2026 Ibanez AS7328 Baritone | An affordable doom and ambient tone machine! First Look Review & Demo

This is the 2026 Ibanez AS7328 Artcore Baritone: a new, and affordable sub $1,000 baritone guitar that’s not super pointy! ----- At Thomann: https://thmn.to/thoprod/633166?offid=... At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/nXq9m7 At Ibanez: https://www.ibanez.com/usa/products/d... ----- When I say “not super pointy”, I mean that the AS7328 is an affordable baritone guitar that’s not just built for an all-out metal assault – which is quite a rarity. This hollow body guitar is part of the Ibanez Artcore series, and its larger, semi-hollow body, gentle curves and Classic Elite humbucking pickups all go towards making this a baritone that’s going to be well suited to lower gain players too. Because baritones can be fantastic tone machines for way more than just metal, doom and sludge: they’re incredible ambient beasts, fantastic country twangers, and great all-round difference-makers when it comes to all manner of alternative and rock styles as well. And while I didn’t have time to go through all of these sounds in today’s whistlestop first look at the AS7328, I do get to showcase it for you in quite a few musical ways. Specs-wise, though, this looks like being a great choice too: the body is linden, and the set neck is a 3-piece nyatoh affair. This particular model comes finished in a deep, and rather lovely, Tobacco Brown finish. Being a baritone – and strung to B standard tuning (that’s, from the lowest string to the highest, BEADF# and B) from the factory – the AS7328 features a 28”/711 mm scale length, and comes with .014-.068 gauge strings. Meanwhile, the bound rosewood fingerboard features 22 medium frets for all your riffing needs. The rest of the guitar’s hardware is Ibanez’s own: you get a Gibraltar Performer bridge, a VT06 tailpiece, and those aforementioned Classic Elite humbuckers. (One of my favorite personal guitars, my trusty Ibanez AS73FM, features the very same pickups, so I know these are going to be great for everything from warm, jazzy cleans to thick walls of heavy distortion!) At time of filming (December 2025) I didn’t know what price the AS7328 was going to be. Obviously now the video is out we know the RRP, but when testing this guitar out I already knew that anything under $1000/€1000 would make it a steal! I’ve been looking for a decent, sub $1000 non-pointy baritone for a few years now… could the AS7328 be the one? Time to find out! (I was at Henning’s house for this video, so I was running the AS7328 through his Fractal Audio FM9!) Enjoy my first explorations with this guitar, and let me know your thoughts in the comments! 00:00 Hello! 00:57 Specs and features 03:18 Clean sounds and discussion 06:08 Let’s add some gain for alternative/indie rock tones 07:32 Classic rock sounds 08:28 Hard rock sounds 09:49 Punk rock and chugging power chords 11:00 High gain metal sounds 11:39 High gain + delay for sludge/doom 12:39 Tuning down to Drop A for metal carnage 13:25 Final thoughts and goodbye --- Get all my gear at Thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0 --- #Ibanez #Ibanez2026 #IbanezGuitars #IbanezArtcore #Baritone #BaritoneGuitar #IbanezBaritone #RichWordsMusic #NewGuitars2026 Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much! ‪@IbanezOfficial‬ ‪@IbanezGermany‬ ‪@EytschPi42‬