Ibanez RG 520 Reviews 
5 / 5 based on 2 reviewsI got this on E-Bay brand new in the box with all the tags still on for $450 American. It retails for more like $750-$800 I think.
The sound is awesome for punk or metal. The V8 and V7 pickups make plenty of noise and stay clear. The floyd rose bridge keeps it in tune for days and days of heavy playing. A super-thin wizard ii neck is fast and easy to play on. It also looks awesome without a pickguard and the transparent blue finish.
It's little on the heavy side, but it's not as bad as a Les Paul or something like that.
Built solid. My volume knob is a little messed up when turned really low, but that's just mine. It's not even really worth fixing.
If you play metal or punk, definatley take a close look at this guitar.
Joey Hoser rated this unit
on
2002-06-05.
I was in the market for a new guitar for a long, long time. The guitar I had learned how to play on was a used Fernadez wanna-be Strat a bought off a friend for $25 and it wasn't cutting it anymore. With a limited budget I discovered an Ibanez RG 520 in a local music store. It looked as though it could really kick some ass, so I thought I'd give it a try. Indeed it did. For $650, it seemed to be better than a cheap replica but wasn't as expensive as some of the guitars that dreams are made of.
I fell in love with the ultra-fast neck and high action. The range of tone I could pull out of the V7 & V8 pickups were impressive too. When I first picked it up, I thought this would be great for metal, hardcore, and similar genres but I soon discovered its versitility. Although it may not be the best guitar for a number of kinds of music, it will certainly suffice.
One of the reasons I chose this guitar as the won that I'd take home was the Floyd Rose Locking-Nut system it had. Being able to pull the strings up a 5th and drop the bar to the body, leaving the strings sagging an inch off the fretboard, all the while having it stay in tune when it returned to neutral was amazing. This I would later discover can be pretty limiting. One, strings break often. I can only use ultra-light strings (for reasons I'll discribe soon), which, with use of the vibrato bar, don't loast long. There is an advantage with the Floyd Rose, which allows you to be able to restring broken strings two or three times. Sound pretty impossible? I'm not going to go into it - you can ask your local provider. Two, I can't ever experiment with alternate tunings without reconfiguring the bridge, which would require me to take it into the shop. Three, Tuning it is a long, tedious process. The way the Floyd Rose works requires the strings to be in perfect standard tuning or else the rest the strings will not be in tune with eachother. It is very complicated and requires a bit of patience.
The construction of the unit seems pretty good. The body is beautiful. The translucent blue finish shows the awesome patern of the grain of the wood. I do my best to take care of guitar and despite my efforts the finish really likes chipping off. I have yet to witness an event (i.e. the guitar falling over) that would cause the paint to chip.
For the price, this guitar is great. It is a good secondary guitar to one without limitation that the Floyd Rose poses. The ease of play has given me the ability to really challenge myself without having to overcome the difficulty of some equipment.
Travis T. rated this unit
on
2001-12-17.
