All user reviews for the Jackson Stars DK05

This is pretty much the hard tail version of the DK04. However, this also only has a regular top. It no longer has the flame maple veneer that you would sometimes see on the DK04, although I guess there could be models that I haven't seen with the flame maple top on. I've only played a few of these. The guitar has the following specs:

Alder Body
Maple Bolt-On Neck
Rosewood Fretboard with Dot Inlays
Hard Tail Bridge
One Volume
One Tone
Three Way Switch

UTILIZATION

The first thing I noticed was that the guitar had a poorly cut nut. THe nut was cut too deep, and it was causing some binding issues with the strings. A good luthier can easily fix this, but you're looking at about $50 to $75 to do that. The frets on this weren't quite as nicely finished as some of the other guitars I've played. They seemed like they could use a bit more work. I'm not a huge fan of the hard tail bridge on this, but that's because I'm mostly a floyd rose guy at heart. After playing them for so long, I got used to the way they feel and play.

SOUNDS

The pickups in this are pretty bland. The bridge seems to have a decent amount of treble and output, but it's very undefined. It's kinda grating at times, too. The neck doesn't have the clarity that I tend to look for in neck pickups, and there's this fuzz that's occurring all the time with the thing. It's mainly due to the cheap pickups. Once you swap those things out for something better, you'll find the guitar actually sounds pretty good. I like to put in a Seymour Duncan Custom in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck. To me, that's the best of both worlds for these tone woods.

OVERALL OPINION

The guitar is pretty bland when you look at it, but it can serve as a good backup guitar for those who don't want to spend a ton of money on other guitars. I'm actually a floyd rose guy at heart, but the floyds on the lower end models are trash, so I actually prefer this hard tail model to them. It means less hardware swapping is needed as the hard tail on this isn't too bad.