A true player's guitar with some upscale appointments

I've had this instrument for about 2 months, so the honeymoon phase is pretty much over and I feel that I can write a reasonable review of the instrument. To give you some context of where this review is coming from, I also own a Fender American Special Stratocaster and a Carvin Bolt Plus - in other words, I'm not a stranger to quality made US instruments.

First of all, what is this guitar? This is the highest end S series guitar that is available (as of 2012) short of a Japanese made Prestige. The thing that separates the S770 from its cheaper siblings is its upscale features. As the previous reviewer said, the poplar burl veneer is completely unique on each guitar, and offers a fresh alternative to the standard quilt and flame maple veneers that are featured on many other instruments in this price range. The attention to detail and cleanliness of the application of the two tone body binding and neck binding is fairly rare for an instrument made in the far east. The inlay work is great and there is only a slight bit of tool marking on one of the frets. If none of these things are important to you and you are looking for a beater/workhorse version of this guitar, then consider one of the cheaper/plainer S series without the veneer top, which feature the exact same pickups and hardware. It will sound exactly the same.

Despite being significantly thinner than my other alder bodied electric guitars, it is easily the loudest acoustically. I attribute this to the mahogany body. When you play a note, you can literally feel the vibrations up and down the neck and body very distinctly - even running up to the tremolo bar in your hands. The stock pickups are definitely on the hotter end of the scale. The INF2 bridge pickup is, for all intents and purposes, an Ibanez take on the DiMarzio Tone Zone, but with more emphasis on the mid range and slightly less highs. Individual strings sound well defined, even when put under heavy distortion. Harmonics are excellent and this instrument loves to bleed into feedback very easily. The middle single coil is also high output and does not sound vintage by any stretch of the imagination. It has a sound that I can only describe as 'hi fi'. Modern clean tones with chorusing are fantastic and bright, but don't expect to coax any Gilmour out of it. The neck pickup is the least impressive out of all of the positions. I can't say anything necessarily bad about it other than the fact that it sounds like your stereotypical stock neck pickup. I will likely be swapping it out for a DiMarzio Air Norton. Everything else will remain the same.

My setup was a little screwy out of the box and the guitar was plagued with tuning issues. After adjusting the bridge angle and flipping around the locking nut pads 180 degrees, my problems disappeared. The ZR bridge is fantastic and very easy to adjust - you can adjust its height and angle with ease, and there is no possible way to adjust individual saddle height, which means one less thing to screw up - a welcome change from annoying non-locking tremolo systems.

The neck profile is your standard Ibanez neck - you will either love it or hate it. Relatively thin and with a flat fretboard - perfect for shredding, but not as comfortable as my Carvin for chording. Bending is dreamy and I find myself playing much more freely and creatively since having this guitar. All in all, a great instrument. I had some concerns over putting so much money towards a non-Prestige instrument, but I'm glad I took the dive.

Had s770pb for a while now,I like the guitar but I have difficulty with the pickups.

When I first received the s770pb it was great. At the time I didn't know much about guitars. One thing I noticed that was a little bothersome was that if I increase the pickup height it wouldn't stay up. After playing it a few months I was wondering how I could fix this.Maybe I'm just doing something wrong. I don't play guitar professionally so it's not a big problem for me.
It still beats my "G" brand guitar and it's easier to play too.

A good guitar but needs adjustments; a one of a kind poplar top like your fingerprint!

The Ibanez s770pb is a good, well rounded guitar. I was looking for a new electric guitar with a narrow, fast neck, since I have small hands .Aesthetically, its a work of art with real a Poplar wood top( what's really neat is that no two tops are the same.) and a mahagony back. The neck is a wizard II the mesurement at the 12 th fret is is pretty narrow, the sound is very clean. The tremolo is the Zero Point system, It has floating ball bearing design, but I don't use the tremolo often, since Iike to play classical guitar and my own creations. Despite the mahogany neck the guitar is lighter.

Cons. I recently adjusted the infs pickups to a higher position but it won't stay. It just goes to a lower one after a day or so. I'm not sure how to remedy the situation, but I really don't play loud anyway.
Neck is not as small and for my hands as I would have liked it. The
guitar goes out of tune more than I actually thought it would.