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Collectable Guitars

Collectable Guitars pt 17 – The Ibanez Destroyer


icontexto-webdev-social-bookmark-09facebook481The Ibanez Destroyer was born, like its’ sister guitar, the fairly similar Ibanez Iceman, out of Ibanez’s infamous 1970s battle with Gibson over Ibanez’s blatant copies of the Les Paul and SG Junior.

Ibanez Destroyer guitarIbanez received a cease- and-desist order and decided to make more original models. This culminated in the Iceman and Destroyer of the late 1970s. The Destroyer started in 1975 as a very impressive Gibson Explorer copy also called Model 2459, but was phased out around a year later.

The new models had a revised body shape, which was an Explorer shape with no scratchplate and some Iceman-style notches on the lower body and the top horn.

There were several models including the rare star-shaped DT250, DG350 and DT350, the DT555 model designed by Phil Collen of Def Leppard, the DT100 played by Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden, the short scale DTX120 of 2000 and the DT420, a reissue of the original DT400 of 1981-2.

The Destroyer has not been made since the DT200 was phased out in 2005, but recently they have been reissued and are now back in the shops.

Destroyers are surprisingly not that expensive.

I found an old DT450 on eBay for less than £500, and a DT200 for around £300. The new model, with DiMarzio D-Activator pickup, will probably be around the same as a similarly specified new Iceman, around £500 or so.