Ibanez RGA42FM - Blue Lagoon Burst Flat Reviews

I was always a Les Paul guy until I played this. So smooth and light! My LPs are about 10-11lbs. This puppy was like 7lbs. I thought I put a feather on! I've been researching on buying a few and there and the RGA and S Series. So thin and light!

I wish they came in more colors, I'm not a fan of the other two.

I chose the RGA42FM to explore the Ibanez RG specific features.
Like all my previous experiences with Sweetwater, everything from ordering to shipment and the quality out of the box, was excellent.
The guitar was set up well and the entire experience was awesome.

This axe is so ridiculously bada** it's disgusting. I wanted a new guitar but didn't want to spend a lot, so I wasn't expecting much. Boy was I wrong. This thing SHREDS. I love the lightness, having been used to heavy guitars, it was refreshing to strap this guitar on. The pickups are monsters, the neck is, well it's a Wizard 3 neck so there you go. Jumbo frets reduce drag on the fretboard and over the guitar is so **** beautiful...
Thinking about buying another just like it.

First time buying from Sweetwater, the service was great! I'm a beginner to electric guitar so I can't really say much about the guitar itself, but it's been a few weeks and there's nothing unpleasant about it so far.

I've had this guitar for about 2 and a half days and it's starting to really grow on me. This is my first guitar with Humbuckers and I'm impressed by the tones I can get with just a 10 Watt amp with limited controls.

I've gotten some pretty heavy distortion tones, along with some very majestic cleans. I'm going to replace my amp soon to see what this thing can really do. I think somewhere down the road I might swap the pickups with some Fishmans but I'm not in a rush to do so.

Speaking of the pickups, I wish these had more clarity under heavy gain, but it's well known that pickups in guitars in this price range aren't the best.

The finish is better than I expected. The purples and blues match well with some of the cosmetic upgrades I did. Even though I prefer gloss finishes on the body, this satin finish feels pretty comfortable.

However, the top that I got wasn't the best. The flamed maple is pretty well book matched even though you can see the seam line. It also has a fair bit of movement within the maple for the price point. I'm not sure if the maple top has marks under the finish, or if theres just some sloppy splotches of dark blue from the burst about 1 inch to left from the neck pickup.

This thing stays in tune pretty well also. I tuned it to Open C when I got it and it's still in tune even after 2 days.
I swapped the strings with some .10 - .52's and it plays incredibly.

The neck is thinner than my $200 squier.
I prefer this neck over the squier simply because its easier and more comfortable to play. The whole guitar is lighter than my squier as well.

The fretboard is ok-ish. It's really good for tapping but I found that when bending a string u can hear the string scraping the fretboard. I'm pretty sure this is common amongst cheaper guitars though.

Overall this thing is (atleast in my eyes) the best guitar within this price range.

The guitar is lighter than regular Ibanez guitars, has an incredible sustain and feels/plays just great. The value for money ratio is awesome. The guitar can easily compete with my > $1,000 guitars.

Bought the RGA42FM as an inexpensive backup for my Strat, which is set up and voiced for clean jazz and sweet blues. After playing the Ibanez for a week as shipped, it has become my favorite. It is remarkably light on the strap and offers plenty of tonal space for virtually any kind of music.

The only changes I might do is to use heavier strings and a put a jazz humbucker in the neck position, same wiring as stock. However, those plans could change as I experiment more with what this stock machine can do. The hotter humbuckers have characteristics that might make them more interesting with various amp and pedal settings, so am holding off on the pickup swap, The .010 strings are working well too, but I am curious what a set of pure nickels or half rounds will sound like, either .011 or .012.

There's no trem on this model, which is fine. Using vibrato techniques comes darn close to a light trem touch due to the highly responsive pickups.

Workmanship and the Sweetwater setup are perfect, came double-boxed and well padded. Now I'm thinking of getting a second RG as a backup for the first due to, primarily, that comfy strap weight factor. The Strat is one heavy mofo, tolerable with a padded bass 3-inch strap. The Ibanez is like playing air guitar by comparison.

This is the ultimate superstrat. Make no mistake, it is vastly superior to the RGA121 Prestige model that premiered in 2005. That model had a Gibraltar bridge with no saddle height adjustment, and the V7/V8 pickup set lacked girth.
Sweetwater needs to update the spec sheet. The body wood is Philippine Meranti. It looks and feels like mahogany but is a different species. It seems to have wild weight variation, from 5-8 pounds.
With Sweetwater's real time gallery, you can choose the right weight for you.
The maple "top" is a veneer. It is paper thin. It is very beautiful, and gives a premium look, but I would prefer the guitar have a Fender-esque DuPont finish and drop the glue used to attach a fake top.
The Jatoba fretboard is a Godsend for Wizard necks. It is an extremely hard wood that provides the much needed rigidity rosewood couldn't provide.
Finally, the Quantum pickups are amazing. Thought I would need to swap them immediately, but they sound perfectly matched for this type of guitar.
That they can offer ALL this for $... boggles my mind. My Bar tab in Manhattan was almost that much last night.
I wish I had this RGA42 available to me when I started playing guitar. I would have saved a LOT of money. Pair this with a Boss Katana, and you have a fully gigable setup...

I love it....

Great guitar, amazing powerful sound with great sustain. Those humbuckers work awesome. Fast neck and really comfortable. I have an Fender strat MiM with noiseless N3 pickups and a fender tele Nashville. Believe me, this Ibanez for $399 can compete easy with my other guitars and is more comfortable by far.

This is my second Ibanez in 2 month and this brand really like me a lot.

Great guitar.

I am a long time fan of Ibanez Guitars, I have three Artcore semis and my experience with Ibanez is "Quality and Consistency." I bought this RGA42FM sight unseen based on that experience and I will say it's playability surpasses that of my MIA Fender Strat. The controls are well placed and not as obstructive as the Strat design. The Jotoba fretboard is amazing, it plays like bare maple but is both bright and dark. Perhaps the "Quantum Humbucker Pickups" come into play here as this guitar sounds amazing played through my Boss Katana 50. The volume control must have treble bleed compensation because it is immediately responsive with little to zero fidelity loss at low volume. The tone control has a very broad range of lows, mids and highs.
The shape of the RGA body contour is an ergonomic sweetheart for me because I have low back problems; it sits comfortably between my knees so I am able to sit upright with proper posture. I should have bought one a long time ago. "If it says Ibanez, Play it!"

I purchased this guitar a few months ago from Sweetwater and have really been enjoying it. I am a relative beginner (maybe early intermediate) to guitar and this is my first electric. I have been spending about an hour or a bit more per day with it and it has been a joy to play. I have absolutely no complaints. Very nice weight, and good sound. I like the fact that it is a hardtail for easy tuning changes, passive pickups so I don't have to worry about batteries. And it looks great. Perfect for where I am at as a new guitar player!

I reviewed this guitar on YouTube (see link) and also did a detailed exam and assessment, under the microscope.

The guitar was a solid build but had some uneven frets, which I fixed.

This is a budget price guitar so they do not level the frets at the factory. But it is my understanding that Sweetwater does offer a PLEK-ing service, which would obviously take care of any uneven frets.

I got this guitar as a back up guitar to keep at my in-law's place instead of traveling with my other guitars and it's great!

I'm a huge ibanez fan since the first electric I ever learned on was an RG and after trying out a bunch of different guitars, there's really nothing like the ibanez feel in my opinion. I had recently acquired an RGAR42HP and it's my main 6 string guitar so I wanted something similar to use while traveling. Like the RGAR42HP the FM feels amazing in the hand (the neck shape and body are the same and I'm a huge fan of the ibanez feel). It's super light which is nice (even though I don't stand and play a lot it's still way better than my telecaster).

The build quality is really great even for a non japanese built guitar and I haven't found anything to call out. The color is sick too! I was kind of skeptical seeing pictures online since the blue lagoon kind of looked almost denim-y but I managed to get a darker one thanks to the sweetwater gallery and it looks even better in person. The hardware is great and feels solid. Out the box it's pretty nice to play. I had to adjust the pickup height a bit but other than that it was pretty much good to go.

The one downside to the guitar that I heard when doing research on it was that the pickups are lacking, and I'm probably spoiled since my two other ibanezs both have dimarzio fusions in them so, yes they don't really compare in that regard but they're still really good. The 5 way switch still gives you a lot of versatility in the sound and I'm mostly using this to practice and write while I'm traveling so in that regard it checks all the boxes.

For the price point it's an amazing guitar considering my other RGA is almost 2x the price. The shape and feel are all the same, the materials are different but it's not drastically affecting how I approach the instrument.

I'm really stoked to have this around and look forward to coming to play it more often, hell maybe one day I'll swap the pick ups on it as a little experiment.

I have owned four Ibanez guitars in 24 years of playing. The RGA42FM - BLF is a beautiful machine that lives up to all expectations. The neck is built for speed. The 5-way pickup selector gives you more tonal options than you would expect from a dual humbucker setup. Right out of the box, the setup was nearly flawless and no fret buzz! The fret edges were dressed nicely and the guitar stays in tune regardless of how hard I bend the strings. Also, the guitar is fairly light, so your back and shoulders won't get sore from hours of jamming.

The guitar plays and sounds great. Only issue I have is that the frets edges are sharp. The nut edge (high E) is also very sharp. I have a welt on my finger from it. Nothing the local luthier can't handle, though.

I love how the tone knobs actually shape the tone unlike some guitars. The pickups were not exactly what I wanted, but overall it's a great guitar and I would recommend it to any beginner guitarist.

To preface this review, I would like to say that I own and love many Ibanez guitars & basses. I'm not a gear snob; if it's good, it's good. My stepson just brought this guitar to me to check out as he said the strings were buzzing horribly. Figured it would be a typical setup to adjust relief/ string height. It had been kept in a hardshell case, indoors, and is less than a year old. The first thing I noticed was this guitar's finish is great and the body is comfortable with good balance. OK, so maybe after a setup this will be a great guitar. However... Tried to play it and nothing but string buzz all the way up and down the neck except for the first 6 frets on the E,A,and D strings. Looked at the neck relief. The neck was quite twisted counter-clockwise, from the treble to the bass side. Big problem. The neck tilt was also noticeably forward, in need of shimming. The nut appears to be cut properly at least. Have never experienced major issues like these with Ibanez before. Unfortunately it's well past the return window so I'll see if I can get it at least somewhat playable. Probably a one-off dud, but this one is bad.