The latest in the series of Paul Gilbert's Ibanez signature models and probably the most "Paul" of them all. Paul's crazy ingenuity, some pictures of Ibanez's classic Iceman model and lots of play in photoshop ended up with this quirky and personal guitar named Fireman (there's nothing wrong with humor in the Gilbert camp).
The guitar is different from the Paul Gilbert models that came before, a different mic setup, a different sound and a totally different playing experience. Despite its odd shape, the guitar is extremely well balanced both when playing standing and sitting.
The guitar is equipped with three DiMarzio PG-13 mini-humbuckers.
The pickups are far from high-output pickups, here we are talking dynamics, more dynamics and TON in capital letters. The pickups are finely tuned to Gilbert's playing style with a lower adjusted center pickup (further from the strings) so that it does not get in the way of plectrum playing. Therefore, the center pickup has more output than the stall and neck pickups, an ingenious solution.
The pickups are connected as you would expect on a 5-position switch with one tone and one volume.
The body is built entirely in Okoume and with a 3-part Okoume/Maple neck that is glued into the body. The transition between neck and body is extremely smooth and access to the highest frets is no problem either when playing standing or sitting. Despite the entire guitar being in Okoume and the relatively large body, it is far from as heavy as you might think.
A model that just has to be tried and far from a guitar aimed only at Gilbert fans.
- 3-piece FRM Okoume/Maple set-in neck.
- Body in Okoume.
- Bound Ebony fretboard w/White dot inlay.
- 22 bands.
- Gibraltar Performer stable.
- Quik Change III string holder.
- DiMarzio PG-13 (H) neck pickup.
- DiMarzio PG-13 (H) middle pickup.
- DiMarzio PG-13 (H) bridge pickup.
- Chrome hardware.
- Comes with gig bag.
The neck:
- Scale: 628mm/24.75".
- Width at the saddle: 43mm.
- Width at last strap: 57mm.
- Thickness at 1 strap: 22mm.
- Thickness at 12 bands: 24mm.
- Radius: 305mmR.