Ibanez Talman TCM50
This guitar was a surprise Christmas gift from my wife (hint to other guys: leaving a browser page open to a particular guitar can bring interesting results.)
The Ibanez Talman TCM50 is an acoustic-electric guitar. As you can see it's a cut-away design that echos the electric Talman's. The body is thin as compared to a regular acoustic guitar, about 3-1/4". The top is ash while the body and neck are mahogany. The finish is a dark brown sunburst stain over the ash. It looks rather nice although, as you can see from the pictures, bright light or distance causes it to just look dark brown. The pickguard is simply a trick of the finish and not an actual pickguard. There is white binding on the neck and on the front and back of the body.
Instead of the typical piezo electric pickup it has a single coil magnetic soundhole pickup at the neck. There are also treble and bass as well as volume sliders (see picture below).
The bridge is a standard acoustic style with a slightly slanted bridge to assist with intonation. The intonation was good and didn't require any tweaks.
The tuners are standard quality import Grover-style die-cast ones and hold the guitar in tune well.
The 25-1/4" neck has 20 frets and has an adjustable truss rod. The fret work on mine seemed to be quite good. No rough edges or dead spots were noted, even high up on the neck. The action wasn't as low as your typical Ibanez 'shredfest' electric but it wasn't as high as your average acoustic either. Overall, the guitar had a very good feel to it. It's hard to believe what they can put together for under $300 these days.
As for the sound, the guitar has a pretty mellow tone. It's not as rich sounding as some considerably more expensive mahogany bodied acoustics I've played, but it doesn't sound 'tinny', a typical problem with cheaper acoustic-electrics (including my Kramer Ferrington and the Fender Strat and Tele style acoustics). Plugged in, it yields a good hollow body-ish vibe with plenty of warmth and none of the piezo harshness. Applying even moderate levels of gain will cause nasty feedback so the idea is to keep things clean and don't position yourself where feedback will be a problem.
There are treble and bass adjustments as well as volume. The red indicator light is a low battery light. The battery compartment can be seen toward the rear. Battery access is very easy. The jack is on the bottom curve, like many electric guitars.
Here's a picture of the back of the guitar and a picture of the electronics on the top bout of the guitar.
Sounds
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There are 2 clips spliced together. The first is a little acoustic chord noodling. It was done with my V-Amp 2 on my Acoustic patch with a little chorus thrown in. The second is a little single note blues noodle done with the same patch without the chorus.
