I'm in this huge freaking dilemma. Both guitars are great and have what I want. I could order the EBMM JP6 here in the US and have it ready for me by the time I'm back after spending my summer vacation in India. If I choose the RG, then I'll be ordering it through Bajaao.com, and also have them swap out the pickups for a pair of nice dimarzio's. To end price is coming out to about the same. The music man is american made and the Ibanez is japanese made. ACK! And with respect to the locking trem and a non locking. I don't really know. Because I have a mahagony iceman with emgs for all of my down tuning needs. HELP!
So the JP6 has a non locking tremolo? I find that hard to believe. I can't find a proper link so if you could link us up...
that music man has a crappy kahler (non locking) style trem. Those are known to give problems after a while. You may need to fabricate some parts to keep it running for very long. There's some kind of pin mechanism that's prone to damage.
The JP series is built very very well from what I've seen and heard. The trem is usually OK for vibrato and some dive bombs, but is obviously not as stable as a Floyd...it does come with excellent locking tuners though. It has an interesting middle position as well, with the middle coils of both humbuckers in series (the standard clean sound in most DT songs). The trouble many people run into is-the arm cutaway, which might not be very comfy vis a vis where you pick, and the position of the pickup toggle, which might be too close to your hand unless you pick as cleanly as Petrucci