Ibanez gives Wes Hauch a Custom Shop Iceman 7-string, and a $9,999 price tag

Wes Hauch, lead guitarist for Alluvial and formerly of The Black Dahlia Murder, has one of the tidier right hands in technical metal, and Ibanez has given him a signature Iceman to go with it. The ICWH727 keeps the shape's offset lower-horn scoop, finished in trans black with black hardware and a Lo-Pro Edge tremolo. Then people saw the price.

Preorders went up at $9,999. Ibanez's reasoning is the build: the guitar is made at the Ibanez Custom Shop in Japan by master builder Sugi and his team, the same workshop behind Meshuggah's M8M, which listed just above $9,000 when it launched in 2013. Reaction across YouTube and Instagram has been split, with plenty of comments calling the figure hard to justify for a guitar that doesn't have a figured top from Gibson or PRS money behind it. A cheaper import version has not been announced, though Ibanez followed the M8M with an Indonesian-built model a year later.

On paper it is an African mahogany body with a flame maple top, set-neck construction, a three-piece maple and purpleheart neck at 27-inch scale with a slim Wizard 7 profile, a rosewood fingerboard and 24 jumbo frets given the Custom Shop's fret-edge treatment. Hauch's signature Seymour Duncan Jupiter Rails humbuckers handle the pickups.