New Fender Custom Shop GT11 Deluxe Strat

Ibanez George Benson Signature GB10EM - Antique Amber

Hollowbody Electric Guitar with Spruce Top, Linden Back and Sides, Nyatoh Neck, Walnut Fingerboard, and 2 Mini Humbuckers - Antique Amber
Building your custom Guitar Gallery
Ibanez George Benson Signature GB10EM - Antique Amber
$769.99
36 months
Special Financing – Ends Jun 30, 2025
$21.82/month with 36 month financing*
See all payment options

In Stock!

(Hurry, limited quantity available)

Add to Cart
Ask An Expert

Our expertly trained Sales Engineers are ready to help!

What is a Sales Engineer?
Sweetwater Gear Exchange

Have one to sell?
Check out Sweetwater's Gear Exchange!
Learn More

Ibanez George Benson Signature GB10EM - Antique Amber
In Stock!
$769.99
Add to Cart
Add to list
Most Popular Accessories & Related Items
Back to navigation

This article was Written By

Our Product Research Team

Get to know them!

George Benson’s Classic Jazz Box

George Benson is the definitive modern jazz guitarist, and the Ibanez GB10EM is his weapon of choice. This classic jazz box boasts a linden body, chosen for its combination of growling warmth and defined attack. A spruce top ensures maximum resonance and resistance to feedback. Plug the GB10EM into your favorite amp, and you’ll enjoy a clean response and clear articulation that are tailor-made for fast melodies and complex chord progressions, courtesy of a set of floating Magic Touch-Mini humbuckers. This hollowbody electric feels great, too, thanks to its easy-playing walnut-capped nyatoh neck. A walnut bridge and VT14 tailpiece ensure rock-solid stability, while a wood tailpiece cover maintains the guitar’s aesthetics. If you want to achieve George Benson’s bluesy, soulful grit (no small feat there), the GB10EM is a great place to start.

Select tonewoods for sweet, sustained notes

The GB10EM is a looker, for sure. But it's not just made for the showcase; this performer has pipes, thanks to specially chosen tonewoods used in its construction. It features a spruce top that resonates beautifully but also helps reduce feedback, so your music comes through with minimal distortion. Beyond that, the GB10EM’s linden back and sides exude a warm growl with truckloads of definition, and that walnut bridge isn't just attractive; it improves sustain so every note sings out at full strength with endurance in spades.

Magic Touch-Mini humbucking pickups serve up expressive tone

The Ibanez George Benson Signature GB10EM boasts a set of Magic Touch-Mini humbuckers. These pickups are mounted to the guitar’s pickguard, enabling them to float above its top. This ensures that they don’t dampen the guitar’s natural body vibration, resulting in a rich, larger-than-life acoustic tone. The pickups themselves serve up a balance of classic tones. They’re chock-full of clean response and clear articulation, which permits you to perform fast melodies and complex chord progressions with razor-sharp precision.

GB neck yields smooth feel and comfortable action

The neck of any guitar determines how well it plays, which is why Ibanez selected the GB neck — George Benson’s choice shape for smooth and comfortable action — for the GB10EM. Not only will your hand love the comfortable carve of this nyatoh neck, but your fingers will appreciate the beautifully bound walnut fingerboard. On top of that, the guitarists here at Sweetwater have found that this hollowbody guitar’s set-in construction really maximizes its sustain.

Ibanez George Benson Signature GB10EM Features:

  • Signature hollowbody electric guitar of legendary jazz musician George Benson
  • Linden body exudes a warm growl with truckloads of definition
  • Spruce top resonates beautifully and helps reduce feedback
  • Floating Magic Touch-Mini humbuckers are chock-full of clean response and clear articulation
  • Comfortable nyatoh neck offers incredible hand-filling playability
  • Bound walnut fretboard feels smooth and looks amazing
  • Set-in neck construction ensures maximum sustain
  • Rock-solid walnut bridge and VT14 tailpiece with nice-looking wood tailpiece cover
  • Tasteful acrylic block fingerboard inlays and attractive chrome hardware

Why Buy Your Guitar from Sweetwater?

See how Sweetwater goes to great lengths to give you the very best online guitar buying experience. From our online Guitar Gallery that allows you to see and select the exact instrument you want to our 55-point Inspection process and our in-house guitar techs, we take the guesswork out of buying your next guitar online.

Resources

Warranty Info

Sweetwater's FREE 2-Year Total Confidence Coverage Warranty

Extra peace of mind at no extra cost.

  • Save money with FREE parts and labor
  • Get back to making music with the industry's fastest turnaround time
  • Fix it the first time with our award-winning, factory-certified Service Department
Learn More about Total Confidence Coverage
Back to navigation

Tech Specs

  • General
  • Number of Strings 6
  • Left-/Right-handed Right-handed
  • Body
  • Body Type Hollowbody
  • Body Shape George Benson Signature
  • Body Material Linden
  • Top Material Spruce
  • Body Finish Gloss Polyurethane
  • Color Antique Amber
  • Neck
  • Neck Material Nyatoh
  • Neck Finish Gloss
  • Neck Shape GB
  • Radius 12"
  • Fingerboard Material Bound Walnut
  • Fingerboard Inlay Acrylic Blocks
  • Number of Frets 22, Medium
  • Scale Length 24.75"
  • Nut Width 1.692"
  • Nut Material Plastic
  • Hardware
  • Bridge/Tailpiece Walnut Bridge with Wood Covered GB10EM Tailpiece
  • Tuners Ibanez Machine Heads
  • Electronics
  • Neck Pickup Magic Touch-Mini Humbucker
  • Bridge Pickup Magic Touch-Mini Humbucker
  • Controls 2 x volume, 2 x tone, 3-way toggle pickup swtich
  • Miscellaneous
  • Strings .011-.050
  • Case/Gig Bag Sold Separately
  • Manufacturer Part Number: GB10EMAA

What Makes Our Sales Engineers Great?

Sweetwater Sales Engineers are a world-class team of experts dedicated to you. Hand selected from across the globe, each brings a wealth of experience and expertise in the world of music gear to provide you with unparalleled service completely free of charge. Friendly relationships, real trust, and the right gear are only a call or a click away!

Back to navigation

Reviews

Rated 5/5
George Benson Ibanez
Already dialed in right out of the box. Thanks.
Music background: Player/ Teacher
Rated 5/5
GB10EM
For those who don't know, "EM" stands for "Educational Model". This guitar gives you a lot of bang for you buck. Nice mellow, soft tones.
Music background: Jazz / Blues guitarist
Rated 5/5
A great guitar.
I don't have all the words to describe how great this guitar is, but it's got a great woody tone and what I would call some snap. I mostly play it unplugged, and it's got pretty nice volume that way (floating pickups mean that the solid top is free to vibrate). I think it sounds close to a classical guitar unplugged. The pickups also sound great when it's plugged in.

I actually really like the wood bridge. I feel like it cuts out the overtones, so I get right to the tone I want, and it still has a surprising amount of definition.

The neck is perfect in my book. Nice and slim, easy to get around. The body is smaller than most jazz boxes, so it's really comfortable to hold and has more modern looking proportions than other jazz boxes.
Rated 5/5
My First Archtop and It's Gorgeous!
Never owned a "jazz box" before. However, over the past 4 yrs I got very serious about upping my jazz soloing skills; including
re-engineering my picking technique. All that was done om my LP Classic. Come last Xmas, I saw the great GB10EM offering on S/W and
decided it was an opportunity too good to miss. It was time to reward myself. I wasn't disappointed.

Since this is a fairly inexpensive axe, my expectations weren't particularly high, despite all the good reviews on the Internet. At this price, I considered it an experiment. Normally, I would be very reluctant to buy online (sight unseen) but given the C19 pandemic and S/W's 55 point review, I felt it was worth the gamble. S/W didn't disappoint. The GB10 arrived in mint condition and, even though it's built in Indonesia, Ibanez QC holds there. The workmanship is absolutely impressive.

Several features of the EM that sold me, over the (Chinese) SE, was the (1) color: I wasn't interested in yet more boring "burst" colors; especially blue, (2) body size and (3) shape: it's essentially a s Gibson LP shape with a 1.5" deeper body. The same applies to the neck dimensions. Most jazz boxes are much bigger and deeper. In fact, I would've paid the SE price for this color scheme if everything else were equal. My decision wasn't just based on price, per se. The EM is a complete bargain.

All that said, my first attempts at playing it were a disaster. The feel and playability of the body with flatwouunds are so different from an LP that, at one point, I thought I'd made a huge mistake and eBay would be the next stop. I was so desparate that I even went down to a 0.43mm plectrum (paper thin). That did help and within a week it all started to come together and I was back to my usual medium 351 playing Benson's "Give Me the Night".

Ever since then, I've completely fallen in love with this thing. I play it every day and I can't imagine a better new buy at this price. It's been incredibly helpful for my jazz guitar studies. Getting essentially the same sounds as Benson, or whoever, really helps make for faster progress.

Something not addressed anywhere that I could find is, restringing with a moveable (free) bridge and that wooden tailpiece cover. Just last week I finally replaced the strings with D'Addario 11-50 flat chromes. And the answer is: the tailpiece is hinged and lifts up when all the strings are loosened or removed. The ball ends are slid in underneath. The bridge should be taped down so you don't lose the intonation.

Another thing that bothered me a little bit when I first played it was, the frets felt a bit rough when bending the treble strings. Reading around the Internet, it seems this is just one of the hazards of buying a low-end guitar (labor costs of polishing?) but, it's easily fixed. In fact, it got better with playing but, noentheless, while replacing the strings, I took the opportunity to polish the frets with a Lizard Spit kit and F-ONE oiled the fretboard (all purchased via S/W). Easily fixed. So, don't fret. :)
Music background: Rock/blues player but have always been a modern jazz/fusion seeker. That quest is now coming to the fruition I was hoping for.