A few weeks ago a friend loaned me a sword, based on the old design of the viking swords used by the invaders to quell the Picts and the Celts into blind submission. The sword was full sized and weighed in at a hefty ten pounds. I picked it up and experienced awe. Wielding it gave a feeling of primeval power - of the avenging, attacking roaring Norsemen bent on pillage, rape and general over-the-top aggression. Real Attilla The Hun emotions.

I thought that that feeling was one unique to vintage invaders hardware. Until, that is, another foreign weapon came into my hands in the shape of the Ibanez RS 315CS.

Of Strat shape and neck, but with a single humbucker mounted bridgewards, the Ibanez looked like a face without a nose. The spartan single volume and tone controls added to this and it looks well, just bare. Picking it up proved a shock, for the body is quite hollow, with a cavity extending down to beside the bridge bolts and up to a point five centimetres from the neck. This reduces the weight dramatically from the normal Strat and I thought, at first at least, that the feel of the guitar was wrong. It hangs well enough, but the initial feeling is one of insufficiency.

After just a few minutes playing, however, that feeling was ripped away and replaced by one of raw aggression. The only other guitar I've handled that comes close is an aged Gibson SG which resides safely in the capable hands of Tony ('Groundhog') McPhee.

With the single pickup putting out some phenomenal levels and the way that the guitar is put together, it becomes obvious that the RS 315CS is an instrument meant for axemanship of the first water.

Technical department: high grade polyester finish over a (laminated?) body and neck protects the machine from accidents, 24 neat and quite wide frets, single bridge/tailpiece with tremolo assembly with string anchoring in the traditions of the Fender with steel sleeves for the retaining knobs, slim and consistent neck with Telecaster-style body mounting allowing easy top fret access. Two tinted plastic tone and volume controls and heavy duty jack socket with two plates on the back finished in 'off cream' colour (nice alternative to frigid arctic white). Single Ibanez humbucker in the standard 'cross wired' position. Access to the internal cavity is easy through either of the two plates. Screening is a little thin, but the component parts look and feel of high quality and should last well. Six velvotune heads complete the picture, running through a plastic nut that creaks a little but not to difficult proportions.

With no scratchplate I felt a little worried about the primeval urges that assailed me when holding this guitar. It simply cries out to be beaten into submission and promises to take anyone within a good fallout area with it... But the polyester stood up to it and what marks were made polished out easily.

So, to playing. The neck is slim and the finish allows for a fast movement either dry or wet. The frets are quite wide and feel almost stoned. I tried the RS 315CS on a Peavey Pacer first, a common transistor amp and trusty as Trigger. Dynamite. The treble output overdrove the overdrive section and after a few hesitant lead lines, it seems to take off. Chords however proved too full and the output, while not as high as some guitars, seems to be so very rich that the saturation level can be reached before you even start to wind it up. Instead I left the guitar to itself to do the roaring and took away the induced distortion. This was better but not very useful - you can wind up the RS 315CS to a fair degree of pain, but the sound remains a little lightweight. Instead, using the wonderful adage that 'Happiness Is A Warm Valve' I used the standard Marshall stack. Now, the conjunction of a Gibson and a Marshall gives a perfect match for 'heavy' work, while the coupling of the stack to a Fender gives a marriage of convenience for a more 'new wave' sound. The war that resulted in the encounter of the Ibanez and the Marshall was rung out in the second round. Fact is, this is not a guitar for those musicians of a nervous temperament...

The tone control, starting on zero, gives a rich muddy rhythm sound akin to the meatier R&B players, but it can take you right through to a blistering lead sound when on top. In between, and with the judicious use of the volume (which works!) a wealth of different sounds, admittedly in the rock mould, can be generated. But the sheer versatility of the tone control is rather dangerous when you consider that a slight knock will revolve it easily. I would have much preferred a 'click stop' type that saves the agony of having to reset the tone after each successive accident.

The guitar is at its most expressive with everything on nine, just under maximum. The tone is rather Gilmoreish while the sustain is à la Fripp. Half a notch up and it's Blackmore country and the Metal Badlands, half a notch down and it's on the way to Hackettland, loads of sweet sustain and the edge of roaring that makes long solos quite unobjectionable.

So to the gripes department, but for all of the quibbles below comes the old reviewer grunt of 'customise yourself!' and replacements to such peripherals are cheap. The plastic rotary pots look a mite wimpish and aren't really in keeping with the macho looks. The nut could become a problem and would get on my nerves after a while, and Ibanez have fitted those 'gullwing' type strap holders which delight in taking your fingernails off. The rest of the comments have to centre on the neck construction which leaves me a bit cold. Granted that the neck is slim, the action (as supplied) was good, and the intonation not too far out (both of which were rectified after an hour with a tuner and an Allen key...). No, it is the shape that worried me and gave my thumb a dull ache after two hours playing. The shallow D shape could be a bit more pointed so that it rests in the crook of the thumb and not in the curve of the hand. It does slow things down a little simply through the amount of skin in contact with the neck. This would increase the speed of the neck considerably, and while it's fastish now...

In conclusion then, this is a rock guitar, but I'm sure that it would do any guitarist a power of good to hold this instrument that really is a basic machine. It has a sort of rough majesty, quite out of proportion to the price. While you might pass this by due to the cycloptic single pickup, try it and see. Your adrenalin levels are going to need a good limiter.

The Ibanez RS315CS guitar has an RRP of £261.30 inc. VAT and is distributed in the UK by Summerfields, (Contact Details)