My wife bought me one about 5 years ago, and I played it up until last year when I sold it. I have been playing for about 13-14 yrs., but yes I did own one. They are quite decent. I was just looking for a little bit more quality, and I bought an SZ320-sun burst. The sound was really nice. I hope you enjoy yours as much as I did mine. Here's a picture of the exact one I had .

Oh as far as amps go, find a good amp that brings out the tone of the guitar's pick ups. If you're going to play blues, you'd better find a nice tube amp, and start with that. You can find wuite a number of amps, for pretty inexpensive. It just depends on how much you're wanting to spend. You need to eventually buy an acoustic guitar.

Gio models are pretty much the bottom-liners of Ibanez. Guitar manufacture has come a long way, meaning that these cheap guitars will be nothing like the terrible guitars that made up the cheap range a few decades ago, but the quality standards for gio models are inevitably rather low. It is possible to get some quite nice gio guitars out of the mill but chances are most will be just OK.
Since you got it in a pawn shop and know nothing about guitars, it would be a good idea to take it to a guitar shop with a tech and have them put new strings on it and set it up. This should improve the playability and alleviate any problems with buzzing strings etc.

If blues is your thing, you can probably get a small fender amp. My personal suggestion to beginners who are undecided is to try something more complex, like a small modeling amp. There's much controversy about them but they can't be beaten when it comes to showing you the different types of sounds that are available and help you make a more confident purchase when you decide to upgrade.

Thanks for the replies. I'm gonna take it down to the guitar shop tomorrow (on closer inspection I noticed the B string is slightly rusted, eek.) So that should help things out quite a bit and just to see if it's on track.

So as far as amps go, Frumsapap you mentioned a tube amp. Sorry to sound dumb but what's the difference between a tube amp and a different kind of amp, and how can I tell the difference? Also ibzRG, have you had any experience personally with the modeling amps and what should I look for as far as brand/size/etc goes?

I much appreciate your help!

My personal experience with modelling gear is the Line6 POD. It's not a full amp and it probably costs more than a 15W amp. You will need some external speaker (computer, home stereo, amp) or you can resort to headphones. Line 6 also has some small modelling amps, Spider they call them. I haven't had any of these but their sounds are part of the POD's much bigger sound arsenal so I have an idea of what they are like. They are not my favorites in the arsenal but they do cover different levels of loudness/distortion.
Another option is the Roland Cube. I know nothing about it but it comes up quite often in similar discussions and always has good comments.

As for size, 15 Watts should cover the loudness needs for home usage more than adequately, but small speakers tend to sound, well... small. If that bothers you, maybe you can look into the 30W range (I think the Roland is in this range). There is no need to look at bigger amps before you have made up your mind about what you like.



Tube amps are expensive and usually big. There are some small ones too though. The difference from other amps is in the sound and dynamics. Tubes are generally richer in sound and get more respect from guitarists. I don't think you should even think about tube amps yet. Learn to play the guitar first, get a taste of what you like and what you expect from your instrument and amp and once you have a few years of experience then you can make the upgrade if you're so inclined to.

Thanks for the info. I googled some Roland Cubes and they look pretty good. I saw a few cool looking Roland Micros, going for about $100 or so on Ebay which is probably my max price range (I figured I'd spend about $200 on the whole beginner setup, the guitar was $100.) Have you heard anything of these? I'm not sure if they'd be crap, but they seem to have a decent number of options.

Roland micro cubes are actually amazing little amps. I'm currently using one to fool around with on the road.