All user reviews of 4/5 for the Jackson JDR-94

The JDR-94 is a unique guitar that you don't see much of. You can sometimes find these stored away in the backs of pawn shops, and it's a bit sad to see them back there considering they can be some real decent players. The guitar features a basswood body, a maple neck with a rosewood fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets with dot inlays, a hard tail bridge, HSH configuration, one volume, one tone and a five way switch.

UTILIZATION

The guitar had a neck joint gap, but it was nothing too big. Some of these can have big gaps, but most guitars out there have SOME sort of gap, so it's nothing to get too anal about. The bad points about this guitar are the pickups and bridge. The bridge on this is a licensed floyd that really doesn't hold up once you start doing heavy dive bombing year after year. The baseplate seems to be weaker than the original floyd rose, hence the issues that can sometimes occur. The rest of the guitar is pretty much good. Weight wise, it was a nice medium 7 lb guitar, it had some solid fretwork and seemed to play quite nice once it was set up. I needed to oil the fretboard and shine up the frets to get this thing to really play the way it should.

SOUNDS

Somebody installed a Seymour Duncan Jazz in the neck and a Distortion in the bridge. The Seymour Duncan Distortion is a high output bridge pickup that works great for metal. Think of the JB, but now add a huge ceramic magnet into it. For those who don't know how magnets affect the overall sound, it basically make it tighter and helped beef it up, along with making it a bit sharper at times. The pickup worked decently in basswood, but I find it works best in either mahogany or even alder at times. The middle pickup was stock, and it didn't really sound that great. It also didn't deliver a great clean. The Jazz in the neck is awesome for cleans and decent for leads. It's a bit hi-fi for me at times for leads, but it's still a cool pickup.

OVERALL OPINION

If you can find one of these at a good price, I recommend you pick it up. They're very solid guitars. With a few modifications, you can have a real player for just a few hundred bucks, and it'll rival quite a few guitars out there. Just be sure you actually like basswood bodies before rushing out to your local pawn shop to try to find one of these.