UPDATE! Factory boxed version is OOS, but the non-factory-boxed version is still available. Both are new in open box. Updated main link.
IYV (Inyen Vina) builds Harley Benton guitars for Thomann, among many others. This specific guitar is a transparent green Les Paul clone with a set neck, carved and bound body, bound neck, and flame maple cap. It used to sell for $140-150 on Amazon, but has been sold out there for a long time.
This guitar is several tiers above the cheap Epiphone Les Paul Juniors, which sell for $150-200. If you're looking for a Les Paul-style guitar, you won't do any better without paying hundreds more.
It gets very good reviews:
https://www.squier-talk.com/threads/a-brief-review-of-iyv-ils-300-egr.197769/ [squier-talk.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lPYWgpphSE [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rph1826-qQI [youtube.com]
https://www.amazon.com/ILS-300-Solid-Body-Electric-Guitar-Emerald/product-reviews/B08T2MMGVW [amazon.com]
Factory boxed version appears to be OOS. Free shipping on both versions.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/387239205278
Also available in non-factory packaging for a few dollars less:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/387148542612
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You'll definitely need the following: a 1/4" cable (10-20 feet), some picks, a strap if you want to play standing up, a gig bag if you want to take it anywhere, a guitar stand (it will eventually fall over if you always lean it on the wall or a table), and what's today called an "amp modeler". It may or may not come with a strap, picks, and gig bag...I haven't got mine yet so I don't know.
"Amp modelers" simulate the sound of dozens of classic guitar amps, plus dozens of effect pedals, and you can plug headphones or home speakers into them and practice at apartment volume. They let you sound like the guitars you hear on records instead of like a cheap practice amp. Amp modelers also have a tuner mode, which is important, because the first thing you'll need to do is tune your guitar.
I don't have time to go through every possible amp modeler, and everyone has their own opinions on which is best, but here are some options for you. Some are cheap, some are more expensive.
Line 6 POD Express (easiest to use, not too expensive, probably what you want)
Line 6 POD Go (much more programmable, but more expensive and has a learning curve)
Zoom G1 Four (cheapest, but also trickiest to use)
Headrush MX5 (similar to POD Go)
Valeton GP-100 and GP-200
Mooer GE150 Pro and GE300 Pro
Once you learn how to tune the guitar (Youtube is your friend), you can learn to do a basic setup by adjusting the truss rod and bridge (again, youtube is your friend), which will make the guitar easier to play and help it stay in tune better up and down the neck. This will require a couple metric Allen wrenches.
Good luck and enjoy!
Does IYV deliver that same standard to direct customers? That seems to be rather more mixed.
Beyond that, there's the sense of taking a bit of pride in the instrument one plays. I remember when I was a teenager that I wanted a stereo new for my first car. I was given one as a gift, but it was a house brand from a retailer like K-Mart. It worked OK, but I never installed it. It would never be a Sony, Clarion, Pioneer, or the like.
It's actually important to feel inspired by the gear you use, especially when you're frustrated at the difficulty of learning and you want to blame the guitar.
...The complaints I see are that the tuners work but can be a bit rough, which is true of all sub-$200 guitars I've tried, and that sometimes the pickup rings are bent, which doesn't affect sound or playability and can be replaced for under $5.
...
My experience with cheap guitars is that very few of them really need a parts upgrade. ...
Sure, Gotohs and Hipshots feel better, but even no-name Chinese tuners seem to work these days. If you want to tinker, that's great. But if you just want to play this guitar, you can get by with an Allen wrench, a #2 Phillips, and a few Youtube videos that show you how to adjust the truss rod and set up a Tune-O-Matic bridge.
You note that you've not had bad experiences with cheap tuners, etc, but I certainly have. Cheap Chinese tuners work but the moment you try a guitar with a cheap set of Gotohs or Grovers, you realize what you're missing.
My Firefly FFTL (a Telecaster style guitar) is illustrative. I paid about $190 for it with shipping. It was attractive. The pots were full size. The switch was a proper traditional 3-way switch. The pickups sounded good. The cavities were shielded. The fret ends were rounded and nice. Then the negatives: it was shipped without relief (truss rod adjustment), the fretboard was filthy, the frets were gritty, the strings were garbage, and the action was WAY high. So I spent a couple of hours cleaning, polishing, re-stringing, adjusting the truss rod, adjusting the action, and then fixing the intonation. Paying a local tech to do the setup stuff would be $60 or so, plus the clean and polish stuff.
(Many other purchasers report high frets on these guitars. Mine only had a single one, and it wasn't real bad. But if you have more than a few, then you're paying for more technician time, or putting your own effort into it, which requires tools as well. A setup doesn't include fret leveling in most cases.)
So now it's finally playable. But the locking tuners were "mid" at best. There was a lot of lash in the them, so tuning was a constant overshoot-undershoot thing. I'd have rather they put better non-locking tuners on it than the junky locking ones they chose. I finally bought a set of non-locking Gotohs for about $48 shipped (MG381-07). It was night and day. There was no lash, and tuning was now easy. And they FELT good when you used them.
The pickups sounded decent, but under any amount of gain, the bridge pickup would squeal like crazy. It was microphonic because it lacked any wax potting. I potted it myself, spending about $5 on a brick of paraffin, plus the time to remove and reinstall the pickup and the 30 minutes to melt the wax, dip the pickup, etc. It fixed the microphonics problem.
I went to sell this guitar after having bought another Telecaster that appealed to me more, and needed no fixes. Having put all that effort into cleaning, adjusting, and improving the guitar, I sold the Firefly with its original tuners for what I paid, and I had to wait out all the lowball offers. I found no local buyers. It had to go on Reverb. The new owner is very happy with it, which makes me glad.
What did I learn from all of that: no-name guitars that you have to work on to make really good can certainly be made VERY GOOD. But such an instrument will never be anything but a no-name guitar (unless you hit super stardom), and you'll never get your time and upgrade investments back when you sell it. In contrast, if you buy a $400 or so (possibly used) guitar of a better model, it'll need very little of all this effort, making it not as expensive as it looks. When you sell it for about what you paid, you won't regret having put so much effort into something that gave nothing in return.
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You'll definitely need the following: a 1/4" cable (10-20 feet), some picks, a strap if you want to play standing up, a gig bag if you want to take it anywhere, a guitar stand (it will eventually fall over if you always lean it on the wall or a table), and what's today called an "amp modeler". It may or may not come with a strap, picks, and gig bag...I haven't got mine yet so I don't know.
"Amp modelers" simulate the sound of dozens of classic guitar amps, plus dozens of effect pedals, and you can plug headphones or home speakers into them and practice at apartment volume. They let you sound like the guitars you hear on records instead of like a cheap practice amp. Amp modelers also have a tuner mode, which is important, because the first thing you'll need to do is tune your guitar.
I don't have time to go through every possible amp modeler, and everyone has their own opinions on which is best, but here are some options for you. Some are cheap, some are more expensive.
Line 6 POD Express (easiest to use, not too expensive, probably what you want)
Line 6 POD Go (much more programmable, but more expensive and has a learning curve)
Zoom G1 Four (cheapest, but also trickiest to use)
Headrush MX5 (similar to POD Go)
Valeton GP-100 and GP-200
Mooer GE150 Pro and GE300 Pro
Once you learn how to tune the guitar (Youtube is your friend), you can learn to do a basic setup by adjusting the truss rod and bridge (again, youtube is your friend), which will make the guitar easier to play and help it stay in tune better up and down the neck. This will require a couple metric Allen wrenches.
Good luck and enjoy!
(A quick test of whether equipment is any good: how many of them are listed USED at Guitar Center's site adjusting a bit for how many were sold. There are an AWFUL lot of Katanas listed. Clearly, someone thought they needed to upgrade.)
When you first start playing, it's hard to get good sounds. One way to improve the ability to get good sounds is to get an amp that provides a reliable basic sound and that doesn't send you down the rabbit hole of fiddling with amp settings. You need to PRACTICE, not fiddle with the amp.
I'd probably look at a Fender Frontman 25R (the other, smaller models are janky; Billy Gibbons has been known to praise the 25R, in comparison). The Blackstar Debut has a lot of potential. A Roland Micro-Cube is a good choice, too.
Or look at my personal favorite: a used Vox Pathfinder 15R. They were discontinued in 2012. The cleans are good, and even the distortion is legit. It has built-in reverb and tremolo. You're basically working the combination of gain and volume to move between clean and distorted.
All of the amps I've listed, save for the Micro-Cube, are analog solid state amps.
That's why I recommend the combo modeller amps like the Positive Grid Spark series amps. There's the portable Go, the slightly bigger (and my favorite) Mini, and the even bigger and louder Spark 40 and Spark 2. The bigger you go, the louder they'll be. Other than that they all have the same amps/effects available I believe.
Then you can get even bigger combo modellers like the Boss Katana series, Fender Mustang LT, etc. Nearly every amp brand has one like this now, Marshall, Vox, Orange, etc.
There's also headphone versions of them. The Spark Go could be considered that, but there are even smaller that plug directly in to the guitar and then you just plug headphones in. For those I recommend the Fender Mustang Micro Plus. Boss had a headphone version that had the guitar modelling amp built in to the headphones. You can still get it but I believe it's been discontinued.
Maybe they mean the Fender it is a copy of...
I'd probably look at a Fender Frontman 25R (the other, smaller models are janky; Billy Gibbons has been known to praise the 25R, in comparison). The Blackstar Debut has a lot of potential. A Roland Micro-Cube is a good choice, too.
Or look at my personal favorite: a used Vox Pathfinder 15R. They were discontinued in 2012. The cleans are good, and even the distortion is legit. It has built-in reverb and tremolo. You're basically working the combination of gain and volume to move between clean and distorted.
All of the amps I've listed, save for the Micro-Cube, are analog solid state amps.
- Have you ever owned an IYV-branded guitar? I have. Their QC is right in line with the Harley Bentons of comparable price, as you'd expect because it's the same factory. Except the HBs effectively cost $72 more, because that's the shipping charge to USA from Thomann in Germany.
- Have you ever used a Pod Express? I have. They're the easiest pedal in the world to use. Plug guitar into jack, plug headphones or speaker into other jack, spin center knob until you hear a sound you like, spin outer knobs to add effects if you want to. Done. A beginner can spend time practicing instead of learning a user interface. They won't need a separate tuner, like you would with a Frontman or other analog practice amp. Since the Pod Express runs on 3 AAA batteries, they can practice anywhere.
- Harley Bentons don't have any better resale than any other cheap guitar once you include the $72 shipping cost. Based on the number of people I've seen flipping this very IYV guitar for $140, and the number sold on Amazon at $140, it'll have better resale at $98 sunk cost than anything else under $200 if someone decides they don't want theirs.
If you think a cheap-ass Fender Frontman 25R transistor practice amp is more "inspiring" than a modern amp modeler, your opinion has no meaning to me or anyone I know in the music industry. Star players are using and endorsing Kemper, Fractal, and Line 6 because they literally cannot tell the difference between them and the real thing, on stage or in the studio. Meshuggah has recorded and played live with modeling amps since the mid 2000s, and their tone crushes. Nearly every bass on every recording of the last 15 years is recorded direct and run through a modeler. My ears do tell me that the front-line players like Kemper, Line 6, and Fractal Audio are a clear cut above the Chinese clone companies like Donner and Mooer, which is amongst the reasons I recommend the Pod Express. It's also $179 new, more appropriate for someone who just started with a $98 guitar than a $300+ Katana. And based on the amp models they include on the POD Express, I know that they're using the Helix generation of models and effects, not the old POD generation.Pod Express just using amp/speaker presets, no effects:
https://youtu.be/s3tF2lUCfks?si=
Messing about with effects as well:
https://youtu.be/s3tF2lUCfks?si=
Compare to a Frontman 25R:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q6qHQI
That's why I recommend the combo modeller amps like the Positive Grid Spark series amps. There's the portable Go, the slightly bigger (and my favorite) Mini, and the even bigger and louder Spark 40 and Spark 2. The bigger you go, the louder they'll be. Other than that they all have the same amps/effects available I believe.
(That said, I'm reasonably sure anyone who's enough into music to want to play guitar also owns a pair of headphones...though you may need a 1/8" to 1/4" stereo adapter, and one of those old-school headphone to dual RCA cables if you want to play through an AV system.)
- Have you ever owned an IYV-branded guitar? I have. Their QC is right in line with the Harley Bentons of comparable price, as you'd expect because it's the same factory. Except the HBs effectively cost $72 more, because that's the shipping charge to USA from Thomann in Germany.
- Have you ever used a Pod Express? I have. They're the easiest pedal in the world to use. Plug guitar into jack, plug headphones or speaker into other jack, spin center knob until you hear a sound you like, spin outer knobs to add effects if you want to. Done. A beginner can spend time practicing instead of learning a user interface. They won't need a separate tuner, like you would with a Frontman or other analog practice amp. Since the Pod Express runs on 3 AAA batteries, they can practice anywhere.
- Harley Bentons don't have any better resale than any other cheap guitar once you include the $72 shipping cost. Based on the number of people I've seen flipping this very IYV guitar for $140, and the number sold on Amazon at $140, it'll have better resale at $98 sunk cost than anything else under $200 if someone decides they don't want theirs.
If you think a cheap-ass Fender Frontman 25R transistor practice amp is more "inspiring" than a modern amp modeler, your opinion has no meaning to me or anyone I know in the music industry. Star players are using and endorsing Kemper, Fractal, and Line 6 because they literally cannot tell the difference between them and the real thing, on stage or in the studio. Meshuggah has recorded and played live with modeling amps since the mid 2000s, and their tone crushes. Nearly every bass on every recording of the last 15 years is recorded direct and run through a modeler. My ears do tell me that the front-line players like Kemper, Line 6, and Fractal Audio are a clear cut above the Chinese clone companies like Donner and Mooer, which is amongst the reasons I recommend the Pod Express. It's also $179 new, more appropriate for someone who just started with a $98 guitar than a $300+ Katana. And based on the amp models they include on the POD Express, I know that they're using the Helix generation of models and effects, not the old POD generation.Pod Express just using amp/speaker presets, no effects:
https://youtu.be/s3tF2lUCfks?si=q...MOgH&t=143 [youtu.be]
Messing about with effects as well:
https://youtu.be/s3tF2lUCfks?si=q...MOgH&t=143 [youtu.be]
Compare to a Frontman 25R:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q6qHQI
The Positive Grid Sparks are another good choice for beginners. Thanks for bringing them up!
(That said, I'm reasonably sure anyone who's enough into music to want to play guitar also owns a pair of headphones...though you may need a 1/8" to 1/4" stereo adapter, and one of those old-school headphone to dual RCA cables if you want to play through an AV system.)
It does not follow logically that a guitar made in the same factory as a guitar from a better known brand is of the same quality. In fact, Cort-branded guitars, made in the same Indonesian factory as MANY highly regarded brands, routinely receive criticism for lower quality compared to the Schecters, PRS SE, and similar models made in that factory. The Asian manufacturers build to the quality you're paying for, in both dollars and volume. There are exceptions, but they're rare. Thomann is in a position to demand a higher quality product from a factory that won't feel any pressure at all from an individual.
I haven't tried a Pod Express, mostly because I think I'd be happier with an HX One. That said, FOR A BEGINNING GUITARIST, I think the modelers are a mistake. I say that as a player who has gone through all of this for five years now. All the extra knobs and models are distractions. When your sound sucks because you're not fretting strings correctly or whatever, it's a tremendous temptation to think that another amp or overdrive model might fix it. "Oh, I'll just fiddle with that," and 10 seconds turns into 20 minutes. That is then 20 minutes you weren't fixing the actual problem: developing the finger skills. It's even worse with the apps, because then you have to figure out the app AND there are even more models.
Not a single one of the amps I've listened to on HEADPHONES was worth listening to if it cost under about $250. The Katana, the Fender GTX, the Spark -- blech on all three of them run through a headphone. (I used both 'typical' listening headphones as well as a decent pair of AKG studio cans.) I'm NOT talking about the higher end Line 6/Helix, Kemper, and similar things.
Yes, I'm well aware there are piles of YouTube channels singing the praises of these amps. It's hard to tell much of anything from YouTube; there's too much audio compression. It still doesn't stop the monetized channels like Studio Rats and all the others from promoting amps to generate traffic through their affiliate links.
Amps can sound good in a mix or in a noisy store but not so great when you're practicing alone. With other musicians playing, amps that sound a little fizzy and synthetic are fine. But when you practice alone, those same qualities come to grate the ear. I've bought and sold THREE Katanas because of this. I convinced myself they sounded good at one point, but in a room by myself, figuring out riffs and melodies, they just got old real fast. I trust my own experience on this over the YouTubers.
So, recapping, I've bought and sold three Katanas MkIIs, a Fender GTX 100, a Fender Mustang I, and a Spark 40. I do still have a now-vintage Line 6 Pod 2.0. It sounds pretty good through a speaker, but not great through headphones. As I mentioned earlier, there are almost 400 used listings for "Boss Katana" in Guitar Center's used section. For an amp that's supposedly a "do all", there seem to be a lot of people who thought they needed to upgrade.
The amps I still use: a Waza Air, a Vox Pathfinder 15R (two of them, actually), and a 5150 Iconic 15W. The latter sounds REALLY good, and the emulated cab is decent, too.
I'll throw in a plug for Monoprice's Stage Right 15W tube amp, too. I sold it, but it did a fine job. If they put it on sale for $200 in November, it's definitely worth considering.
Finally, if you've not tried analog solid state, it's worth giving it a shot. There have been some terrible ones to be sure. But the Frontman 25R isn't bad, especially for mostly clean. The Vox Pathfinder 15W is absolutely fantastic for everything but maybe thrash metal distortion. The Peavey Studio Pro 112 and Bandit 112 both sound great once you dial out the "honkiness" that shows up with some guitars.
As with everything, YMMV. I'm not insulting you or anyone else. I simply think the entry level amp modelers don't sound that great and offer too many distractions for beginning guitarists. A beginner needs a reliable guitar (to know the bad sounds can't be blamed on the instrument) and an amp that produces something that sounds good even after a lot of practice time.
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