The AW500 is an Artwood series acoustic model introduced by Ibanez for 1995. It was produced in South Korea.
The AW500 features a dreadnought body with solid spruce top with herringbone binding on rosewood back and sides. The round soundhole is trimmed with a herringbone rosette and has a shell color pickguard. The mahogany neck has a 20-fret bound rosewood fingerboard with abalone snowflake position markers and a matching headstock. Components include a compensated plastic saddle on a rosewood bridge with fancy inlays, a synthetic nut and gold grover rotomatics machine heads.
For 1997 the top was changed to solid engelmann spruce.
The AW300 is a similar model with mahogany body and abalone dot fingerboard inlays. The AW100 is a related model with pearl dot fingerboard inlays and die-cast tuners.