Ibanez Prestige AZ2402-tFF £1,779 (inc case)

the Alter switch heading south we have: neck humbucker, inner slug coils of both in parallel, both humbuckers, outer screw coils of both in parallel and, lastly, bridge humbucker. In the upper position the Alter switch offers us ‘tap’ mode. Here ‘Power Taps’ are used on the humbucker selections (neck, both and bridge). Ibanez tells us that the “Power Tap uses one single coil plus a low signal from the other single coil.” However, the DCR measurement doesn’t change in this mode so it’s not a coil-split, partial-tap or parallel linkage of the two coils: the more ‘single coil-like’ sound appears to be achieved with a passive RC (resistor and capacitor) filter on one single coil that uses small surface mount components placed on a PCB that’s fixed to the five-way switch. The in-between positions in this ‘tap’ mode voice the neck’s slug coil and then the bridge’s screw coil.

Components differ too: the Premium guitars use the smaller body Alpha 500k pots; the Prestige’s are full-size plus we get a full foil screen on the HSS scratchplate, the Premium’s foil is just around the control area. All have conductive paint in the cavities, however, and switches appear identical on both. The volume controls have a treble bleed capacitor (330picofarad); the tone capacitor is 0.022microfarad.

One final performance consideration is the placement of the output jack – on the guitar’s side, by the lower wide flange strap button, and angled so you thread your lead through your strap to secure it more easily.

There’s a considerable price difference between the Prestige and Premium models and that’s not just the construction costs of the different countries. There’s also the different woods and pickups and as

You’ll need to practise a lot to uncover all the different nuances of the Ibanez/Seymour Duncan Hyperion HH pickups on the AZ2402TFF 4 4.

Playing with Gotoh’s SG381 and the post heights can be a bit fiddly but it’ll be worth it when it’s bang on 3 3.