Hatsubai « Mystery body wood »
Published on 11/10/11 at 14:52This is an entry level Jackson for those who want to rock out without having to spend tons of money. In fact, it's so entry level that Jackson won't even say what the actual body wood is. I believe it's cedar or something, but I'm not entirely sure. If someone knows exactly what it is, I'd like to hear it. The guitar has the following specs:
Mystery body wood
Maple neck with rosewood fretboard
24 frets with sharkfin inlays
Vintage style tremolo
HSS configuration
One volume, one tone and a three way switch
UTILIZATION
The guitar was pretty much your run-of-the-mill entry level guitar. The nut needed to be filed better for it to truly be worthy of playing, the fret ends were sharp and should have been filed down a bit, the frets weren't crowed as well as they could have been, there was a neck pocket gap, the frets themselves weren't perfectly level, the inlays had some filler and the overall guitar just didn't feel that great at all. The bridge on this isn't that stable, either. You're bound to wear out the bridge in a few years of hard use. I'm not sure it would be able to withstand hard touring at all like other bridges with higher quality steel.
SOUNDS
The stock pickups in this sound awful. The bridge is bright and buzzy sounding. When you start adding gain, it gets to be a huge mess. It's useless with both clean and dirty. When combined with the middle pickup, it's not TOO bad for cleans, but anything else is bad. Middle pickup alone is bland, but I never use that alone anyway. The middle pickup + neck pickup gives a decent clean, and it gives a decent stratty kind of sound, but it's far from ideal. The neck pickup alone lacks the smoothness that I tend to look for, and it doesn't have enough output.
OVERALL OPINION
I would recommend playing one before you actually lay down money on this as they can be pretty bad. There might be a few good ones out there, but you're going to go through tons of dogs before you find one half decent. Buy an old Pro series instead.
Mystery body wood
Maple neck with rosewood fretboard
24 frets with sharkfin inlays
Vintage style tremolo
HSS configuration
One volume, one tone and a three way switch
UTILIZATION
The guitar was pretty much your run-of-the-mill entry level guitar. The nut needed to be filed better for it to truly be worthy of playing, the fret ends were sharp and should have been filed down a bit, the frets weren't crowed as well as they could have been, there was a neck pocket gap, the frets themselves weren't perfectly level, the inlays had some filler and the overall guitar just didn't feel that great at all. The bridge on this isn't that stable, either. You're bound to wear out the bridge in a few years of hard use. I'm not sure it would be able to withstand hard touring at all like other bridges with higher quality steel.
SOUNDS
The stock pickups in this sound awful. The bridge is bright and buzzy sounding. When you start adding gain, it gets to be a huge mess. It's useless with both clean and dirty. When combined with the middle pickup, it's not TOO bad for cleans, but anything else is bad. Middle pickup alone is bland, but I never use that alone anyway. The middle pickup + neck pickup gives a decent clean, and it gives a decent stratty kind of sound, but it's far from ideal. The neck pickup alone lacks the smoothness that I tend to look for, and it doesn't have enough output.
OVERALL OPINION
I would recommend playing one before you actually lay down money on this as they can be pretty bad. There might be a few good ones out there, but you're going to go through tons of dogs before you find one half decent. Buy an old Pro series instead.