Jackson JS Kelly JS35KE

Back in the 80s everything needed to be pointy to be metal. The normal Gibson Explorer was not pointy enough to be metal in the 80s so Jackson came out with a pointier version called the Kelly for the guitarists at the time. Jackson guitars took the basic Explorer shape and made it more focused for metal. They sharpened up the design overall. The JS35 KE is a budget version of this metal guitar. It has a 24 fret bolt on maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. The neck still has the awesome compound radius fretboard that Jackson uses on even their highest end models. This is a lot cheaper to produce than the USA version which has neck through construction and an ebony fretboard along with brand name pickups. The body is made out of alder. It has a cheap Floyd Rose copy and dual Jackson humbuckers. It has a master volume knob and a master tone knob with a 3 way toggle pickup selector in between them.

UTILIZATION

The upper fret access on these guitars are not as good as on the USA models but it is still pretty good compared to many guitars. The frets are big but it really needs a proper fret leveling and setup. The compound radius is something you do not find on many guitars and none at this price. with the compound radius the radius of the fretboard near the headstock is about 12 inches while the radius near the body is 16 inches. The flatter radius near the body means that in the area you would be soloing the fretboard is flatter and you can get your bends to be better. Near the headstock the area where you would be playing chords the radius is slightly more curved so the chords are more comfortable for your hand to make. The cheap Floyd Rose tremolo on this guitar is not very good either and is made out of soft metal and goes out of tune pretty easily. I would not recommend a beginner play a guitar with a Floyd Rose or any tremolo in general. A beginner will not know how to properly set it up and it will probably go out of tune easily.

SOUNDS

Because this is a metal guitar Jackson has thrown in some in house high output pickups. The pickups have plastic covers to make them kind of look like EMG pickups. Like most low quality high output pickups the pickups sound kinda muddy at high gain. The bridge pickup can get you a nice crunch for your distortion sounds. Heavy riffing and single not runs sound good on the bridge pickup. The neck pickup is great for solos and clean tones. You can get a nice liquidy smooth tone for solos and your clean chords will ring out well. For a clearer sound you should probably swap out the pickups for some Duncans or EMG's if you want active pickups.

OVERALL OPINION

For the longest time Jackson did not make many really budget priced guitars. Now that they are they are opening themselves to a new market. They are getting themselves exposed to younger guitar players who may want a high end Jackson one day but cannot afford it. I like the fact that you can get these guitars with either a tremolo system or a string through hard tail. I would definitely recommend the hard tail version for any beginner. Low quality tremolo systems are a pain on the best of days and for a beginner it may put them off guitar permanently. This guitar is ok for a low end Jackson but I would recommend the hard tail version.