Today we’re doing a little blind test to hear how similar two extremely different electric guitars sound!

The guitars in question are the Ibanez Iceman, which is a cult favorite of rock and metal players everywhere, and the semi-acoustic Vintage VSA500B – which is an elegant, Bigsby-equipped beast of an instrument!

Get the Iceman IC420-ABM at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/576908?offid=...
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/m5qVqM

Vintage VSA500B ReIssued Semi Acoustic Guitar w/Bigsby in Gun Hill Blue: https://vintageguitarsrus.com/collect...

Now, this is a light-hearted and totally unscientific test, but what I am hoping to show here is that we often perceive how guitars will sound almost as much with our eyes as we do our ears.

If you see a guitarist with an Iceman, you’d (probably quite rightly, in 99% of cases) imagine they’re going to be indulging in some hard rock or metal riffs. By contrast, you’d expect a player using the Vintage VSA500 to be making much gentler music – perhaps jazz, blues, or rockabilly, with maybe some indie rock and classic rock at a push.

But, despite their obvious differences, these two guitars can sound very similar indeed, and so I challenge you to a blind tone test to see if you can work out which one is which!

In this video, I play a bunch of riffs across my favorite genres (that’s everything from country, folk and indie, to pop, rock, punk, and metal) with both guitars… only you can’t see which guitar is which! One is simply Guitar A, and the other is Guitar B.

All I want you to do is tell me which one you think is which! Leave me a comment telling me if you got it right.

Here are some links to the various playing samples and info bits:

00:00 Intro and what we’re doing today
01:50 Today’s rig and plan

02:38 Van Halen inspired rock riff (Amp Lead Channel, Bridge Pickup)
02:57 Ringing open indie pop chords (Amp Clean Channel, Both Pickups)
03:23 Garage rock riff (Amp Clean Channel, Greer Lightspeed, Bridge Pickup)
03:40 Heavy metal lead sound (Amp Clean Channel, Revv G3, Neck Pickup)
03:55 Classic rock riff (Amp Crunch Channel, Bridge Pickup)
04:09 80s rock riff (Amp Lead Channel, Bridge Pickup)
04:29 Melodic hard rock lead (Amp Lead Channel, Neck Pickup)
04:51 Grungey droning chords (Amp Clean Channel, Bridge Pickup)
05:07 Fat indie rock rhythm chords (Amp Clean Channel, Greer Lightspeed, Bridge Pickup)
05:37 Green Day inspired punk rock riff (Amp Lead Channel, Bridge Pickup)
05:50 Indie picked arpeggios (Amp Clean Channel, Neck Pickup)
06:10 AC/DC inspired riff (Amp Crunch Channel, Bridge Pickup)
06:28 Progressive rock riff (Amp Lead Channel, Bridge Pickup)
06:44 Funky rhythm chords (Amp Clean Channel, Both Pickups)
06:57 Metal chugging riff (Amp Clean Channel, Revv G3, Bridge Pickup)
07:14 Southern rock picked arpeggios (Amp Clean Channel, Greer Lightspeed, Both Pickups)
07:33 Quacky rock riff (Amp Crunch Channel, Both Pickups)
07:42 Mastodon inspired metal riff with country twang (Amp Clean Channel, Revv G3, Bridge Pickup)
07:55 Indie octave chords (Amp Clean Channel, Greer Lightspeed, Neck Pickup)
08:23 Hendrix inspired riff (Amp Crunch Channel, Neck Pickup)
08:40 Glam rock riff (Amp Lead Channel, Bridge Pickup)

09:02 The big reveal!
09:34 My thoughts
10:26 Thanks for watching and goodbye

My setup was as follows: I ran the two guitars into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head, also using my Greer Lightspeed and my Revv G3 pedals for overdrive and heavy distortion sounds. The amp went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done.

Get all this gear at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
Get all this gear at Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Ibanez #IbanezGuitars #IbanezIceman #Iceman #VintageGuitar #VintageGuitars #VintageTone

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