There are loads of known and unknown artists who play with Ibanez. In order to choose a top 20 we ranked them on skills, fame and energy. Scroll down to know our top 20!
George Benson
George Benson bursts on the scene in the mid ’60s and ushered in an era of modern jazz combined with an adventurous harmonic spirit, blinding technique, and a no-nonsense tone that has influenced countless jazzers since. Benson is known for his rest-stroke picking technique. He has his own signature series at Ibanez.
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Benson was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of seven he played the ukulele in a corner drug store. When he was eight he played guitar in an nightclub on weekend nights. At the age of 10, he recorded his first single record, “She Makes Me Mad”, in New York, under the name “Little Georgie”. His 1974 release, Bad Benson, climbed to the top spot in the Billboard jazz chart.
Tosin Abasi
Toluwatosin Ayoyinka Olumide “Tosin” Abasi is a Nigerian American musician, best known as the founder and lead guitarist of the instrumental progressive metal band Animals as leaders. A guitar virtuoso, Guitar World ranks Abasi at #97 on their list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time. He now has his own Tosin Abasi series produced by Hoshino Gakki and sold under the Ibanez brand. This line of solid body electriic guitar models was introduced in 2013. Both the TAM10 and the TAM100 are based on the RG228 which is an eightstring RG series guitar. Abasi left Ibanez after 2017 to launch his own gitar label.
James ‘Munky’ Shaffer
James ‘Munky’ Shaffer is the rhythm guitarist for the band Korn. His work with Korn has resulted in over 35 million albums sold. He is an Ibanez endorsee and currently has two signature 7 string guitars, the APEX100 and the APEX2 which are a part of Munky’s APEX series. They are made in Japan by FujiGen.
Shaffer set up the side-project band Fear and the Nervous System in 2008 and is also the founder of Emotional Syphon Recordings. Shaffer first took up guitar as part of rehabilitation when he severed the tip of one of his fingers on the chain of his dirt bike.
Jennifer Batten
Jennifer Batten is an American guitarist who has worked as a session guitarist and solo artist. She played in all three Michael Jackson’s world tours, and from 1999 to 2001 she toured and recorded with Jeff Beck.
Jennifer Batten has released three studio albums: Above, Below and Beyond, produced by former Stevie Wonder guitarist Michael Sebello, The Jennifer Batten’s Tribal Rage: Momentum. The last one was Whatever, which was released in Japan in 2007 and worldwide in April 2008.
Batten began to play guitar at the age of 8 when her father bought her a red and blue electric. Her early influences were the Beatles, B.B. King and Jeff Beck. She started to experiment with the two-handed tapping technique in 1978, having been inspired by Guitar Institute of Technology classmate Steve Lynch.
Herman Li
Herman Li is one of the guitarplayers from the band Dragonforce, not my favourite type of music, personally, but man… that guy can play. He also owns a beautiful EGEN8 from his own signature series.
Herman Li is a Chinese musician. He is the lead guitarist, backgroundsinger and producer of DragonForce. He also played in the black metalband Demoniac.
Li uses an Ibanez E-gen guitar. His model is based on the S-series that came out in 2008. This guitar is of a mahogany with mostly a flamed maple top. He used this guitar during the most recent album Reaching Into Infinity.
Stephen Lee Bruner aka Thundercat
Yes, he’s not really a guitarist but he’s to cool to leave out! Stephen Bruner was the bass guitarist from crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies. He has also worked with Snoop Dogg, Kamasi Washington, Erykah Badu and many others. He uses a custom 6-string Ibanez artcore bass. A 2012 Custom Shop model made in Ibanez’s LA factory. This machine is heavily modified to suit Thundercat’s genre spanning playing style, boasting six strings (tuned BEADGC), a hollowed-out maple body with a five-piece maple/jatoba neck and a rosewood fingerboard.
Thundercat is an American musician, record producer, singer and songwriter. He has released four solo studio albums and is noted for his work with producer Flying Lotus and his appearance on Kendrick Lamar’s album To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015. In 2016, Thundercat won a Grammy for Best Rap/ Sung Performance for his work on the track “These Walls’.
Nita Strauss
Nita Strauss is an American guitarist best known for her work with Iron Maiden all female tribute band The Iron Maidens. She performed with several rock projects such as Alice Cooper. One of her ancestors of the family is the Austrian composer Johann Strauss. Nita Strauss and the Ibanez JIVA10 signature.
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In 2018, Strauss started to make appearances on WWE shows. She appeared at WrestleMania34 playing guitar in a live performance. In 2016 Strauss released her first instrumental solo album Controlled Chaos.
Strauss is the very first female to become a signature artist for Ibanez. In 2018 she launched her signature guitar the Ibanez JIVA. She also has her own line of DiMarzio Pandemonium pickups.
John Christ
John Christ is a musician best known as the original guitarist for the metal band Danzig. (Danzig is one of the bands that really got me into metal). He has been known for his bluesy hard rock sound and frequent use of the pinch harmonic. Christ (lol) was ranked 63rd in Guitar World’s list of ‘The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists’. He plays on Ibanez RG series.
Christ began playing electric guitar at age 13. His first electric guitar was a Univox Les Paul copy. Later, he studied classical guitar and attended Towson University studying Jazz, theory and composition.
In 1987, Christ dropped out of college and moved to New Jersey to join Glenn Danzig’s band Samhain. “John Von Christ” played guitar with Danzig from 1987 to July 1995, appearing on the albums Danzig, Lucifuge, How the Gods Kill, Danzig 4 and Thrall: Demonsweat live. During his time with Danzig, Christ’s main guitar was a 1983 BC-Rich Bich with custom D’Aquisto strings and PRS pickups. The guitar was customised with the Danzig skull symbol, and is currently on display at the Hard Rock Café in Orlando.
Chris Broderick
Chris Broderick was the lead guitarist for Megadeth, formerly of Jagpanzer and Nevermore. His main guitar was a 7-string RG model. During the recording of Endgame he started using 6-string Ibanez S series guitars, which are painted with artwork from various Megadeth albums.
Broderick started playing guitar when he was 11 years old. His styles range from metal, classical, neoclassical to jazz. Broderick used to practice 14 hours a day during his summers as a teen. He practiced electric guitar, classical guitar, piano, and violin under a strict daily routine. He was a standout player in the Denver music scene from 1988 on, in the bands Grey Haven, Industrial Eden and Killing Time. He also has a degree in classical guitar music performance at the University of Denver. His favourite guitarist is Paco de Lucia which is a flamenco guitarist.
John Frusciante
He might nog be known for playing with Ibanez much but here’s a fun fact you might not know yet: John Frusciancte used the Ibanez RG250DX during the recording of the Red Hot Chili peppers’s 1989 album Mother’s Milk. That guy on the pic below, yep, it’s Frusciante with an Ibanez RG250DX.
Frusciante joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988 when he was 18. With him, the band released Mother’s Milk in 1989 and Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991. Frusciante felt overwhelmed and left the band in 1992. Addicted to cocaine, alcohol and heroine, he became depressed. In that state he managed to release two lofi albums; Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt in 1994, and Smile from the Streets you Hold in 1997.
In 1998 Frusciante succeeded in rehabilitating and rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who had experienced a dip musically in the time of his absence. He participated in the successes Californication (1999), By the Way (2002) and Stadium Arcadium (2006). His solo album To Record Only Water for Ten Days was released in 2001. In 2004, Frusciante released six albums in a creative impulse, with different music styles and recording techniques on each album.
Pat Metheny
Patrick Bruce Metheny is an American Jazzgitarist. In 1985 he had a big hit together with David Bowie called ‘This is not America’. He has his own signature Model Ibanez PM2 en Ibanez P200.
At the age of 18, Metheny was the youngest teacher at university of Miami at Coral Gables. At the age of 19 he became the youngest teacher ever at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1996 he received an honorary doctorate. Metheny recorded his succesful album ‘Bright Size Life’ in 1975 at the age of 21.
Metheny has made several solo, duet, trio and quartet recordings including Dave Holland, Gary Burton, John Scofield, … He has collaborated with various artists in various musical styles. Metheny has written more than 400 songs.
Frederik Thordendal
Fredrik Thordendal is a Swedish musician, best known as the lead guitarist and backing vocalist for the band Meshuggah. His signature models are FTM33, M8M, M80M. And man, they do look awesome.
Thordendal began his career in 1985 when he formed “Metallien”, a Metallica- influenced band. The band later changed their name to Meshuggah. Meshuggah’s music gradually evolved into a more progressive sound. Various members of the band coined the term “Djent” in reference to a commonly-utilised technique of playing heavily muted, extended powerchords found within Meshuggah’s music.
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As a guitarist, Thordendal draws attention with his complex rhythm-playing featuring prominent polymetric passages. These characteristics are augmented by his use of seven and eight-string guitars.
Paul Gilbert
Paul Gilbert started at the early age of 5 playing guitar. Guitar Player Magazine named him the succesor of Yngwie Malmsteen. When he was just eightteen he taught guitar to the three year younger Buckethead. In 1984 he left to LA to work as an instructor for the Guitar Institute of Technology. In 1988 he joined MR. Big which he left in 1997 but he continued a solo path. Paul Gilbert is one of the fastest and most technical shred-gitarists. Paul Gilbert mainly uses Ibanez PGM301-WH .
Gilbert plays completely out of his wrist when he hits, making it possible for him to play very fast riffs in which he hits all notes. He also often uses blue notes. These two things in combination are important ingredients of his personal sound.
Paul Stanley
Paul Stanley, born as Stanley Harvey Eisen is de singer, guitarist en co-frontman of KISS. He has his own PS signature series.
His alter ego in KISS is “The Starchild.” He is known for his expressive behavior and sexually motivated comments (both on and off the stage).
His favorite musical artists included Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and little Richard. Stanley learned to sing harmony with his family, and he was given a child’s guitar at age seven and a real acoustic guitar when he was 13. He listened to a lot of doo-wop music, and was inspired by performances of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Steve Vai
Steven Siro Vai is an American guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist for Frank Zappa and played in Zappa’s band from 1980 to 1983. He released eight ablbums with his solo career to date. He has recorded and toured with Alcatrazz and Whitesnake. Vai is part of the generation of heavy rock and metal virtuosi. Ibanez Jem7V is the guitar most linked to Steve Vai.
Very early, Vai became obsessed with the discipline of practice. Vai practiced ten-to-fifteen hours every day. This became the basis of his work ethic for the rest of his career. During his employment by Frank Zappa, Vai transcribed and played very rhythmically complex music, believing that if started slow and perfected, any piece of music could be played.
Vai’s first solo album, Flex-able, began his career as a solo artist in 1984. Originally not intended for release, Flex-able expressed a certain creative “quirky” and “angular” freedom in the eclectic nature of Vai’s writing style.
Vai’s playing style utilizes specialized guitar techniques such as two-hand tapping, alternate picking, lgato, hybrid picking, sweep picking, whammy bar acrobatics, and circular vibrato.
Joe Satriani
Joseph Satriani is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. Early in his career, Satriani worked as a guitar instructor, with many of his former students achieving fame, such as Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett, Andy Timmons, … Did you know that he was directly recruited by Mick Jagger for his first solo tour and he briefly toured with Deep Purple after the departure of Ritchie Blackmore? Joe Satriani is inseperable from is Ibanez JS1000.
Dexter Holland
When you think about Ibanez, you surely don’t think about this guy. But that’s why we put him here. Bryan Keith “Dexter” Holland is an American musician and molecular biologist, best known as the lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and primary songwriter for the punk rock band The Offspring. He loves his Ibanez RG Prestige 570.
John Petrucci
John Peter Petrucci is an American guitarist composer and producer. He is best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He has been the sole producer of the band’s albums released since Portnoy’s departure in 2010. If you love Ibanez, you surely have seen his Ibanez JPM100.
John Scofield,
John Scofield sometimes referred to as “Sco”, is an American jazzrock guitarist and composer. He has worked with Miles Davis, David Liebman,Pat Metheney, John Mayer, … John Scofield loves his 1981 AS200 which is the basis for the JSM John Scofield Model introduced in 2001, which reproduced the original AS200 guitar, with added improvements.
That was our top 20 for Ibanez artists! Hope you liked it!
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHO
