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Ibanez AWS 1000 ECE Electro Acoustic Guitar

 

Review of the Ibanez AWS 1000 by The Man in the Jar 

This is an immediately attractive instrument, well-crafted from a selection of nice quality woods. 

Features of the Ibanez AWS 1000  

Tuners - Sealed gold Grovers with attractive brown pearl plastic knobs. These worked smoothly. 

Headstock - The simple paddle-shaped headstock is essentially part of the one-piece mahogany neck. This is faced with what looks like a rosewood veneer. The trussrod cover also looks like rosewood. 

Nut - The white Ivorex nut abuts the fretboard and is well-finished.

Neck - The mahogany neck is essentially a one-piece through its length, although the heel is formed using another two pieces of mahogany. As expected from Ibanez the neck is slim, comfortable and easy to play.  

Fretboard - The lovely ebony fretboard has been left free of fret markers and this makes for a luxuriously elegant look. The fretboard is bound in what looks like maple and the ebony and maple are separated by a pinstripe detailing. The maple binding carries small black dot position markers for the convenience of the player.   

Frets - The 20 thin profile frets are nicely finished.

Action - Set medium low from the box. Ibanez have thoughtfully provided a spare bridge saddle in case you want to experiment with a lower action.

Body - Dreadnought-sized with a single cutaway. The top is made from solid sitka spruce and the back and sides from solid mahogany. The body is bound front and back with the maple and pinstripe combination and the front is edged with a pinstriped edge of mahogany. The soundhole rosette is a circle of attractive rainbow abalone with a thin inner ring of mahogany. All in all a very pretty guitar, although there is some unusual "mid-air" bracing visible through the soundhole.

Bridge - The rosewood bridge holds an Ivorex saddle which is compensated at the second string and specially strengthened bridge pins. The design of the bridge is called "Ramparts". This is because there are little slots cut in front of each string as it leaves the saddle. This is to give you scope to drop the action as far as you choose without interference from the bridge. 

Pickup - The B-Band A5T preamp is fed by an UST (under saddle transducer).

Controls - The control panel sits on the upper edge of the body and incorporates a rather nifty onboard tuner which mutes the output whilst turned on. Five slider controls take care of Volume, Presence, Treble, Mid and Bass boost and cut. There's a button to reverse Phase in case of general feedback problems and a Notch Filter with rotary controls for Depth and Frequency to zap specific feedback-prone frequencies.

Pickguard - Although it looks like there is no scratchplate there is in fact a teardrop-shaped guard made from thin transparent plastic.

Strap-buttons - Two monster-sized strap buttons make this guitar very safe on the strap. One is on the bottom of the guitar, one is behind the heel.

Output - There's a standard jack and an XLR output in the bottom of the body set in a black plastic panel that also holds the battery compartment.

Finish - This instrument is very nicely finished considering it is of Chinese manufacture.

Accessories - Spare bridge saddle and bridge pin.

 

Sound of the Ibanez AWS 1000

Acoustically the AWS is lush and well balanced with nice droning mids and the depth of tone that comes with the dreadnought sizing. When I ran the guitar through a clean amplifier I found I needed to boost the onboard Bass EQ somewhat to achieve a similar amplified sound. Slightly cutting the Mid and leaving Treble and Presence flat gave me exactly the sound I was looking for. The Notch Filters weren't too intrusive on the tone and although they aren't immediately intuitive to use a leaflet enclosed with the guitar gives a step by step account of how to set them up.   

 

Overall Impressions of the Ibanez AWS 1000

You can safely rest your buying decision on looks alone because the AWS1000 delivers in all the other areas; amplified sound, unamplified sound, build quality, playability and quality of materials. This guitar will be a pleasure to own, look at, hold and play.

Buy the Ibanez AWS 1000

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