The Fabled American-made!? Approaching Ibanez USA Custom Made Guitars

Ibanez is a Japanese guitar manufacturer that is well known worldwide and loved by many professional musicians.

The flagship model of Ibanez is the j.custom, but did you know that before the j.custom was introduced, there were actually American-made Ibanez guitars on the market from the early to mid 1990s?

This time, I would like to introduce the Ibanez USA Custom series, which is considered to be an urban legend among Ibanez fans.

About the USA Custom Series

The USA Custom series is a lineup produced by Ibanez in the early to mid 1990s.

1991USACustom

The USA Custom series included five different lineups.

• American Master (MA)
• USA Custom Exotic Wood (UCEW)
• USA Custom Graphic Design (UCGR)
• USA Custom The Metal Design(UCMD)
• USRG

Here are the features of each line.

American Master (MA)

The American Master (MA) was one of the higher grade models in the USA Custom series, and its greatest feature is its neck-through-body construction.
This guitar was only made for two years, from 1990 to 1991, and was sold only in the US, making it a very rare model.
The MA series is also the only one of the USA Custom series for which a bass guitar was made.
In 2022, some of the MA series models were reissued one by one to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hoshino USA, which became a hot topic.

Ibanez 50th_Anniversary lacs8
Ibanez 50th_Anniversary lacs7
Ibanez 50th_Anniversary lacs6

USA Custom Exotic Wood (UCEW)

The greatest feature is the use of USA Custom Exotic Wood (UCEW). Using exotic wood with extremely beautiful grain patterns for the top material is such a luxury.
By the way, the RG that I own is from this series.
(I will introduce my own guitar in more detail later.)
The company also offers custom orders to meet customers' demands, and a small number of them were sold in Japan as well.

USA Custom Graphic Design (UCGR)

USA Custom Graphic Design (UCGR) is a model with a high-impact hand-drawn graphic on the body top.
While the two previous models in the USA Custom series were manufactured entirely in the U.S., the body and neck from the UCGR series were made by Fujigen in Japan, and the guitar is assembled and finished in the U.S.
This model was also available for custom orders according to the customer's preference.
(Not available in Japan).

USA Custom The Metal Design(UCMD)

USA Custom The Metal Design(UCMD) is a model with animal designs on the top of the body, and like UCGR, the body and neck were made by Fujigen and assembled and finished in the USA.
(Not available in Japan).

USRG

The USRG is not exactly from the USA Custom series, but it’s an American-made model that was manufactured and sold from 1994 to 1996.
The USRG was characterized by the use of a tension-free neck, a neck with a unique mechanism that did not have a truss rod.
* An American-made ATK bass called the US ATK was also released around the same time.

A thorough description of the USA Custom owned by me!

Model name [UCEWQM]

This is one of the UCEW series introduced earlier.
Let's take a look at the body first.

The wood grain of the quilted maple is stunning.

Even today, guitars with beautiful wood grains are very popular, but there is a special point to be noted about this model.

The thickness of the top wood.

The top wood used for guitars currently in circulation is usually only a few millimeters thick.
This guitar, however, is made to be…

A whopping 12mm!

It’s so rare to find 12mm quilted maple nowadays.

It was possible in the old days when wood was abundant.
By the way, mahogany is used for the back wood.

The neck joint has a bolt-on neck mount called All Access Neck Joint (AANJ), which is also used on current models, for easy access to the high frets.

Next, let's look at the neck.

The neck is also made of bird's eye maple and has a very high quality finish.

The neck is slightly narrower and thicker than the standard RG (RG550 and RG570) of the time.
Fingerboard is rosewood with 400R fingerboard R (standard RG is 430R).

The head is marked with the “u.s.a.custom” logo.

PU is a Dimarzio PAF PRO and VS-1, a standard combination. (I have already changed to Air Norton and Tone Zone.)
The bridge is equipped with the Lo-Pro Edge, which was just developed at that time.
The Lo-Pro Edge is now used in high-end models such as the j.custom because of its smooth operation and tuning stability.

Despite such extravagant specifications, the selling price at that time was about 250,000 yen. (Shocking...)

By the way, this guitar was not made by the Ibanez Custom Shop.
In fact, there was no Ibanez custom store at the time, and this guitar was made in California at a workshop called Hosono Guitar Works.
The luthier at this workshop, Mr. Tak Hosono, later became a master luthier at Ibanez's LA custom store and has made guitars for many famous musicians, including Steve Vai.

Steve Vai's signature guitar making video

(Mr. Tak Hosono appears after 1 minute.)

How was it?
Ibanez USA made guitars are now very rare and hard to find, but the techniques developed through the USA Custom series have been passed down to the current flagship model, the j.custom.

Ibanez / RG8570CST-NT

You can get a j.custom that is a limited edition model made by the custom store and technology that was adopted in the USA Custom series!

⇒ j.custom list

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