“Tailored for his percussive playing and highly technical style”: Ibanez finally honors prog guitar hero Manuel Gardner Fernandes with his first signature model – and it’s a radical reimagining of the firm’s most daring design

Progressive virtuoso Manuel Gardner Fernandes has finally been bestowed with an Ibanez signature guitar – the headless MGFM10.

A signature Fernandes Ibanez has been a long time coming, and quite frankly it’s a surprise it has taken so long. After all, Fernandes has been an Ibanez endorsee for some time now, and made a name for himself behind the fretboard of some radical custom Ibanez designs.

Armed with any number of one-off Ibanez AZ Superstrats, Fernandes propelled himself to prog-rock stardom, having first found attention by popularizing his trademark percussive approach on social media before branching out into heavier prog rock territory with Unprocessed.

Now, for his first-ever signature, Fernandes has swapped the Strat-style ergonomics of the AZ for the headless design of Ibanez’s Quest range – and it’s one of the most striking signatures we’ve seen in quite some time.

Manuel Gardner Fernandes -Signature Guitar - MGFM10 | Ibanez - YouTube

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Signature Qs from Ibanez aren’t new – the company actually debuted its flagship headless electric guitar range with Ichika Nito’s first-ever signature model – but none are quite like this.

Here, Fernandes has elected for an Obsidian Black Low Gloss finish, which dazzles on top of a quilted maple top and next to gold hardware. The six-string also offers a matching gold pickguard and gold Q58 pickups.

At its core, it’s a standard Q model with some extra oomph, flashing a nyatoh body, a three-piece roasted maple/bubinga neck with a Parallel Wizard profile, and a roasted birdseye maple fretboard with mother of pearl inlays.

The Ibanez Mono-Tune bridge is joined by 24 jumbo stainless steel frets, while the pickups are tailored by master volume and tone controls, a five-way selector switch and Ibanez’s Alter switch that offers extra coil-pairing options.

The guitar has been “tailored for his percussive playing and highly-technical style”, most notably through slanted frets, which help facilitate his wide chord spreads and tapping licks.

“I chose the Q because I’m on tour all the time, and I need a guitar that is slim and easy to handle,” explains Fernandes, who spent a while deliberating over the final finish. “I’m in love with gold, especially with guitars. We looked for a color that would go with gold.

“We looked for rose and white, but we came down with black with the exotic wood. It’s an all-time classic. To now be a signature artist [with Ibanez] is a dream come true.”

It is without doubt the nicest-looking Quest model to date – and that's including the four new-look models we received earlier this summer.

Not only that, at $1,299, it's also only slightly more expensive than the standard HH Ibanez Quest ($999).

Visit Ibanez to find out more.