It is a guitar designed by Steve Vai, to be the ultimate guitar for his personal tastes and idiosyncrasies, and it seems that guitar players all over the world agree that it is the ultimate rock guitar, blending the best features of historical favorites with visionary advancements.In 1985 Steve Vai had just stepped into the most coveted and perhaps the most highly scrutinized position in the guitar world at that time guitarist for David Lee Roth, who had just departed from Van Halen. Now, most of those guitars (and indeed many of the companies) are history, yet the Ibanez Jem guitars have remained as popular and as exciting as ever, a lasting testament to their imagination, practicality, craftsmanship and design. The new headstock shape was very close to the one from Guild but the guys there obviously didn’t care.(The Jem, The Universe, and Me) It seemed like in the 1980’s, a thousand different guitar companies introduced a million different guitars for rock guitarists. with a different headstock shape and also another logo which some called “Rabbit Ears”. Already in 1976, some say even end of 1975, they started producing the Les Paul and SG clones etc. They focused on the dsign of the headstock – the so called “Open Book Headstock” and on the 1977 NAMM show they wanted to take Eleger, the US Ibanez distributor (in between owned by Hoshink Gakki) by surprise, so that Ibanez would have had an empty booth without guitars.īut Elger/Ibanez anticipated this. No wonder Gibson got nervous and wanted to stop this. The models 26 in particular were almost perfect copies of the Les Paul – for a fraction of the price. Most were with bolt-on necks – like this 2350 – but some had set necks and came closer and closer to the original also in means of the wood used, massive tops etc. In 1976 Ibanez offered about 26 different Les Paul copy models – more than Gibson did. Things changed before a real suit was filed. There are many legends about this issue and the fact is: There never was a definitve lawsuit between Gibson and Ibanez. The guitar has just some minor dings and dongs, neck is straight and the frets have still a lot of life left.
#Ibanez guitar values serial
Ok, one slight modification: I changed the strap buttons and applied Schaller Security locks – but still have the originals and this is fully reversible.Īnd it’s one of the few models that still have the Pre-Lawsuit Open Book headstock, the Diamond Logo AND already a serial number. Many of the 2350s that survived until today are heavily modified. Mine is in all original state with Super 70 pickups and still the original tuners. So, technically seen, it is much different.īut people gave a f*** about it and the 2350 became the best selling Les Paul copy in the 70s.Īnd not to forget: With first the maxxon humbucker pickups, later with the Super 70s, it had a really good sound and lots of sustain.ĭue to the high manufacturing quality – compared to many other cheap Japanese copies of those days – it had a real good playability and on stage it’s lower weight was a big advance especially during long gigs. Ok, the body is not solid mahagonay, it is chambered and it has a bolt on neck and many other differences. If you stood in a distance of about for meters and more from the stage, you couldn’t tell the difference if it was the original or not.
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The simple reason: It was affordable compared to the Gibson and optically it was a perfect copy of the Les Paul – including the Open Book Headstock, the Headstock Diamond Logo, the gold plated hardware and the binding. It started it’s career in the early 70s and though it was technically much different from it’s role model, the Gibson Les Paul Custom, it was an absolute best seller all over the world and layed the basics of Ibanez’ later success. The 2350 can justifiably be called one the most important guitars Ibanez ever made.
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It has a B76 serial, so it was produced in February 1976.