Ibanez AM93ME-NT

Bought this a year ago and the first impression was that I can’t get this thing adjustet well enough! The tune-o-matic bridge had to take to extremes to get the fine tuning done.

Finally took it to my luthier and he did a marvellous job. I asked him to level the frets, sand the fret ends and to make a bone nut to it. After that the guitar is a totally different beast. After what he did, I swapped the tuners (the originals were just crap) and put a Baggs piezo bridge on it too. Well, now it is not a 749 EUR guitar anymore! 😁👍

The core of the guitar is great but be prepared to make these steps to it to turn it to a decent instrument.

This is my first hollow body guitar. I've wanted one for a while and was checking out several brands including PRS SE (lost me on the Chinese lack of quality), The Dangelico DC (Felt kind of dead sounding) and finally my go to Ibanez.

This is my 10th Ibanez guitar I've ever owned, and I own 4 Ibanez guitar including this one right now. Ibanez was always on point when it comes to quality, but that's only when you buy the Japanese instruments as with the Indonesian guitars it's a bit of a different story.

The Indonesian factory delivers a mix bag or quality, and this guitar is not exception, but this one is on the good side.

The good:
-Overall built quality, the Makassar ebony body looks great in pictures but even better in person.
-The neck is one of the most comfortable "chunky" necks I've played. It reminds me of a Telecaster in a way.
-The pickups are the same pickups you get in the higher end Japanese guitars, so that's an A++ for this one.
-The rest of the electronics are also solid, the knobs on the pots are amazing.
-Ergonomics: this is not a full sized hollow body like an ES335 or an Epiphone dot or Sheraton, which in this guitar's case is a huge plus for people like me who are used to the size of regular guitars like RG's Strats and Les Pauls.
-Play-ability is nothing short of what you'd expect from the brand.
-Sound is also up there with anything built at the Fujigen plant in Japan, this is a 500$ guitar with a 5000$ sound as far as I'm concerned.

Now the bad:
*Keep in mind that this is a 800$ guitar with great pickups and great wood work, so cuts had to be made somewhere.
-The hardware is cheap, I'm talking China levels of cheap:
Machine heads are no brand almost aliexpress levels of cheap, so is the bridge and tail piece, so the first upgrade I would do is to change out that hardware for something a bit better like Gotoh or Graphtec.
The fretwork is OKAY, but nothing to right home about, the fret edges stick out just a little bit that you feel them very well when you run your fingers on the side of the neck, but not to the point of cutting into your fingers.
Inlays are just as well, you can see places where the routed slot is larger than the inlay and they just used glue to fill the gaps. They are nice and smooth, but don't expect top luthier craftsmanship.

In conclusion: the AS93 is a value for money jazz/blues/rock/ambient machine. You can tell that Ibanez knew what to save when making it as pretty much all of the problems that you can have with this guitars can simply be fixed with a simple hardware upgrade that you can do at home without having to pay a professional.
I can safely recommend this to anyone buying their first hollow body on a budget. With a simple hardware update this guitar will play and sound even better.

This instrument is used for home playing, mostly.

Required tweaking the set-up on arrival.

It is a stunning looking guitar with good sound and versatile humbuckers. It is easy to play once you have got used to the higher string gauge of 010 - 052. I play mostly blues and rock. Will cover most styles of music but not the heavy stuff.

It did arrive with some bad scratches just above the pick-guard under the 1st and 2nd strings and so fortunately are not easily seen. There are also a few tiny spots on the back which you need to strain to see. Neither of the previous mentioned imperfections effect the playability of the guitar.

I would buy this guitar again. However it has a hiked price due to the use of Maccaser Ebony for the body and although stunning there are equivalent models which cost less.
Great looking and playable guitar. A nice introduction to the hollowbody type guitar and sound

The combination of woods, built, and electronics make for an amazingly responsive and phat instrument at heart. The money you pay goes to all the right places on this one, and where corners are cut, you can live with it cause it plays and sounds profoundly good for what you pay. not recommended if you like 'twang'. It's low-mid meaty and with a slight well colored grit. needs much more careful handling than solid bodied guitars.