I've been watching these Ibanez reviews pretty closely the last few days now that I've decided to surrender and join the dark side....it's kinda fun over here though I must say
If you only knew the power of the dark side ...
1. How difficult is the Floyd rose system? (changing strings, general maintanence. That type of thing) It kind of intimidates me a bit to be honest but all the models that interest me have one. (with the exception of the Rg42FX)
It needs to be respected but with a few simple rules you can make it painless.
1. Make sure the shop sets it up for your brand and gauge of strings before they ship it or you pick it up (sweetwater did this for me for free!)
2. When Changing strings use the same brand and gauge - this means no real tremelo adjustment. If you do change strings, all bets are off, it sin;t hard to do but readjusting will be a time consuming circular chore.
3. When changing strings either just change one at a time, or wedge the tremelo with a block of wood or something
My first string change took me about 20 - 30 minutes as opposed to 10 - 15 on a regular guitar. I would expect to get it down to the same range using the one at a time method.
That's it really
2. Also with the FR how big of a difference...if any... is there to the sound?
Between the same guitar with a fixed bridge? Don't know - but the floyd is a big part of the Ibanez appeal, you can learn lots of new tricks so I wouldn;t worry about it. I would say that regular tremelos can reduce sustain, but I don't know if that is true for Floyds, in any case my Jem has bags of sustain
3. What are the benifits to a through neck as apposed to a bolt on? not sure if there is any but that's why I'm asking.
These days not a lot. A thru neck is supposed to help with sustain but these days set and bolt on necks are pretty good, and I don;t believe this is really a factor - I asked the same question and eventually discounted it as there was no clear gain for the price and people disagreed over whether it even helped.
So thats about it - go for it!