Ibanez TCM50E Electro Acoustic Guitar - Acoustic Guitar

I'm surprised and pleased with this for the price point. It arrived in tune, setup with almost perfect tone, in one piece, without damage and looking as attractive or more so than the pictures.This guitar is the perfect starter guitar, or a great all-singing-and-dancing type guitar for traveling around and casual play. It's smaller, has a narrow depth which means it's very comfortable, and is of course a 'looker'. The sound is very good considering that small depth, because it is not a traditional acoustic with a deep 'bellow', but it doesn't lag far behind cheaper acoustics either. The electronics are adequate, nothing great if I'm honest but then if you pick an electro acoustic you are looking for that hybrid you can try out anything with, which is why it makes the perfect beginners or casual guitar. It fits a niche in any collection of guitars and you probably need to go to a £400 price range of a good acoustic or electric to start benefiting more from an instrument and then buy two of them to cover it's capabilities, which implies you are already buying several guitars and have committed a lot of time into this hobby.Someone said the strings were coated in something black, this is true, my fingers were blackened, but it washes off. I didn't get any funny smells, just a light smell of the factory glue.I very rarely give 5 stars for anything, but I was happy to here because it exceeded my expectations.

Received this great guitar the look and sound fantastic really lovely to play comfortable playing action is great came already set up and tuned, so straight out the box and playable,came well packed all in all a great guitar and great service..

Nice guitar but slips on my knee if I don't keep still so better to use the strap. Nice deep bassy sound and just as good through an amp. Great for recording too. Havent gigged with it yet though. Great vintage look and finish.

Brilliant guitar,plays lovely

excellent

I have had mine for about 6 months and for sitting around the house strumming it's perfect. Make no mistake you get what you pay for and you won't be taking this into the studio to record but to learn and practice this is great. It works suprisingly well as an electric guitar, probably better when plugged in than as an acoustic. If you want an electric guitar you should really but an electric guitar, and if you want an acoustic... but if you want both and don't have the cash or the space this is a good hybrid.The internal tuner is really good (although it's a bit annoying it only works when your plugged in/connected to an amp).Crucially - and this is important - this guitar will, like all, spend a lot of time not being played and it is a thing of beauty. Buy a decent wall mounting (or a nail and an old shoe lace) and display it proudly. Even non guitarists are impressed.

Just love it and delivery was fast.

I recently added an Ibanez Talman to my small guitar collection because I thought it might fill a niche in my acoustic lineup, since from Youtube videos it seemed to have a distinctive tone to it, and it does!It is not an expensive instrument and that has to be borne in mind but, that said, it is very playable and is great for noodling around creating song ideas. If it was a recording device, it'd be a portastudio and not your 24/32 track digital recorder. That's not to say that it couldn't be used on finished tracks, it can be. There are certainly places for its rather distinctive tone in a mix.The Sound:The tone lacks bass, due to the thin body that sits depth-wise halfway between a "true" acoustic and a Telecaster (let's call it a "Tubbycaster"), it is very "honky" and if played harder, very bright-sounding. There's a lot of mid-range to be heard, perhaps because the lack of bass response to fill it out. In a mix where there is already a lot going on down at the bass end, I can see this working quite well musically, since it stays clear of the low end. It's not ever going to create a classic acoustic guitar sound without severe EQ, it would need a fuller body for that, my Seagull 6-string knocks spots off it if you're looking for a rounded response, and even my Ovation (Electric Custom Balladeer) with its helicopter radome for a body (!) sounds fuller and more complete, but the Talman's almost steely sound has its place even though it may not be to everybody's taste. It is worth checking out some films on Youtube to get some impression of what you'd be letting yourself in for. If you were only going to have one acoustic guitar to cover all your bases, this would not be it. Ibanez make great instruments, and they make other, full bodied, guitars that you'd find more useful in more situations.The electric sound is pretty similar in character, although at least in this case you have treble and bass response that is adjustable via sliders in the pickup controls situated on the upper bout. This can go a little way towards fixing the response of the guitar to something more balanced. Using effects and distortion on an electo-acoustic is an interesting experiment, a bit hit & miss although I'm sure I can find something I can use!Setup-wise it came in good shape, very playable but in dire need of tuning up. Sadly the built-in pickup on my Talman doesn't have a tuner incorporated (as the Magus pickup in the Ortega nylon-strung guitars do, for instance, as well as other Talmans). Mine arrived (not from Amazon) smelling strongly of fish (and yet in a sealed box) so I'm assuming that some glues used in manufacture are to blame for that. I might apply some lemon oil (which leads on to jokes about chips in the body, and on to mushy peas...) - although the neck probably doesn't need treating yet, I'd rather some lemony freshness than Billingsgate.The intonation was good and the action fair, with nicely levelled frets and a good level of finish (albeit a bit of a fingerprint magnet). Mine arrived with a truss-rod allen key and also a spare bridge saddle, which was puzzling. Mind you, the only way you can adjust action on the instrument is by filing down the nut slightly, so perhaps the "replacement" is actually another bridge option! :)The body, though, is a thing of beauty that certainly draws the eye. It means the instrument can share your living space without detracting from it, it's almost ornamental in character. The inlaid "scratchplate" is weird and somehow in character with this strange instrument, and everything about the guitar screams "individualistic" in one way or another.And I think that about sums it up. It is quirky, not altogether practical and hardly your jack of all trades, but it refuses to be anonymous or generic. It has a character all its own and you will either like it or loathe it, but probably never be indifferent to it, and that's what character is all about.