai and got his attention, and their cooperation, which changed the guitar designs profoundly, had just started! Legendary luthier Mace Bailey at Ibanez made prototypes for Steve Vai based on his input and came up with the JEM design, which would later give birth to the legendary RG series. When the JEM design was first introduced to the masses at the NAMM show, it completely blew away the audience and got praised as the ultimate alternative guitar design to actually buying a custom-made guitar.
Due to excellent sales figures, Ibanez also came up with the RG550, a JEM design but without the edgy aesthetics of the original Vai design. Since then, RG design guitars have been released with additional variations throughout the years. As you can understand, one can easily trace RG’s roots back to these modern and edgy guitar designs that rocked the world. The Ibanez RG series is now considered one of the most distinct and unique guitar designs of all time and is praised as a classic series. Just like your Stratocasters, Les Pauls or Teles. 
A Short History: Ibanez JEM & RG by 5 Watt World
If you want to know more about all these cool details and the history of Ibanez RG guitars, I suggest you check out the “A Short History: Ibanez JEM & RG” video by 5 Watt World. There are so many cool things you can learn from this channel!
Ibanez GRG170DX
Even though its price range is a bit higher for the lowest budget electric guitars, it’s been the best-selling electric guitar in my country, and I witnessed this during my service in the musical instruments industry! I believe this has been due to its price not being so much higher than a not-so-well-known guitar brand and its value for money. 
I would say it comes in 99.5% perfect condition and does not require much initial care and set-up, plus it provides a wide variety of sounds thanks to its humbucker – single-humbucker + 5-way switch RG wiring. Before we have a look at the tech specs and review the instrument, let’s hear the sound it can produce. This short video was one of the first videos that we made back in the day. The first demo I had with this guitar features our test room equipment, which is a Rode VideoMic Pro and a Marshall AVT50 amp + an old Boss SD-2.
Test Room Video (no talking)
It is reported that Ibanez’s RG model was released in 1987, and it is one of the best-selling super strat guitars in the world. It is shaped in a classic RG body form and comes with an HSH pickup combination. It also features a basswood body with a maple GRG-style neck and bound rosewood fingerboard with bindings. Here’s the longer video that we recorded with a Marshall JVM205C valve amp + Shure SM57 microphone.
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Sound Demo (no talking)
Let’s have a look at the tech specs and then talk about the guitar.
Tech Specs
| Ibanez GRG170DX | Tech Specs |
|---|---|
| Neck | GRG Maple neck |
| Body | Basswood (Mahogany???) body |
| Fretboard | Bound Rosewood |
| Frets | Jumbo Frets - 24 |
| Bridge | FAT-10 Tremolo Bridge |
| Neck Pickup | Infinity R (H) Neck |
| Middle Pickup | Infinity RS (S) Middle |
| Bridge Pickup | Infinity R (H) Bridge |
| Hardware | Chrome |
As mentioned above, this guitar has always been ready to play out of the box. It comes with a D’Addario 9-42 string set on a 24-fret fretboard, which makes this a natural shred machine. Bending is so easy, and overall performance is without any hassle. As you can see from the table above, I have marked the body material with question marks because Ibanez’s website tells us it has a mahogany body. To be honest, I don’t believe it has a mahogany body; instead, it has always been a basswood body. I suspect that not many people can just spot the body wood of an electric guitar just by hearing it. It mostly occurs to us that using mahogany in the body makes the guitars a lot heavier than basswood ones, most of the time. So I also can not be 100% sure. Maybe you can contact Ibanez and ask. But I remember having seen basswood written on Ibanez’s website.
If you’re into hard rock, metal, and shred stuff and want to start playing right away, I would definitely recommend the Ibanez GRG170DX electric guitar. I would not like to encourage you to use its standard tremolo as if it were a Floyd Rose bridge tough 🙂 Tremolo bars on most entry- to mid-budget electric guitars are not so useful and will cause tuning problems, in my opinion. So don’t need to comment on that much. Instead, I would just tighten the springs on the back of the guitar and make it almost like a fixed-bridge guitar. 
Pricing & Availability
Ibanez GRG170DX has been around for ages, and it’s still going strong! Ibanez has been manufacturing this model with slight spec changes throughout the years. And they have managed to keep its price tag relatively low for an even more competitive guitar market. In recent years, the company released the silver finish option, too, so you don’t have to stick to the all-black version! 🙂
Check out the Ibanez GRG170DX on Thomann here
You may also want to check out Reverb for the used as well as the brand new listings.
Check out the Ibanez GRG170DX on Reverb here
Last but not least, you may want to check out Amazon, as they may have some stores listing these models from time to time.
Check out the Ibanez GRG170DX on Amazon here
Hopefully, it’s been a clear, open review for you and helps you make up your mind about one of the best value-for-money RG-style Ibanez electric guitars. Any questions? Reach out to me via the contact section. See you in the next review!
