Enter to Win a $8000 PA System!

Ibanez Artcore AS53 - Transparent Black Flat

Semi-hollowbody Electric Guitar with Sapele Top, Back, and Sides, Mahogany Neck, Walnut Fingerboard, and 2 Humbucking Pickups - Transparent Black Flat
$349.99

Earn $18 back in Bonus Bucks OR pay $15/month with 24 month financing*

Find it used on Sweetwater's Gear Exchange
listed for
$220.00
In Stock!

Only 3 left in stock! More on the way.
Add to Cart
Notify me about deals

Ask An Expert

Our expertly trained Sales Engineers are ready to help!

What is a Sales Engineer?

Most Popular Accessories & Related Items

Ibanez Artcore AS53 - Transparent Black Flat
In Stock!
$349.99
Add to Cart
Add to list
Back to navigation

This article was Written By

Our Product Research Team

Get to know them!

Unbelievable Value on a Great-playing Semi-hollowbody

With its classic design, the Ibanez AS53 semi-hollowbody electric guitar gives you the comfort of a smaller body and modern sound for an amazingly low price. The sapele top, back, and sides offer plenty of warmth and punch, and the mahogany neck is fast and comfy. The guitar's body is about the size of a traditional solidbody guitar, making this guitar extremely comfortable to play. A pair of humbuckers can take your amplifier from sparkle to snarl in the blink of an eye. When you're on a budget and need the warm, airy tone of a semi-hollowbody, you won't be disappointed with the Ibanez AS53.

Compact and comfortable body is fun and easy to play

Solidbody players sometimes shy away from semi-hollowbody guitars due to the size even though they want the tone. The Ibanez AS53 crosses that barrier with a smaller body that is comfortable to solidbody players but is still a true semi-hollowbody guitar. Using the classic maple body and mahogany neck combination, the AS53 gives you the semi-hollow sound you want. No more having to get used to oversized and uncomfortable guitars for great tone. The Ibanez AS53 is the perfect culmination of tone and size.

Humbuckers deliver warm and creamy tone

Ibanez designed the AS53's ACH-ST pickups to give you warm and well-balanced tone. They really bring out the depth and tonal complexity in the AS53's all sapele body. At the same time, ACH-ST pickups do an amazing job suppressing noise and reducing the feedback that tends to plague semi-hollowbody guitars.

All of the fat semi-hollow tones you love

Semi-hollowbody guitars are used in most genres of music. The AS53 is great for jazz, rockabilly, and many other styles of music. Don't forget that this style of electric guitar has also been used in rock 'n' roll, fusion, and even country bands. Get the Ibanez AS53 and start playing with big, fat semi-hollowbody tone today.

Ibanez AS53 Semi-hollowbody Electric Guitar Features:

  • Comfortable and lightweight compact body
  • Sapele top, back, and sides deliver rich and naturally warm tone
  • Mahogany neck with walnut fretboard feels great and provides fantastic stability
  • Dual humbuckers provide you with a thick voice for anything from jazz to rock

Additional Media

Warranty Info

Sweetwater's FREE 2-Year Total Confidence Coverage Warranty

Extra peace of mind at no extra cost.

  • Save money with FREE parts and labor
  • Get back to making music with the industry's fastest turnaround time
  • Fix it the first time with our award-winning, factory-certified Service Department
Learn More about Total Confidence Coverage

Free 2-year Warranty

Sweetwater's 2-year Total Confidence Coverage™ Warranty gives you extra peace of mind at no extra cost.

Learn More about Total Confidence Coverage
Tools Icon

Save money with free parts & labor!

Fast Icon

Get back to making music with the industry's fastest turnaround time.

Award Icon

Fix it the first time with our award-winning, factory-certified Service Department.

Back to navigation

Tech Specs

  • General
  • Number of Strings 6
  • Left-/Right-handed Right-handed
  • Body
  • Body Type Semi-hollowbody
  • Body Shape AS Doublecut
  • Body Material Sapele
  • Top Material Sapele
  • Body Finish Satin
  • Color Transparent Black
  • Neck
  • Neck Material Nyatoh
  • Neck Shape Artcore AS
  • Neck Joint Set Neck
  • Radius 12"
  • Fingerboard Material Walnut
  • Fingerboard Inlay White Dots
  • Number of Frets 22, Medium
  • Scale Length 24.7"
  • Nut Width 1.692"
  • Nut Material Plastic
  • Hardware
  • Bridge/Tailpiece Gibraltar Performer Bridge, Quik Change III Tailpiece
  • Tuners Ibanez Die-cast
  • Electronics
  • Neck Pickup Infinity R Ceramic Humbucker
  • Bridge Pickup Infinity R Ceramic Humbucker
  • Controls 1 x master volume, 1 x master tone
  • Switching 3-way toggle pickup switch
  • Miscellaneous
  • Strings .010-.052
  • Case/Gig Bag Sold Separately
  • Manufacturer Part Number: AS53TKF

What Makes Our Sales Engineers Great?

Sweetwater Sales Engineers are a world-class team of experts dedicated to you. Hand selected from across the globe, each brings a wealth of experience and expertise in the world of music gear to provide you with unparalleled service completely free of charge. Friendly relationships, real trust, and the right gear are only a call or a click away!

Back to navigation

Customer Reviews

Write your review
Rated 5/5

Value and Great Tone

This guitar gives you fantastic craftsmanship and a highly versatile range of tone options - punchy acoustic, jazzy clean, crunch as well as ambient reflective. I played it with round and flat wounds depends on what you are going for. I did find it to be picky about strings. Ultimately a set of D'addario XL 10-46 with the G-string swapped for an .18 Wound G-string gave me the most solid tuning and maximum joy (didn't have to fight tuning issues). Two other things I did was replace the nut with a Graph Tech and put locking tuners on it. Great value and highly playable.
Music background: Casual multi-instrumentalist for many years. Most play on a church praise band and for mental health ✅
Rated 5/5

Probably the best guitar for the price you can get

First off, Sweetwater is awesome, service, shipping, everything top notch. As to the guitar, it punches way above its weight. It is extremely well built, sounds amazing, and plays beautifully. This is probably the best first guitar someone could buy. It punches way above its weight class. It looks sharp in person, plays great, and sounds great. Now, why is someone like me that has played for years and has a rack of expensive guitars buying one? I didn't have a hollow body and wanted to try and nail some jazz and blues tones. I was surprised to find not only do I like hollow body guitars, but I love this guitar. In fact, I'm playing it quite a bit, passing up many much more expensive guitars in my rack to grab it. Now, it's not all good, there are some negatives. The tuning machines are not great, it stays in tune well enough for a session, but I tend to have to tune it every time I pick it up. I'll probably replace these tuners. The Infinity Rpickups that come stock are cheap ceramic pickups, but they sound surprisingly good. I'm on the fence about a pickup upgrade, because the pickups I would put in cost more than the guitar. But, if you step back and view this as an upgrade platform, maybe this will be a great guitar. Also, the frets are on the small side, intonation is great, but the action is low and makes contact with fretboard.
Rated 5/5

Good stuff all around!

First off, the whole gear-buying experience was first-class, from the ease of selection, to communication during the process, to the actual receipt of the gear - buying a guitar online can feel dodgy at times, but the minute I received the picture of the ACTUAL guitar I was going to receive (serial number and all!) I knew this was able to relax and just wait for it to arrive. They know how to safely pack a guitar for shipping, and I needed to tweak nothing except apply my chosen tuning when I unboxed it. Jacob's attention to detail and affability reminded me of going to my favorite (now-defunct) guitar shop in college - no worries, and I felt like more than an average online shopper. But I've come to see this as the rule with these guys, rather than the exception. And the guitar itself is unbelievable at the sub-$300 price point. Beautiful, infinitely playable, and sounds amazing. It's everything I wanted and more! My only niggle in the entire experience was this weird little three-day dosido it made back and forth between Lincolnton and Charlotte (3x) and Durham (2x), but that was all FedEx, and over a holiday weekend; for what I got when it arrived, that gets a total pass, and should serve as no reflection on the quality of the Sweetwater experience. If you're wondering or concerned, don't be - I'll be returning for everything I conceivably can in the future! Thanks for everything!
Music background: Former live production engineer and lifelong musician, 25+ yrs playing guitar
Rated 5/5

Very happy

You guys are great ! Love the guitar ! Thank you ! All I have to buy now is talent !
Close Close $8,000 PA System Giveaway -- input your email address below to enter or click here to learn more.

See giveaway details & rules or check out our past winners!

Success!

Your email, test has been entered to win this giveaway. Good Luck!