IYVIJG-200 TSB

For a beginner? I've been playing for over 60 years. Gibsons. Fenders. All sorts of fine instruments. But then I discovered IYV -- made in (of all places) Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Inexpensive. And.... Good. Really good.(This is my third)Good in what way?Every way, really. Well designed, along familiar lines but with their own little twists. (Here a "Jazzmaster" in general type, but semi-hollow bodied, and with pickups voiced much as classic P90s.Built well. With, here, none of the bug-a-boos that typcially are part of the low end guitar scenario. Her fret ends are smooth. Her finish nearly flawless. Even her wood grain more than passing fair. And her hardware is well chosen and nicely built. (A roller bridge. Smooth, adjustable, tuners.All, if not quite total "first class" pretty dang close.Even set-up was passing fair on delivery. And strings, once lowered to my own preference, revealed no fret buzz whatever.All of that is sayng a lot. But it is all true. And for me that is three times in a row. Three IYVs. All now among my most often played guitars.

This guitar is an incredible value for the money. It looks and feels like a much more expensive instrument, with nice touches like the brass roller bridge. Although it benefitted from a minor intonation adjustment, the guitar was ready to play out of the box.Although I could nit-pick one small blemish in the finish near the semi-hollow cutout, and some fret ends could use a little bit of dressing, overall, I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of the sunburst finish, and the neck had a very nice satin feel to it. I was surprised by how heavy this guitar is, considering it's a semi-hollow body. I'm truly impressed by this instrument, and I'm not sure how IYV is able to offer this guitar at this price.With all of that said, there is one huge caveat to this guitar: it does not sound like a Jazzmaster. I bought it with the hopes of adding chimey, jangly Jazzmaster tones to my repertoire. While it looks like a Jazzmaster, and has JM style circuitry, it just doesn't sound like a Jazzmaster. I don't know if this comes down to the pickups (which I believe are P90 type pickups, rather than JM style pickups), or something else (scale length, etc.?).I found the pickups were very hot - this guitar is noticably louder than my other guitars. Perhaps because of the hotter input signal, I found the guitar has a gritty, thick tone. Weirdly, it reminded me more of a Les Paul with humbuckers than a Jazzmaster.I was also surprised that it didn't really sound like a hollow-body - it didn't have the somewhat boxy, woody, microphonic quality that I associate with semi-hollows.If I had to describe the tone of this guitar, I'd describe it as a little "generic." However, that's not necessarily a bad thing! For example, if this is your main guitar, you might want a versatile instrument, rather than a guitar with an extremely unique tone. Plus, you do get a good range of tonal variety due to the JM style switching.In summary, this guitar gets high marks from me - it's an incredible value and I'd reccomend it - just not if you're looking for something that makes Jazzmaster-like tones.

I can compare this to a CV Squire Jaguar which I also recently acquired. The Squire took more setup! But the Squire CV Jag is much nicer, certainly worth the extra $. But this IYV JM is a very good deal and can be enjoyed out of the box--or mine could. JM scale 25.5 ish (Wish it had the shortscale like the IVY Mustang--my fav IYV of 6 now), Despite "semi-hollow" dugout on the top side, it is not as light as it looks...but that might help the tone. I'm still learning it's voices, like many of my budget beauties, I start out thinking, Pickups!! New Pickups! But after a month, I start to like them and learn to use pedals to tune their tones. It has the same basic top/bottom switching as my Jag, sans the bass mute on lower side. I've got the action low with little work. Trem seems fine. Hooray!!

Amazing guitar, beautiful, great neck, great pickups, smooth tremolo.

I purchased this guitar based on glowing YouTube videos of the IYV products. I have wanted a jazz master style guitar and expected the low priced copy to live up to the reviews that I had read about it. Unfortunately, the first one that I received was unplayable with the fretboard, having uneven jagged, very sharp, edged, frets all the way up and down the board. I returned it and decided to try getting a replacement rather than a refund, thinking that I just got a bad version that slipped through the cracks of quality control. Unfortunately, the second one that I received had issues of its own. The floating tremolo was not installed properly, and when I pushed down on the bar instead of springing back up, it just stayed down because it appeared to be wedged against something inside the guitar. I had to pull up on the bar in order to get it to release and come back up into its normal position. The guitar was beautiful and functioned electronically as it should, but if obvious things were wrong with it, what hidden defects were there to be found in the future? I truly wanted this to be a good purchase, but sadly decided to return the second one for a refund. If you don’t mind reworking certain parts of a brand new instrument that you just purchased, give this a try. I expect any instrument that I buy to be in good playing condition right out of the box and there’s no excuse for the issues that I found with these instruments when I received them.

I have a gibson and a fender and prefer to play this over both. It's smooth, comfortable for a j-neck, and affordable.