With so many different guitars they’re producing, both electric and acoustic, its impressive how Ibanez still has some production space to manufacturer more parlor guitars! Case in point is the recently released Ibanez AVN10, which is part of their Artwood Vintage “Thermo Aged” line. This new guitar comes out of the production line looking and feeling old, thanks to Ibanez’ accelerated wood aging technology.
The layman term for this technology is simply “baking”, where in the wood that will be used on the guitars for the Thermo Aged line are heated. It’s not a simple heating though, because the heating process is designed in such a way to release water and resin moisture without damaging the wood, resulting in a convincing old school look and feel. This certainly goes beyond the usual “vintage” style looks, and actually turns the wood components similar to that found on well loved instruments. What’s great about this technology is that you get the vintage response, look and feel, without the structural problems and dings found on existing vintage parlor guitars.
Thankfully, Ibanez included parlor guitars in this series, one of which is the AVN10 which features an all-solid wood “Thermo-Aged” body. The top is crafted from solid sitka spruce, while the back and sides are from solid mahogany. It also features a spruce X bracing for improved volume and frequency range. The resulting sound would be punchy and crisp, while having the midrange gnarl expected of small bodied acoustics.
The guitar has a mahogany neck with a soft V-shape. It has an 18-fret rosewood fingerboard, with vintage style Mother of Pearl fretboard inlay, and joins the body at the 12th fret following old school specs. Scale length is 24.96″, while nut width is 1.693″. Both the nut and the bridge saddle are crafted from bone. As usual, my favorite part of this guitar is its slotted headstock design with Grover Chrome Open Gear tuners. Other cosmetic features include Herringbone top board purfling, and grained Ivoroid binding.
Finally, the best thing about this all-solid wood, thermo-aged parlor guitar is that its very reasonably priced, retailing for just under $600.
