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Review: 2025 IYV- ILJR-200 Solid Basswood Electric Guitar (TV Yellow)
The IYV-ILJR-200 is a nice, inexpensive way to get a copy of a double cut Les Paul Jr with a p90 pickup in TV yellow. This style of electric guitar has its origins as a student guitar that happened to have a pickup that many famous rock guitarists found good enough to use for a lot of classic recordings. So, it's a simple design that can produce a classic sound that doesn't cost much to manufacture.
The P90 pickup does involve accepting some trade-offs, mainly because it's a noisier pickup than other single coils like you would find on a Fender but it's probably more of a cost issue because other versions, like the Epiphones, for example, have p90s that are noticeably quieter. That being said, the P90 has a classic growl that you're really not going to find in another pickup. It has the fullness of a humbucker with the clarity of a single coil.
The guitar is a lot quieter at lower volume and if you back off to around 50% it cleans up well. At that point you can adjust volume from the amp. That's more than you might have to do on a higher quality version but it's a trade-off that might appeal to many because the build quality is very good. It's a nicely made guitar.
If you're a beginning guitar player who wants this type of guitar, be prepared to pay a little bit more for a setup if your guitar came as unfinished as mine. Judging from comments I've seen on various sites, it's possible that the one I have went out of adjustment to a larger extent than others who reported getting guitars that arrived set up or only needing slight adjustments.
The tuners are adequate, fit and finish good for this price. The wrap around bridge is pretty good, it’s compensated with additional screws to adjust the alignment in addition to the height. I have this company's version of an SG, and so overall I like the level of quality you get with this brand at the price they charge. The company doesn’t give out very many specs on this guitar so one can assume that they use materials that they get a good deal on at any given time during manufacture.
The sound is pretty close to an Epiphone/Gibson guitar of this type, and it's a nice size and weight for beginners. If someone wants to go to the trouble of having it set up and maybe get a noise gate, then it's cheap enough to do that. However, this is a single P90 guitar so it’ll be noisy at some settings and comments from guitarists who are familiar with this type of pickup appear to have a good opinion of this Les Paul Junior copy.
This particular guitar sounds good with the stock pickup yet the quality and price are good enough that if you wanted to make it an upgrade project, it could even take a stock Gibson humbucker and still be below the price of quite a few other versions of this guitar.
A lot of inexpensive guitars are just expensive enough to make it impractical to do too many upgrades but the cost and build quality of this guitar make for a good upgrade project. It's a good package that delivers a classic sound due to its history as an inexpensive guitar that ended up punching above its weight.
Al Handa
July 22, 2026
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