I bought this guitar at a local pawnshop for $160 (after trading in my old First Act guitar). It has a metallic red finish and looks awesome!

First off, as I noted, it looks really good. The fretboard is nice and smooth, and the guitar generally looks built to last. For metal guitarists, it has a very good metal tone (it sounds twice as mean as my First Act did with regular distortion!).

There are only a couple of things I don't like about this guitar. My first problem is a very minor one that really doesn't effect the guitar itself too much. I just wish that the guitar had the standard, cool-looking Jackson inlays that most Jacksons have (unfortunately, it seems this guitar was made as a stripped-down Jackson). The other problem I have is that the pickups can sound muddy when you try to get a clean sound out of them, especially the top pickup. This may be due to my amp (which is a crappy First Act practice amp; hopefully I'll get a Behringer or a Line 6 amp so I can see what this Jackson's really made of), and it seems that adjusting the tone button helps somewhat.

The guitar is well-constructed and great-looking as well. Only problem is with the pickups, as I said above. Hopefully different pickups or a different amp can help to fix that.

Overall, this is a pretty good Jackson for a beginner guitarist who likes metal, and for the price you can't go wrong. This guitar has assured me of the quality of Jacksons and makes me hope that I will continue to play them in the future.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com