All user reviews for the Jackson USA Soloist SL2

The Soloist itself is so popular that some people forget that there's a two humbucker version of this guitar. This has everything you've come to know about the normal Jackson Soloist but with one neck humbucker instead of two singles. The guitar features an alder body, a maple neck-thru design with an ebony fretboard, 24 extra jumbo frets, sharkfin inlays, an original floyd rose, two humbuckers, one volume, one tone and a five way switch.

UTILIZATION

With these Soloists, it's crazy easy to get up to the higher frets. The neck-thru designs is really a great design in terms of performance. While I tend to prefer the tone of bolt-ons, it can't really be argued that neck-thru gives great access to the upper frets. The guitar had an original floyd rose on it, and this is the bridge that every floyded Jackson should have. Sometimes Jackson has those licensed bridges on them, and I hate that. They're almost always not as good as the original is, and they tend to not flutter as nicely. The finish on this was a solid color yellow, and it was great at standing out a bit more than most normal guitars. The rest of this was pretty much like your standard Jackson. Fretwork was killer, too.

SOUNDS

The guitar had DiMarzios installed in it, and you don't see these too often. It had the newly released Crunch Lab and LiquiFire pickups put in it. For those that don't know, these are Petrucci's latest pickups, and they're amazing. The Crunch Lab is super tight, but it's also fairly linear in how it sounds. It can work with pretty much any wood you can think of. It's powerful enough to do any genre you can think of, but it's also organic enough to be able to respond to your volume knob and ease up on the overall output and compression. The LiquiFire is my new favorite neck pickup. It took everything I loved about the Air Norton and made it so much better. It now has way more character and seems to be a bit more organic than the previous one.

OVERALL OPINION

These are awesome guitars, and if you have the chance, go out and play one. Not everyone likes the neck-thru tone, and I can understand that. I'm one of them as well. However, Jackson knows how to make the neck-thru design work, and you can really tell by the way they made these guitars. If you decide to buy one, buy used to help save on the overall price.

The Jackson Soloist was one of the first guitars designed for shred playing. In the 80s guitarists wanted modern guitars to suit their modern guitar playing. The 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-2 is still around today with all these same features. The Soloist SL-2 today comes with A Seymour Duncan TB4 in the bridge and a SH1N pickup in the neck. It has master tone and master volume knobs from CTS with a 5 way Fender style blade pickup selector made by switchcraft. The 5 way switch gives you pretty much every possible combination of humbuckers and split single coil sounds.

UTILIZATION

The SL-2 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 compound radius makes playing all over the neck comfortable and the ebony fretboard feels good under your fingers. 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 TB4 in the bridge is a total machine and rips for metal and heavy rock. It is clear and defined and can handle the heaviest gain and lowest tunings. It has a nice high output so it will push your amp hard and give you a good tone. The SH1N fills the role of neck position perfectly. It gives you a nice smooth tone for your lead playing and can clean up really well for clean passages.

OVERALL OPINION

Not many shred guitars are still made in America and this Jackson is one of the few. The Jackson soloist was the original shred guitar and it is still one of the best. If you want a great guitar that is made in America with the highest quality parts this guitar is a good choice. The playability and sound is excellent and they will hold their value well.