IbanezRG MiKro GRGM21 - Black

I've played the same Fender USA strat since 2011, and I've played it a lot. It's the first thing I would grab if my house was on fire. With that said, I didn't really want anything to replace it, but I wanted something smaller and easier to play in the bedroom and other places that make a smaller form a little more bearable (makes it so much easier to get into those port-o-potties).Anyway, it IS much easier to play in more cramped spaces, BUT, holy crap is this thing fun to play. And it plays GREAT. The feel of it is awesome. The only downsides I have, which aren't enough to care about for me for this guitar, are the neck width (a little small for my hands, but I have big hands), and maybe the dead, bland feel of the wood in this guitar. It's still worth the money, but there's a way that good wood sounds when a guitar vibrates, and this once definitely has zero of that. But that isn't going to affect playability or how it sounds to a degree. And for the money, it's just fine. In fact that's maybe not even fair to gripe about at all with a guitar this cheap.ALL new guitars need a proper setup. It also takes a few hours of playing to get it broken in a little bit. I highly suggest buffing out/polishing the frets (this took the most time, but it made the most difference for me), NEW STRINGS, adjust pickups, adjust truss rod. Besides the fret buffing, bridge pickup being too low, and a little neck relief added, mine was actually in great shape.I also adjusted the bridge saddles a bit to match the radius of the fret board. I am only saying all of the setup stuff because I am seeing a lot of negative comments about this guitar being junk because it plays like crap. It WILL play like crap out of the box. You have to do more than tune it... It's a music instrument. It desperately needs intonation and new strings. Ibanez did this at the factory but that was in China, and it happened many months before it showed up in your hands. It's easy to do, and it will get this guitar up to its potential. I can't believe the build quality of this thing for 150 bucks. I highly recommend it!

I am giving this 5 stars taking in consideration the price point. I purchased this as a practice guitar. My use case is to have an inexpensive decent playing 3/4 size guitar to practice during the day. It's a great chair or couch guitar, even chairs that have arms. No need to pull out a valuable guitar. I can walk around the house and not bang the headstock or body into doorways and so on. For the price point I can't image something better.Like other reviewers, I found tuning stability to be the only significant issue out of the box. Users can try this: Please see the first pic. Once tuned to pitch, tighten to snug the Phillips head screws. This makes the tuners harder to turn. To restring or do maint. loosen the screws and use string winder or whatever. The idea being to not wear out the bushings by keeping them tight and using a string winder for changing strings. Keep them snug tight for minor tuning adjustments then loosen them when doing extreme tension changes. I also used lubricant on the string trees and nut. Red arrows point these places out in the two pics.I included a 3rd pic of the guitar with two of it's full sized brothers also made by Ibanez for size comparison. Out if the box I didn't do much but I did it in this order, not much different from any other new guitar.- Tightened tuning pegs, the only unique thing needed compared to other new guitars.- Lubricated string trees and nut (D'Addario friction remover is an option)- Tweaked the neck relief, not very functional truss rod, but very little really needed. It came good enough for my use case.- Oiled the fingerboad which was quite dry. (F-One Oil is an option)- Polished the frets which were a bit rough. (MusiNomad has a nice kit as an option)- Raised the string height on a couple strings because I couldn't increase the neck relief.- Checked intonation which was good enough out of the box for my use case.I have long respected Ibanez guitars and even more so now. At this price I am very impressed indeed!