Definitely inspect the RG3 carefully and make sure the neck isn't warped and that the frets are nice and level. The workmanship on these newer budget guitars is honestly really nice and it plays great. I own a model very similar to the RG3 (basically an Indonesian, fixed bridge, basswood RG) and have been extremely impressed with it. If you want a fixed bridge, the RG3 is going to have a simpler setup to work with. Not sure which kind this one is in particular. And some of Ibanez's tremolo systems are definitely liked more than others. Keep in mind too that the EX has a tremolo, which at this point has probably seen a lot of wear and tear. Some of the newer budget RGs already come with a 5-way switch for some cool sounds too, though the RG3 might be a 3-way. You can always get a push-pull tone pot to get series parallel on your neck humbucker for a single-coil sound, not a very expensive mod. From what I have seen, people see the v7/v8 pickups as an improvement. (And many would argue that manufacturing in the budget lines especially has improved a lot in that time.) Sure, you have a single coil middle, but the pickups look like the INF pickups, which are not very liked if you look around. A non-MIJ budget RG today (which is basically what this was 20 years ago) costs $300 new. So you're looking at a ~20 year old budget model RG made in Korea, for $245. They presumably were named differently to prevent them from possibly hurting the reputation of the RG name, although some markets already did have some Korean made RG models." With Ibanezs Floyd Rose Designed Tremolo system and three Ibanez designed pick ups your. The EX (short for "Experimental") models were RG-like guitars produced in Korea instead of Japan as a more affordable alternative. The Ibanez EX series features are designed for todays shredders. "The Ibanez EX series is a series of electric guitars produced by Hoshino Gakki, first introduced in 1988. Here's what the Ibanez wiki says on the EX series: