All user reviews for the Jackson USA Soloist Archtop

Jackson is known for their superstrat guitars, and they're also known for their neck-thru designs. This guitar is sort of like an evolution of that. They added a thick maple top and carved it out for an archtop effect that some people find really cool. The guitar features an alder body with a maple carved top, a maple neck-thru neck design with an ebony fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets with sharkfin inlays, a hard tail bridge, two humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a three way switch.

UTILIZATION

The guitar itself had great fretwork. The frets on this, although slightly worn, were great. You could tell by looking at them that Jackson took a good bit of time into these. The neck was straight without any issues at all, and once I tweaked the truss rod, the relief was perfect. The hard tail bridges aren't honestly my thing. I much prefer floyd rose bridges. Also, the archtop design isn't really my thing, either. I prefer the flat designs of the normal Jacksons. That said, the maple top on this is great, and it really stands out. It has this nice, honey kind of color that makes the quilt pop a lot more.

SOUNDS

The guitar had the standard JB/59 combo installed in it that seems to be real popular with Jacksons. The Seymour Duncan JB is great for pretty much any genre you can think of. If you want to do pop, no problem. What about death metal? Sure thing. Blues? You got it. While it's not the perfect pickup for any genre, it can do any genre with ease. It's one of those do all but master none kind of pickups. In a way, it makes it super versatile. The 59 in the neck is great for cleans and leads. It has that old school PAF sound but with a bit more output to it. It's fat enough to stay thick sounding on legato lines, but it's also bitey enough to stand out in a dense mix.

OVERALL OPINION

These guitars are very good, but be sure you like both archtop designs and hard tail bridges. These are two things I'm not a huge fan of, but the guitar itself was good enough that I'd be willing to take this home with me and not complain about it at all. The rest of the guitar is super high quality, and anybody would be happy with one of these.