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tjon901 « The grandfather of shred guitars. »
Published on 05/16/11 at 19:15The Jackson Soloist is the original shred guitar. In the early 80s the guys at Jackson decided to make the ultimate guitar. They took a Fender shaped body and changed it from bolt-on to neck through construction with a quartersawn maple neck. They gave the neck the wide and flat dimensions of a Les Paul neck and an ebony fretboard configured with a compound radius. The compound radius allows the for great playability on both ends of the neck. Near the headstock on the low end the radius is 12 inches which means the fretboard is slightly more curved up there to make playing chord shapes more comfortable. Near the high end the radius is 16 inches which makes shredding and lead playing effortless. They threw on 24 jumbo frets and at the other end installed an Original Floyd Rose tremolo system. When it was finished they had the ultimate shred guitar. Before long everyone was copying the design but the original is always best. The Soloist SL-1 is still around today with all these same features. The Soloist SL-1 today comes with A Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge and two Duncan Classic stack humbuckers in the middle and neck. It has master tone and master volume knobs from CTS with a 5 way Fender style blade pickup selector made by switchcraft.
UTILIZATION
The SL-1 is a purpose built shredding machine. Everything is designed for you to play faster. The neck-through design is a feature I love and wish more guitar makers would use. The wood for the neck goes all the way through the body and the top and bottom of the body are glued to the side of the neck piece. With this construction there is virtually no neck joint which makes playing up at even the highest frets as easy as playing at the middle of the neck. Not only does this construction let you not have a bulky neck joint it also increases sustain as the pickups are mounted directly to the same piece of wood as the neck. The original Floyd Rose is the original double locking tremolo system and its still the best. When properly setup this system will never go out of tune.
SOUNDS
THese guitars are very versatile in their sound. They can do any type of music. Coming with quality Seymour Duncan pickups from the factory put its ahead of most companies guitars which just come with in-house pickups. The middle pickup allows you to emulate strat tones while the bridge humbucker lets you rip it at high gain for all your metal songs. The original Floyd Rose lets you do all your crazy tremolo divebombs and it will never leave you out of tune.
OVERALL OPINION
This is one of the few shred guitars that is still USA made. Many of the people building them now are the same people who built them 20 years ago. The quality was there then and its still there now. The SL-1 is a guitar that is made to play and build to play anything.
UTILIZATION
The SL-1 is a purpose built shredding machine. Everything is designed for you to play faster. The neck-through design is a feature I love and wish more guitar makers would use. The wood for the neck goes all the way through the body and the top and bottom of the body are glued to the side of the neck piece. With this construction there is virtually no neck joint which makes playing up at even the highest frets as easy as playing at the middle of the neck. Not only does this construction let you not have a bulky neck joint it also increases sustain as the pickups are mounted directly to the same piece of wood as the neck. The original Floyd Rose is the original double locking tremolo system and its still the best. When properly setup this system will never go out of tune.
SOUNDS
THese guitars are very versatile in their sound. They can do any type of music. Coming with quality Seymour Duncan pickups from the factory put its ahead of most companies guitars which just come with in-house pickups. The middle pickup allows you to emulate strat tones while the bridge humbucker lets you rip it at high gain for all your metal songs. The original Floyd Rose lets you do all your crazy tremolo divebombs and it will never leave you out of tune.
OVERALL OPINION
This is one of the few shred guitars that is still USA made. Many of the people building them now are the same people who built them 20 years ago. The quality was there then and its still there now. The SL-1 is a guitar that is made to play and build to play anything.