Ibanez Artstar AS153B Black

I should preface this review by stating that this guitar was bought as B-Stock, but described as

"Traces of use (no damage/scratches)". The guitar was offered without a hard or soft case.

When I ordered the guitar the sales person advised me that it would be packed in a box-within-a-box. However, when it arrived, the guitar was simply packed in a single box, packed with bubble wrap. There was no visible damage to the box upon delivery, and the guitar looked fine when I unpacked it. However, the next day I noticed that the guitar had suffered some minor impact damage to the rear corner near the bottom strap button. As this is a B-Stock guitar, I can live with this, but this does not qualify as "no damage/scratches". The action and intonation, both needed adjusting, and the supplied strings were pretty terrible, but I guess this is to be expected, and I was able to deal with this myself. Other niggles: the pickup selector plastic toggle is loose, and will not tighten, so it would appear that the thread is stripped.



Overall, it's a great-sounding guitar, that plays well and stands up well against a Gibson ES-335 that I own. The Tri-Sound switch gives a couple of usable extra sounds. The guitar is only let down by the cosmetic damage that I wasn't expecting to be present.