Ibanez GRG7221QA-TKS

I had originally bought a Harley Benton SC7 fanfret, which was fantastic.. I took a step up to a larger name brand. I tried the Ibanez GRG7221QA-TKS. This thing is a beast. It's super easy to play, even though it has a much thicker neck than a 6th string. I think the tone of the stock pickups are pretty amazing. A lot of people are saying in their reviews that they will replace those pickups. They kind of have a split tone to them. Not so much when I'm playing clean tones, but when I put some overdrive, or some heavy distortion you don't just hear one note. You almost can hear 2 notes. Kind of like an octavia. I noticed that also with the Harley Benton. So there's something about the 7 string guitar pickups that they give a split tone which I think is pretty damn awesome. Oh and I was able to bring both guitars down to a .009 gauge string. They still sound incredible. The stability of the tuning is really not that bad. Considering I had lowered the string gauge. It's about the same as when they had the .010 gauge strings. The fretboard is very comfortable all around. Paint job is pretty good. I thought it was going to look more dramatic. Deeper woodtones coming through the paint job. As for the weight distribution. It's incredibly light for the size. This is definitely an awesome starter to intermediate player guitar. The next 7 string I'll be getting will be a much more expensive one for sure.. But this one is highly recommended.

Started playing this yesterday - guitar feels well made and sounds good enough too.

Out the box the guitar was set up quite well - strings were just a little high for my taste but not overly so, I only made a minor adjustment there. Intonation was almost spot on across all strings, again just a minor adjustment needed for one of the strings. The guitar comes with instructions for this for anyone unfamiliar with how to make these adjustments.

Neck is comfortable and there is good access to all 24 frets.

The build quality feels very good - the pickup selector switch, knobs and tuners all feel good quality to me. It seems to hold its tuning well too. The bridge is also very comfortable to rest your hand on while playing.

The finish is less striking than in the pictures - I find the wood grain barely noticeable unless there is a light shining onto the guitar, but this is still a very nice looking guitar.

Sound-wise I think the pickups are decent for the price - they do the job. Obviously higher end pickups will sound better but you won't find that in this price range.

I do love that the 5-way switch allows for coil splitting (position 2 splits both coils to give similar to a strat "quack" sound and position 4 splits just the neck for a single coil sound) so there are a variety of sounds available. I don't think there are any other 7 strings which offer coil-splitting in this price range so this is a great feature to have.

I may put thicker strings on in the future though, as the stock strings are probably too thin for anything below Drop A - this is in part due to the 25.5 inch scale length.

Overall I am very happy with the guitar and would fully recommend it to anyone wanting a decent 7 string on a budget.