The story behind this guitar

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After perusing a similar Ibanez 1982-1983 Acoustic Guitar Catalog as shown below, I bought this guitar in 1982, when I was still young and reckless, from Spanjaard Muziekhandel, a store in Alkmaar still in existence. That purchase also happened to be the first made with input from the beautiful woman who is now my wife. It is the only surviving specimen of my original batch of cheap guitars, also including a Hondo Les Paul knock-off and a no brand mahogany dreadnought with spruce top, of which this is the most expensive by far. All but this 12-string were incredibly hard to play mainly because I barely understood the workings of a truss rod. Setting up was something I did while playing volleyball and, at least at that time, had little to do with guitars. This one was set up just perfectly straight out of the box and has maintained that trait without too much tinkering ever since.

This is the guitar longest in my possession and has been places, keeping me company when I was a teenager living with my parents, when my wife and I were living in small quarters in both Amsterdam and Sicily, and then when we moved to the US. It was my main axe until I bought a Gibson Les Paul in 1998. That Les Paul is long gone (see PRS Artist II) but this one is still here! It is a testament that Ibanez was really starting to make headway in the guitar building industry in the early-1980s and had come into its own by constructing instruments with an unbelievable price to value ratio.