One Year Review of My IYV Guitar

I purchased my IYV from Amazon October 29th 2022. This was last years early Christmas present to me. So I've owned it a little over a year. At the time I was searching for a Harley Benton hollow body. Those can be a bit of a task getting into the US though. While searching for a Harley Benton I came across this IYV in the Amazon search results.

The price was right and the reviews were fantastic. With several hundred reviews, it averaged 4.3 stars. Close to every review seemed super impressed with the low budget guitar. Let's be real, in this price range you're really not expecting much. If the thing stays in tune and has halfway decent intonation, you're probably going to be pretty happy. Not only did it stay in tune, this is just a really nice playing guitar!

For the most part, I wasn't looking for anything fancy. I tend to play mostly acoustic these days. I wanted an electric semi-hollow body guitar to play late at night when the house is asleep and I feel like strumming a few chords. This fit the bill perfectly. It rarely gets plugged into an amp, but it's fantastic for that late night guitar playing fix.

I call it the IYV IVY. Ironically, I passed by this guitar several times because I thought the manufacturer misspelled Ivy, then realized that was the manufacturers name 😆 The actual model I believe is IPF-300 TSB, I'll stick with calling it The Ivy.

Lets start with what I didn't like. As per several Amazon reviews, the neck comes extremely loose. Mine was no different. The guitar needed a little setup work. A quick adjustment of the truss rod straightened that right out.

The wood on the neck seemed really dry. I purchased some D'Addario Hydrate to oil the fretboard.

There was a couple really slight blemishes in the paint, again were talking about a $160 guitar. Unless you're really looking for the defects, they're hard to find.

I also did a couple minor bridge adjustments.

OK, so out of the box you have to do a little setup work. For someone considering this guitar, if you don't know how to do your own setup work, it would probably be worth it to have a tech go over it for you. Chances are it would only cost you another $50 or $60 to get it setup properly. Money well spent in my humble opinion.

Once you get the guitar setup properly, you'd never know you were playing a guitar that costs under $200. The thing just plays like a dream.

Man I look fat again. HIVE is keeping me fit. Time to start dieting again 🤣 I'm already packing on those holiday pounds.

Like I said earlier, I rarely plug this into an amp. The pickups are OK. I read several reviews where customers eventually replaced the pickups. I don't find them that bothersome, and frankly between that and my MOOER effects pedal, I get a really great sound out of it plugged in. I'm only playing through a tiny Sawtooth practice amp with the MOOER effects pedal. I think it has like 200 effects and you can get some great sounds out of it. Who knows, maybe I'll do a video review of the MOOER soon with the IYV.

What I Love

Honestly, I love just about everything with this guitar. I love the price. I love the design across the fretboard. At first I thought it would be to busy, but the ivy leaves are larger on your 3rd 5th and 7th 9th and 12th fret markers. It also has fret marker dots on the top side of it when your looking down. It didn't take very long to get used to it.

The action and intonation on this thing are really good. It's perfect for my style of playing. It took me a little while to get comfortable with the amount of pressure I put on the strings. In that way, it was a little sensitive. A friend of mine has a Gibson that plays the same way though. Not comparing it to a Gibson, but it has a very similar feel in my opinion.

Personally, I'm not crazy about the placement of the pickup selector. I tend to hit it often while playing. Again, I don't plug it in often, but that has been a minor issue for me.

I was a little concerned about the fake mother of pearl inlays wearing out over time. After a year of playing though, I like the way the fret board is aging. The inlays still look great, and the wood is a little darker in spots from play. I wrote a post a week or so ago about having a slight issue with sticky neck. A little rubbing alcohol applied to the back of the neck straightened that out though. I probably wouldn't take that approach with a more expensive guitar.

The neck also has a glossy finish. That kind of adds to the stickiness. Besides a couple runs in the paint though, I really like the look and finish of it.

Tone and volume knobs are fine. I had no issues whatsoever with anything so far.

I honestly don't know what else to say about this guitar. If you're looking for an inexpensive practice guitar, this guitar is perfect. With a little work, I think this could be something more than a practice guitar too.

If I played in a band, I'd probably look into upgrading the pickups, but just for personal practice, I think they're fine.

Well, that's all I got. After one year of playing this thing, I'm pretty happy. Actually, I'm ecstatic. This was money well spent. This was the perfect guitar for my needs and I'm really happy with the purchase.