Could it be? A Jem that is priced in budget guitar land? Yes! The Ibanez JEMJR looks like a Jem. It gots the handle and everythings! Will this guitar eat into the regular Jem’s market share? Will experienced superfast players start buying this instead of the “real” Jem? Uh, nope. But that’s not the point.
This guitar is aimed at players who want to play fast, dive bomb, want a Jem, and can’t afford one. The Jem guitars that serious players use start around $1,000 to $1,500, and go up from there. With this guitar being around $500, you can draw a pretty interesting comparison between the Fender Strat and the Ibanez Jem. Roughly the same price points. But is the JEMJR worth the money?
Uh… maybe? It depends on the person buying it. The body is light, the neck feels good for those who shred, the fretwork was good. But the hardware is cheap. Yes, it has a locking trem. But I’m betting that when most guitarists go into their local Guitar Center to try this out, the model they pull off the wall is going to be wildly out of tune. It’s not a very good trem system. That’s not uncommon on guitars under $500 – actually, it’s the norm.
So the big questions are: Will this be your main guitar? Will you be learning how to restring it? Do you have a good friend who can restring it for you and set it up every so often? This trem system will need to be adjusted quite a bit. Especially with brand new strings on it. For a young player who doesn’t know how to put his/her own strings on, let alone adjust a locking trem, this is a bad move. Any locking trem system would be. Unless the player is willing to learn the art of maintaining the locking trem, that is.
All of that is true for any of the sub-$500 locking trem Ibanez guitars. So maybe that’s not a fair review. It’s the most important thing to understand, though. But how does this guitar compare to others in the same price range? Meh. I think this is a $399 Ibanez being sold for $499 because they made it look like a Jem. This reminds me of the Epiphone Les Paul, which looks just like a Gibson Les Paul but doesn’t play like one. All the money goes into the looks of the thing.
Playability was good, though. The pickups sounded good when you distorted the piss out of them, but that’s what you’re going to be doing if you buy this. This is not a bad guitar. I liked playing it. But I don’t think it’s the best value for the money. I’d play a lot of other guitars around the $500 mark first and see what I thought. In my opinion the Jackson Adrian Smith Signature SDX is a better guitar and a better value for the same money. It has the locking trem and can do the high gain stuff and sound great, but it sounds better clean (to my ears.) But the SDX doesn’t have 24 frets, and of course it doesn’t look like a Jem.
So there you go. If you want a guitar that looks and mostly sounds like a Jem when going through high gain, and you don’t want to spend a grand or more, this is the guitar you want. I don’t think it’s a great value, but it’s a good enough instrument. But make sure you understand what it takes to keep a locking trem system working properly. Not a great idea for beginners.
