🎸 RG-EEK! DAY TWO 🎸

🌊 Meet Calypso! 🌊

Ibanez RGDIX6MPB Iron Label • 2018 • Surreal Blue Burst

Some guitars have a nice top.

Calypso appears to contain an entire ocean.

🏷️ Adoption Fee: £675 🏷️

Yesterday we introduced you to an RG.

Today we’ve wandered slightly further down the family tree and found its bigger, angrier relative.

Calypso is an Ibanez RGDIX6MPB Iron Label, built in Indonesia in 2018 and finished in the wonderfully named Surreal Blue Burst.

And frankly, the name is accurate.

That extraordinary top is poplar burl, stained in shifting shades of turquoise, blue and green and laid over a layered swamp ash body, with the natural timber exposed around those enormous RGD bevels.

It looks slightly different from practically every angle.

Which is unfortunate, because we’ve now taken approximately nine thousand photographs of it.

The RGD was developed from Ibanez’s RG formula for players who wanted to go lower without everything becoming floppy and indistinct. So instead of the standard RG’s 25.5” scale, Calypso stretches things out to 26.5 inches.

Ibanez actually shipped these tuned a whole step down to D standard from the factory.

In other words, she was quite literally born to misbehave.

That extended scale is paired with Ibanez’s wonderfully thin Nitro Wizard RGD neck, and on this 2018 version it’s a three-piece construction of maple and purpleheart.

Flip her over and that purpleheart stripe runs straight down the centre of the neck, because apparently the front of this guitar wasn’t showing off quite enough.

Then there’s the fretboard.

It’s birdseye maple, and it is gorgeous.

The figuring runs right along the board beneath 24 jumbo frets, with luminescent side dots added to the 2018 specification so you can still work out where you are when the stage lighting inevitably becomes unnecessarily dramatic.

At the other end, a set of Gotoh MG-T locking tuners keeps everything where it belongs.

And then we reach the bit where the Iron Label badge starts making considerably more sense.

Calypso carries a pair of DiMarzio Fusion Edge humbuckers, developed in collaboration with Ibanez for exactly this sort of instrument.

They’re passive ceramic pickups designed to retain clarity and definition under serious amounts of gain, particularly when you’re playing low, fast or both.

Controls are gloriously uncomplicated.

One volume knob.

One three-way pickup selector.

That’s it.

There isn’t even a tone control.

Ibanez clearly decided that if you bought a 26.5”-scale Iron Label RGD with two DiMarzios, you’d probably already made your intentions reasonably clear.

At the bridge is an Ibanez Gibraltar Standard II fixed bridge, giving you a solid, comfortable platform without a tremolo system getting involved in proceedings.

No Floyd Rose.

No locking nut.

No collection of tiny springs.

No changing one string and accidentally beginning a four-hour engineering project.

Just tune it down and get on with frightening people.

And despite looking like something designed exclusively to produce noises audible from neighbouring counties, she’s remarkably comfortable. Those exaggerated RGD body contours aren’t just there to look aggressive; they remove a surprising amount of bulk and make the guitar sit beautifully against you.

Calypso has now been through our full rehabilitation process here at The Stray Chord, including our usual fret level, crown and polish, fret-end attention, full clean, hardware and electronics checks and complete professional setup.

The result is a discontinued Iron Label from one of Ibanez’s more gloriously excessive periods, with an extended scale, proper DiMarzios, locking Gotoh hardware and enough poplar burl to constitute a minor geological feature.

And somehow, after all of that, we’re still mostly staring at the top.

Because LOOK AT IT.

🌊 Calypso 🌊

2018 Ibanez RGDIX6MPB Iron Label

Surreal Blue Burst

26.5” extended scale

Poplar burl top

Layered swamp ash body

Nitro Wizard RGD 3-piece maple/purpleheart neck

Birdseye maple fingerboard

24 jumbo frets

Luminescent side dots

DiMarzio Fusion Edge ceramic humbuckers

3-way pickup selector

Gibraltar Standard II fixed bridge

Gotoh MG-T locking tuners

Factory designed for D-standard tuning

Professionally rehabilitated & set up

🐾 Rescue • Restore • Rehome 🐾

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