Review of Indie IPR Hollow - Hollowbody electric guitar

I found this guitar quite a number of years ago now in a pawn shop.  It gets used mainly at home rather than out and about, though it has done a few gigs.

I remember looking at these new in a local guitar shop when they first came out, and they seemed to get some favourable, if rather a limited number of reviews.  The retail price was quite high, around £6-700 if I remember correctly.  However, as with a lot of lesser known brands, when music shops failed to shift all the stock, prices dropped dramatically.

Indie was an innovative company concept that others have since followed: coming up with ideas for  guitars in this country and then producing them in Korea, where building standard and quality control is relatively high, but costs low in comparison to making things here.  It is of course a model of business that companies like Ibanez have followed for years.

Indie produced a number of original models, but also sold a number of guitars that owe a huge design debt to existing brands.  I still regret not buying an Indie Rickenbacker copy from the same pawn shop at a silly low price.

The IPR pays homage to a PRS, sharing many design features with that brand.  I bought this one because it only cost me £140, I passed it by at full retail value because it wasn't quite what I was looking for, but if the price is right...

The guitar body appears to be constructed from a hollowed out piece of solid mahogany capped with another piece of mahogany, with single binding, topped with a thin veneer of very nicely figured quilted maple - not nearly as high quality as my Ibanez in the previous review, but still a joy to behold.  The hollowing leaves a centre block on which is fitted the hardware.  Personally I don't like the PRS style wrap around bridge.  This guitar came with one compensated for a wound g-string, and so I have replaced it with a new one compensated for a plain string.  Adjusting for intonation on these bridges is limited and a bit fiddly and annoying, I've never understood why PRS uses this system.

The pickups are very good quality Indie own brand 'GR8's (see what they did there?) I don't see any need to change them as they sound good to me.  The neck is of rock maple according to the spec sheets, with a very nice ebony fretboard, again single bound.  Unusually for a guitar of this design the scale length is 24 3/4" rather than 25".  The fret work (24 frets in total) is of very high standard with the fret ends all nicely rounded and smooth.  The fretboard is set with abalone dot fret markers.  The nut looks like bone to me and is very well cut.  The tuners are mini genuine grovers and very smooth and responsive.  The guitar is relatively lightweight.

I have not been able to find another IPR quite like mine.  The black headstock carries the Indie logo in abalone inlay which I have never seen before and I wonder if this one was an early issue/prototype model.

The finish is of high standard, and I can see why Indie were trying to position this guitar in the £600 price bracket when it came out.  Overall I really like this guitar and the sound it makes but I do have some criticisms.  Firstly the bridge which I have already mentioned, and which I have at its lowest setting - giving no room to manoeuvre if I wanted the action any lower.  Secondly the pickups don't sit totally parallel to the strings and this always annoys me, as it betrays sloppy workmanship.  The guitar is rather neck heavy so does neck dive if you are not careful.  The controls are nicely set into the body but because the veneer is so thin, the indentations show the mahogany body under the veneer.  The body of the guitar is beautifully carved on the top, but the back is not body contoured at all, making it rather less comfortable to play than the Ibanez in the last review.


I'd recommend this as a well made, nice sounding guitar, but with enough little niggles to stop it being absolutely first class.

Ibanez SZ520 Electric Guitar Review, 2003 model

The quilted maple is stunning

I couldn't find a great deal about this particular model of guitar when I searched so I thought it deserved a more in depth story/review.



Mine was made in the World Music Factory in Korea in 2003 - a factory which produces brands such as BC Rich, Chapman, Dean, Gretsch, LTD, PRS SE and Schechter.  This model was made at the time just before Ibanez started producing the vast majority of their guitars in China.  2003 was the first year of production for these guitars and the line gained new pickups in later years.  The ones supplied with mine are the original 'SZ' pickups, which are stamped with 'Ibanez' on the back.  I took them out of the cavities to have a look and check out the magnets. Although the Ibanez Wiki page says these pickups have ceramic magnets, mine has an alnico magnet on the neck pickup and a ceramic on the bridge.  They are wired for independent operation of the coils and the SZ has the rather nice feature that when the pickup selector is in the middle position, both pickups are in single coil mode, so you get that nice twangy telecaster sound, a feature I really like.  I like the tone of both of the pickups and don't think I would swap them out for anything else, although they are quite trebly.

Beautifully executed neck join

The neck on this guitar is a real joy to behold and especially to play.  I have quite a number of Ibanez guitars and I have never been disappointed with the playability of the necks.  For those who like clutching a baseball bat it may feel a little slim, but I personally like that.  The neck is three piece mahogany, with a volute at the nut end.  It benefits from a very straight string run from nut to tuner.  Mine appears to have a bone nut, which is very well cut indeed and the fret work is excellent and smooth, with no obvious high frets, and nicely smoothed off fret ends.  Not bad for a 14 year old guitar.

The neck on this example has no divots or dings (except for some slight wear marking in the rosewood in the first three fret positions.)  The real joy is in the neck join which is beautifully smooth and rounded, allowing complete access to all the upper frets.  The scale is a rather unusual 25.1", which gives the guitar a unique voice, somewhere between the classic Gibson and Fender scales, just slightly longer than a PRS.  The inlay has grown on me, I would never choose this, but it is well done, and the side markers are abalone, which is a nice touch of luxury.

Showing the thickness of the maple cap

The strings run through the body in 'compensated' holes and over the Gibraltar III bridge.  I likethese bridges, they are much more comfortable than a tunomatic, and just as adjustable.  The hardware is all nickel plated rather than chrome.  The downside of this is that the nickel on mine has worn off the bridge at the low E end.

The top of the guitar is of an extremely high grade quilted maple veneer, one of the best I have ever seen, superbly bookmatched.  This veneer is applied to a very thick carved maple cap, which is partially revealed to form the body binding.  This makes for a classic sounding guitar, that is relatively light to wear.  The body is very well balanced with no neck dive when being played.

The guitar sounds amazing when I roll the tone off a bit.  The pickups deliver a lot of power, though I haven't had them up on the multimeter yet to determine just how much.

What Ibanez did with the SZ is to fill a niche that none of my other guitars can quite reach, the unique combination of pickup choice, coil split, maple cap, scale length, playing comfort, stunning looks, make this guitar one of the unsung and underrated heroes of guitar history.  But I am not complaining, with a different name on the headstock, and less innovation, I would never have had the joy of buying, playing and working on this beauty.