Ibanez Q52 | Is this the perfect first headless guitar for under $1000? Review & Demo

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This is the Ibanez Q52 – a beautiful and not-so-scary gateway into the world of headless guitars from the Japanese brand’s Quest (or Q) Series!

Ibanez Quest Series guitars at Thomann:
At Sweetwater:

Headless guitars have intrigued me and frightened me in equal measure over the years. Usually the preserve of progressive and metal players, I always thought they were way too exotic for my indie and alternative rock riffs… but the Q52 is actually a rather easy way in to the world of the headless guitar – and it’s a relatively affordable one, too, at around $999/€899.

The biggest obvious difference to a standard guitar is the lack of a headstock – here, tuning is taken care of at the Ibanez Mono-Tune Bridge on the body. The rest of the body, despite being quite modern looking and contoured (and gorgeous in Laser Blue Matte!), is surprisingly similar to a Standard Super Strat.

The neck is also a thing of beauty. A three piece satin roasted maple/bubinga/roasted maple affair with a roasted birdseye maple fingerboard, it has Ibanez’s Wizard C profile, meaning it’s not super thin or overly chunky. You also get 24 jumbo stainless steel frets.

Most confusing are the pickup switching options. You get a pair of Ibanez’s ceramic Q58 humbuckers here, but the dyna-MIX 10 switching system (which also incorporates Ibanez’s Alter Switch) gives you ten sound variations to play with, with genuine single coil tones too.

That means there’s a lot of tones to get through here - and so in the video, I put the Q52 through its paces in as many different musical styles as I can.

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

00:00 Hello!
00:20 Introduction to the Q52 and headless guitars
01:58 Specs and info
03:56 All about the 10 different pickup options
08:26 Today’s rig and plan

Clean Sounds
09:01 Clean tone reference chords on all pickup settings
09:49 Poppy barre chords
10:04 Country ballad arpeggios
10:17 Country lead sound
10:24 Country strummed chords
10:42 Funky riff
10:56 Grungey droning chords
11:13 Blues progression
11:24 Atmospheric indie arpeggios
11:43 Cowboy chords/tone control test
12:43 Ascending droning indie chords

Overdriven Sounds
12:56 Fat indie rock rhythm chords
13:25 Foo Fighters inspired rock balled arpeggios
14:02 Kings Of Leon inspired riff
14:17 Southern rock picked arpeggios
14:36 Upbeat indie barre chords
15:00 Volume control roll off test
15:21 Garage rock riff
15:37 Choppy barre chords
15:55 Indie octave chords
16:20 Classic rock riff
16:34 Quacky rock riff
16:43 Airbourne inspired rock riff
16:55 AC/DC inspired riff
17:13 Groovy classic rock riff
17:40 Hendrix inspired riff

Heavy Overdrive Sounds
17:57 Glam rock riff
18:18 Van Halen inspired riff
18:38 80s rock riff
18:58 Melodic hard rock lead
19:20 Chunky alt rock chords
19:43 Alternative rock riff
19:57 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
20:10 Pop punk melodic lead riff
20:26 Pop punk riff
20:39 Less Than Jake inspired punk riff
20:51 Pop metal riff
21:01 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
21:17 Modern rock palm-muted chords (Drop D)
21:42 Rage Against The Machine inspired groovy riff (Drop D)

Heavy Distortion Sounds (all in Drop D)
21:59 Metal chugging riff
22:16 Heavy metal lead sound
22:32 Hardcore punk breakdown
22:47 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang
22:59 Rammstein inspired industrial metal riff
23:12 Hardcore punk riff
23:24 Classic heavy metal/sludge riff

24:04 My thoughts and thanks to Ibanez Germany
25:00 First impressions and looks
25:32 Weight
26:19 Build quality and hardware
27:10 Playability, neck and balance
28:48 Sounds and pickups discussion
30:58 What other similar headless guitars are out there?
32:48 My conclusions on the Q52 and why you should buy it

LINKS:
Ibanez Q52 product page:
Guitar World/MusicRadar article I quoted:

My setup was as follows: I ran the Q52 into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed and my Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds. 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.

Get all this gear at Thomann:
Get all this gear at Sweetwater:

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

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