IYV-IRK-300 Semi Hollow Electric Guitar 3T Sunburst (IYV)

With Rickenbacker being perpetually, frustratingly behind the times, it's tougher to get a decent 50's/60's semi-hollow than most other guitar styles. Without much competition, my expectations were tempered, but Beatles fans on a budget can rejoice, because this is a remarkably nice instrument for so little money. The looks are great, and not only are the colors lovely, but it has no real flaws anywhere. It feels quite decent, is well balanced, has a nicely shaped neck, doesn't have too much flex anywhere, has reasonably smooth fret edges; it's just a plain good instrument, top to bottom. The strings it came with should be changed right away, but once you do, the sound is lovely, with no need to swap the stock pickups. It's just a bit jangly and bright as it should be, and the pickups are a little lower output than most humbuckers, without being weak enough as to require rebalancing your amp and pedal settings. The bridge isn't quite as convenient to restring as most modern designs, but doesn't really hold you back. The tuners would benefit from being replaced with a nicer set, but are definitely good enough to work with. All in all, I'm thoroughly impressed and very happy to finally have a Rickenbacker styled guitar without spending an arm and a leg.

Review of IYV 6 String IYV-IRK-300 Semi Hollow Electric Guitar 3T Sunburst, Right, (IRK-300) I received the one pictured (the fireglo sunburst type model) and I am very pleased at that. It is a beautiful guitar. There are a couple of minor finishing QC type issues. There is a little residual polishing dust near the neck pickup around one of the screws and along the edge of the pickup near the neck. No big deal. Mine is intonated very well, action is low, and the neck relief is spot on with no buzzing. There are no sharp fret ends. The frets are not polished as well as they could be, when you do a bend you can feel some roughness as the string moves (I’ll fix it when I change the strings). Tuners are basic sealed economy type tuners, but mine holds tune pretty well, new strings and some graphite in the nut slots will improve that I think. The fretboard is Jatoba, a wood I was not familiar with, but from what I’ve since read it is an inexpensive, but very acceptable perhaps more sustainable alternative to some of the common boards, such as rosewood, ebony or maple. The bridge and tailpiece both look great and are solidly made and set. The wood used in the top and back is attractive and visible through the finish. They even put clear coat inside the sound hole. Electronics seem to work fine. The volume and tone knobs both make considerable difference across their ranges. The pickups sound great to me. They are not real powerful, the clean tone is a bit jangly and has a vintage vibe to it, especially at performance volume. Using a little OD distortion the tone is tight and pleasant and sits well in the mix with a bass, flute, drums and keyboard. The band was complimented on the overall sound today. Overall, I like the sound. With the single coil pickups, the pickup design and the hollow space in the body the guitar has an airy resonate tone that actually sounds like it comes from a hollow body guitar (some semihollows just sound like solid guitars, not this one). It reminds me of the airy tone (that I like) of a cheap strat with a canoe cut under the pickups and pickguard, almost a natural reverb tone. Really nice for less than $170 US.

Great value, this guitar required some fine tuning including kissing the fret ends with a fret dressing file and gluing the nut in place and a truss rod adjustment but with a little work this is an amazing playing and sounding guitar.I recently ordered a second one in a different color that I am going to fit with soapbar pickups and I'm expecting a little work but overall build quality is fantastic for the price

I’m actually impressed! I have a friend who I recently got started with guitars. He really admired my FireGlo Rickenbacker 330, which is easy to understand since it is a stunningly beautiful guitar. So for Xmas I decided I would get him this relatively inexpensive guitar. My main thought was that it would be a great piece of wall art for his office and an incentive to keep learning to play. I had actually watched several videos on this guitar and all of them indicated that while the bridge pickup was pretty decent, the neck pickup always sounded totally dull, muted and low output. But I have to say that in the last week that I’ve been “testing” and setting up my friend’s new guitar, I am actually pretty impressed! Both pickups sound pretty decent and have an appropriate sound for each location. Now I’m not saying that this guitar sounds anything like my Rickenbacker, nor does it match any of my Strats, Les Paul’s or others. But I will say that it does have decent sound in all 3 switch settings and sounds like a pretty decent guitar. Which for the price is somewhat amazing! Overall the fit and finish is really pretty danged good! It is a nice looking and feeling guitar. Not just for a “cheap” guitar, but for any under $1000 guitar. Didn’t have any fret sprouts (which many reputable brands do have nowadays), the finish is well done and even the tuners are reasonable. And pretty inexpensive to swap out a great set of Gotoh Locking tuners if you plan on keeping and using this. I have to say that I was expecting a lot less. Been playing and collecting guitars for decades and this one is really fun to play! Obviously not going to replace my Ricky, but I’m sure my friend will really enjoy this! Assuming he keeps up his lessons! 😂

Looks good , plays well, sound good too! BUT NO, IT IS NOT A RICK ! But hell needier is the price!

In my experience, inconsistent QC is one of the things that go hand in hand with buying inexpensive guitars. One can be nearly perfect and the next one, not so much. What makes this guitar good value is less to do with price versus quality and more to do with the relative lack of options for a Rick-styled guitar. If this were a Strat or LP style guitar, at this price point there are lots of options and as a result, I'd be less forgiving of an imperfection in the finish or some fret sprout or a high fret but for a Rick-styled guitar, I do forgive those things. The finish on mine was perfect and it sounds great. It had a number of frets that weren't fully seated and after addressing that I ended up doing a full fret level, crown and polish. I swapped the tuners (and I usually don't unless they're really clunky). Also not a fan of these bridges but they're part of the vibe of guitars like this so it's fine. In conclusion, you may get a perfect one or you may not. Even if you get one that needs some TLC and don't feel comfortable doing the work yourself, it's probably worth it for this style of guitar (certainly you'll spend way less than you would for the guitar this is styled after).