Mojo | soldguitars

1990 Ibanez Radius 540R

"Mojo"

Another Japanese Ibanez, and why not. Read the info on "Twiggy" above to see what I think of guitars from the Japanese FugiGen Gakki factory. This is a sweet one. The body is goofy but really comfortable. If a strat body was made of toffee and you sucked it for half an hour, it would look like this, rounded and ... well ... radiused. Hence the "radius" name I suppose. And the top edge has been sucked for longer than the bottom edge, as the top edge is really quite skinny, whereas the bottom edge is still quite beefy. Does that make sense?

This was the pre-cursor to the Joe Satriani "JS" signature Ibanez, and he actually endorsed this model for quite a while before the JS guitars were made. In terms of spec, these are very similar to the higher-end JS models that are made today, and (crucially) have the excellent Lo-Pro Edge trem ... not one of the cheaper derivatives, some of which are crappy. This trem RULES. The original pickups were made for Ibanez by DiMarzio, and were stamped "IBZ USA". The bridge hum is punchy and raspy, and the singles (together) are VERY quacky and stratty ... moreso than my strat, which is curious. They're really nice pickups, so any thoughts of replacing them with the current pickups that Satriani uses are gone ... I'll stick with these thank you.

I'm glad that this one is white, as it seems that Joe has had a preference for white 540's over the years, including in the video for 'Satch Boogie', which is Joe at his finest in my opinion. Before the flaming starts, I KNOW that the one in Satch Boogie was a 540P, not a 540R ... whatever!

The experts out there will notice that the original 'Bee Hive' volume and tone knobs on this have survived, which is a very good thing. Little stuff like that makes me happy. By the way, the neck on this feels quite chunky ... not what you'd expect from an 80s Ibanez at all, with more than enough meat to get hold of ... I guess that's how Joe likes 'em. Whatever, it all adds to the comfort of the guitar ... this is one of those "strap it on and forget its there" guitars.

Very nice, and highly recommended.