Ibanez AZS2209 | The ultimate Telecaster is NOT a Fender?! In-depth Review & Demo

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This is the Ibanez AZS2209 Prestige: a premium, made-in-Japan single cut that takes the DNA of an Ibanez AZ and a Fender Telecaster and mixes them together into a unique guitar proposition!

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Get an Ibanez AZS at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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The AZS2209 is, to my mind, Ibanez’s take on the Telecaster – and I love Teles, so I was really excited to try this one!

This specific model is the AZS2209H (H for the hardtail bridge; you can get an AZS with a trem as well, if that’s your thing) in Antique Turquoise. Priced at around $1,999/€1,666 as of June 2025, they’re comparable to a USA-built Fender in that sense, but the AZS’s specs are fantastic on paper.

Under that beautiful blue finish – which also has binding on the top side – you get an ash body with a sizeable tummy cut on the back, and Ibanez’s Super All Access Neck Joint, which great improves upper fret access.

Pickups-wise, we have a pair of Seymour Duncans here: an Alnico II Pro Custom Tele-style in the bridge, and a Magic Touch-mini humbucker in the neck. With Ibanez’s dyna-MIX5 switching system and the Alter Switch, you get a number of extra pickup splitting/phase options too.

The bridge is a three-saddle Gotoh F1803, and the control plate is where Ibanez have made sure your eyes don’t fool you into thinking you’re looking at a Fender: it’s the same layout as a Tele, but bent down at a rather interesting angle, and presumably to make the guitar more ergonomic too. Definitely an interesting visual addition!

The AZS2209 features a roasted maple neck and fingerboard along with some pretty modern-leaning specs – similar to many AZ guitars, in fact – and this is where the guitar differs compared to more traditional Fenders too. First off, the profile is the AZ Oval C – not too fat, not super thin.

You also get 22 jumbo stainless steel frets here (which have been given Ibanez’s Prestige fret edge treatment), a bone nut, and a 25.5” scale length, while the fingerboard radius is 12”, so pretty flat. At the headstock, you get a set of Gotoh Magnum locking tuners.

All this is pretty premium stuff, as the price tag would suggest – so how good is the AZS2209? Can it live up to my lofty expectations of it being like a cross between an Ibanez AZ and a Telecaster? Or is it just another Ibanez without any Tele personality?

Time to find out! In this video, I put the AZS2209 to the test in as many different musical styles as I can, from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, metal, and more – let’s see how it handles it!

Let me know your thoughts on the AZS2209 in the comments.

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Hello!
00:18 Introduction to the AZS2209
01:49 Specs and features
08:31 Today’s rig and plan

09:18 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
09:55 Clean tone samples (folk, country, pop, indie, blues, funk, etc.)
12:18 Tone control test
13:39 Indie and alt rock tones
15:58 Volume control roll off test
16:21 Ambient rock tones + tremolo and plate reverb (Fender Tre-Verb)
17:25 Classic rock tones (AC/DC, Hendrix, Airbourne, etc.)
19:14 Hard rock tones
20:19 Alternative rock tones
21:13 Punk rock tones
21:54 Progressive and modern rock tones
23:03 Metal/chugging/heavy distortion tones

25:01 My thoughts
25:46 First impressions, looks, hard case
26:39 Weight
27:20 Build quality and hardware
28:09 Playability and neck
29:00 Sounds and pickups
31:34 What other similar guitars are out there?
33:29 My conclusions on the AZS2209H and why you should buy it

My setup was as follows: I ran the AZS2209 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed, Marshall 1959 Super Lead, Friedman BE-OD Deluxe and Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds, plus my Fender Tre-Verb for some extra reverb and tremolo tones. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

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Get all this gear at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:
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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Ibanez #IbanezGuitars #IbanezAZS #IbanezPrestige #IbanezTelecaster #Telecaster #RichWordsMusic

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