kristoffer_sundberg's Reviews

Great value for price

It's a bird... it's a plane... it's a bass VI. Now what the heck is a bass VI...? Well, it's a bass. Aaaaand it's a guitar.... Introduced by Fender in the sixties, the bass VI model is an odd one out. Tuned an octave lower than a regular guitar this thing acts as a bass but has PAF style humbuckers and plays more like a guitar than a bass due to the quite slim neck. SubZero is Gear4Music's own brand and is a cheap brand but it way extended my expectations. Sure, it has it's imperfections but give it some love and it's bang for the buck. Heavy riffing on this will blow your mind. Very inspiring to play as it forces you out of your comfort zone.

This machine inspires

I've owned a lot of guitars. When I found this one, I instantly wanted to have it mainly because it looks rad; I had no idea it would quickly become my main.

There are lots of different models in the Ibanez AF series but this here is an AFC - the C standing for Contemporary and besides from being a well sounding hollow body archtop, this guitar has some really cool features.

First off, it comes equipped with two floating mini humbuckers. For those not familiar with the concept of floating pickups, it means they're not attached to the body, which allows the wood to resonate without disturbance. Instead of being screwed on to the body, the neck pickup is attached to the sides of the end of the neck while the bridge PU is attached to the pick guard.

Having two floating PUs is unusual, most jazz guitars will have only the neck PU. While it certainly is true that I mainly use the neck PU, it's cool to have the availability of the other one for diversity in sound without compromising the acoustic sound of the guitar.

Other nice details include the tasteful fingerboard inlays, the black tuners, and the black tone and volume knobs made of rosewood. The AFC line was only in production between 2017 and 2019 before it was discontinued. My guitar is from 2017 so the back and sides are maple while the top is matt laminated spruce. The neck is mahogany/maple and is one of the smoothest necks I've played. I use .013 flatwound strings but on this guitar they feel much lighter.

The look, the feel, and the sound of this guitar is all very inspiring and makes for a great tool. I bless my often empty wallet for going ahead and getting it even though It wasn't a fully necessary purchase at the time.

Fuzz from another dimension

This one is a beast - in the true essence of the word. It took some time to tame it but once you get it under your thumb it can create some truly beautiful disastrous sounds. The first thing you should know and get before trying to understand these circuits is that the knobs are actually mirrored, so 10 is 0 and 0 is 10. I have no idea whether this was intentional but at first, before you realize this, this pedal will just scream in your face and your only thought will be that it's broken. However, once you know the knobs are mirrored, it gets a little easier. The trick here is to be very gentle with the knobs and go from 0 to not much more, because beastness. The effect loop in this thing adds extra dimensions of awesomeness but the same is true for the pedal you decide to stick in the loop - be gentle and add just a little bit of whatever that pedal does. I've got a Stone Grey Distortion stuck in the effect loop atm and it adds just about the right amount of warmth to the fuzziness. This pedal is super cool, and, if you put in the time to get to know and understand it, it sounds great. You can get sounds out of this that other pedals just won't give you. Beautiful disaster indeed.