Artist AR350 PLT – ’87 Super Edition w. Edge (Floyd Rose) Trem

It’s almost ten years ago now, I bought this guitar from a guy in a village called Zirndorf near the city of Nuremberg, Southern Germany.
I was just at the beginning of Ibanez GAS and saw the guitar beeing offered in a local free classifieds web site for a very decent price.
Unlike today I, didn’t know the model and just thought: “Cool – a white Artist with a Floyd Rose – let’s go for it.”

Some days later, I picked up the guitar at the owner’s place – still not knowing what kind of rare bird had flown to me with this AR350 PLT.
PL stands for “Pearl”, the “T” means Trem. And on the fretboard it has a “Super Edition” inlay.

The guitar was in very good condition, only a scratch at the bottom edge near the output jack.
Frets have 95% life left and the only modification was the bridge pickup switched to a 80s 4-wire DiMarzio Super Distortion with creme bobbins which also had the Tri-Sound wiring.
The white color inbetween has aged beautiful into some yellowish/ivory color with a metallic effect depending on light angle – stunning!

The playability was great, the stability of the Edge/Floyd Rose is legendary and the sound was just perfect – even with the changed pickup.

The AR350 showed up for the first time in the 1985 String Instruments catalog but first models appeared in 1984.
The finishes offered where Pearl (PL, first called PW – Polar White), Fire Red (FR) and Marine Sunburst (MS).
Until somewhere in 1986 the AR350 came with the Ibanez Pro Rock’r Trem which lacked the legendary tunig stability of the new Floyd Rose Trem. Then Ibanez/Hoshino made a wise decision and licensed the Floyd Rose and called it “Edge Trem” which gave an enormous extra value to the guitars equipped with it.

The guitar has perfect production quality in every detail. The electrics in the control cavity is completely contained in a metal shielding box that perfectly supresses hum and buzz.

On ICW I found some information about production numbers. Don’t know exactly how “bulletproof” this information is:

These were made with both the Edge Tremolo and the Pro-Rocker tremolo. They were made from 1984 until around 1988,
Just the 1984-85 models had the pro rocker all the others had the Edge on them.

Production numbers*
1984
AR350FR 4
AR350MS 42
AR350 PW 12

1985
AR350FR 48
AR350MS 112
AR350 PW 125

1986
AR350FR 20
AR350MS 63
AR350 PLT 176

1987
AR350FR 11
AR350MS 22
AR350 PLT 62

Since mine is a A87 serial (January), all ’87 models probably have the Floyd Rose / Edge

Yesterday, I decided to give the AR350 some TLC like cleaning, new strings and also replaced the neck DiMarzio PU with a Gibson 498T pickup which was highly recommend to me by a friend.
I’ve got several Artists with Super 58, Super 80 and Super 70 pickups, so I thought why not give a try to this beast.
With the gold covered Gibson pickup it looks very much more genuine than the DiMarzio – I also have a 4-wire Super 58 in stock, so I could bring it back to original any time.

The result can be seen on the pictures below. The sound of the new pickup is good and powerful. Not that heavy as the DiMarzio but hadn’t the opportunity yet, to test it in a band context. Hopefully in the beginning of August after 4 months of Corona shutdown.

Enjoy the pics 🙂

Edit:
For years I was looking for a MS (Marine Sunburst) version of the AR350 with Edge.
Some months ago (03/2024) I finally found a MS model in decent condition at Rare Guitars in Muenster, Northern Germany (thank you Rudi for accepting my offer), which is presented here:

*) Production numbers were found on Ibanez Collector’s World. See one of the links below