Ibanez Acoustic Guitar Innovations
Published on 12 March 2025
Ibanez are a brand who are well-known for being forward thinking. With their electric guitars, basses and effects, they’ve consistently innovated in the marketplace, pushing ahead some pretty out-there ideas (the RG electric guitar model with the built in KAOSS Pad Mini? Wild!) that are often more ‘mad scientist’ than ‘mainstream sales’ in scope. They’ve often straddled that inspired edge where ideas can really change the game for players, and indeed for other brands once they catch on and copy!
That’s true of their solid-bodied offerings, but what of their acoustic guitars? Do they display the same innovative spirit? I’d say they do, and here’s my reasoning…
Ibanez Innovations at a Glance
The Ibanez Talman: Pre-empting the Portable Acoustic Craze
Re-invigorating the Nylon String
Embracing the Percussive Tappers
Pioneer of the Open-Pore Finish
The Ibanez Talman: Pre-empting the Portable Acoustic Craze
The Ibanez Talman acoustic changed the game for portable acoustic guitars long before the Little Martins and Taylor GS Minis of the world came along and dominated the market. There has actually always been a need for smaller bodied acoustic guitars, but brands in the past were relatively unwilling to meet the demand.
Things are different today, of course, and the Talman helped pave that path. The Talman is an offset body shape that actually started as an electric guitar and bass before being adopted as a small-bodied acoustic.
It was never one for the purists, particularly as the Talman tended to appear as affordable/budget models, and in bright finishes. The smaller, shallower body didn’t give up the rich tones desired of traditional acoustic aficionados, and so the Talman was more of a niche proposition.
That, I would say, is its superpower. It looks different to a normal acoustic, it sounds different and it plays more like an electric guitar than a typical dreadnought. Why? Because Ibanez gave it a slim neck, a double cutaway body design (I often wonder why more acoustic guitars don’t have double cutaways, but that’s another matter) and a body size that’s closer to a typical electric than it is to the likes of a dreadnought or jumbo.
The sound is certainly smaller and thinner than those other styles, but I’d argue that this is a feature of the guitar, not a negative. Not every guitarist wants to broadcast their playing to all and sundry, so these more personal, intimate guitars are actually a way to connect to a very personal style of playing, and for me, that makes the Talman a legitimate and attractive contender.
Their innate playability has also made them attractive to electric guitarists who want to have an acoustic that feels at least slightly similar to what they already know. So, for those who aren't traditionalists, the Talman is something of an innovative acoustic classic.
Re-invigorating the Nylon String
Nylon string guitars have generally been a niche interest in Western music, the focus of classical players, flamenco practitioners and high school music departments. The uniquely beautiful touch and tone of the nylon string guitar seemed to have been somewhat sidelined until Ibanez focused on revitalising them.
So, what did they do? Well, no great designs exist in a vacuum: they take from good designs of the past and expand on them. In this case, Ibanez seems to have taken inspiration from two places: the Godin Multiac guitars (a full range of stage-friendly acoustic hybrid instruments) and the old Gibson Chet Atkins thinline acoustics, which featured shallow bodies, nylon strings and easy playability.
To this, Ibanez added slimmer necks, updated pickup systems and their own brand of inimitable visual flair. They then made the price point affordable and thus easier to put into the hands of everyday guitarists. Older models were part of the still-existing Galvador sub brand and had a more traditional silhouette, but recent additions are altogether more post-modern, if you will. The Ibanez FRH guitars are almost Telecaster-like in their shape, with soundhole-less tops and eminently playable setups. For performers, these guitars offer an experience that is hassle-free, comfortable and great sounding, not to mention a sleek contemporary vibe.
One such player to take advantage of this style is Polyphia’s Tim Henson. The modern day shred legend has his own signature TOD10N guitar, emblazoned with ‘Tree of Death’ inlays along the fingerboard. Niche? Not as much as you think: this has been one of our best-selling guitars of the last five years!
For gigging players looking to take a nylon string guitar on tour, these FRH guitars are a portable, dependable and inspiring proposition.
Embracing the Percussive Tappers
Guitarist & composer Michael Hedges re-wrote the rulebook on how to play acoustic guitar way back in the 1980s. Using the guitar’s body as a drum kit and his hands as drumsticks, a whole new vocabulary was born, one that is now continued in players like Andy McKee and Jon Gomm.
Gomm in particular has taken alternative techniques to new extremes, twisting his guitar’s tuners mid-song to enable new notes. Gomm actually moved across from the company he initially had a signature guitar with to Ibanez precisely because they were so on board with exploring his passion for percussive guitar.
Their resulting collaborative series of guitars are the Ibanez JGM models, and they are made exactly how Jon wants them. They have dual outputs (so that separate amps can deal with different frequencies), a thermally aged top and a special pickup system incorporated for capturing tones from everywhere on the body, be they strummed notes or thumped percussive taps. This is proprietary stuff that is only just being ‘figured out’ by other pickup makers now.
As with all Ibanez innovations, you can expect to see these features refined and developed further and into other future guitar models, as has been the way with the brand since day one.
Pioneer of the Open-Pore Finish
This point may seem unimportant, but I think it’s actually pretty significant. Ibanez were one of the very first mainstream guitar brands to offer guitars with matte ‘open pore’ finishes. These finishes are economical to execute, and offer a fresh look and touch, since you can still feel texture from the guitar body’s timber under the thin coats of colour and sealer.
Whilst price was the main motivator for developing the open pore finish, the unexpected positive was a more resonant instrument - whether used on acoustics or on electrics - with a tactility than players love. Open pore finishes also age and ‘relic’ naturally more quickly than thick gloss finishes, and that’s an attractive concept for many of today’s players.
What’s really interesting to note is how quickly the guitar market took this on board and offered their own takes on a textured, matte open pore finish. Whilst I can’t say for sure that Ibanez were the first builders to produce this type of finish, they were certainly early adopters and the first of the ‘big hitters’ to roll out the style to a significant percentage of their output. The industry followed, and now it’s an integral part of many brands’ output.
Ibanez: Acoustic Innovators
I hope that I’ve stated a strong case for the innovative status of Ibanez acoustic today. Because they make (mainly) affordable guitars and give them long codeword titles instead of actual names, I feel that some players may miss out on them through oversight.
Innovations are important because they drive progress, but in-and-of- themselves, they aren’t very important unless they are attached to objects of quality. This is perhaps where Ibanez score their home run, since they’ve been making consistently high quality instruments for 50 years. They are played by the biggest names in the business (how many Tom Morello fans realise that he gigged for years as the Nightwatchman with the cheapest Ibanez classical guitar on the market?) and are available in a veritable cornucopia of styles & colours.
Basically, whichever Ibanez acoustic guitar you choose, you’ll be enjoying decades of innovation.
Click to Browse our Ibanez Acoustic Guitars
