Adam Black Guitars JA-15

Wanting a budget jazz guitar to give me the vibe whilst belatedly learning some jazz technique (OK, I know John McLaughlin did all his Miles Davis parts on a Fender Mustang, but hey), I settled for the Adam Black JA-15, after trying the all-acoustic JA-10. The JA-15 is the poor man's Johnny Smith, with a floating mini-humbucker at the neck end and controls on the floating scratchplate, so theoretically providing the best of both acoustic and amplified worlds.
In fact this example turned out to be something of a curate's egg, though all its faults have proved curable. Potential vendors are warned, however, that assembly quality seems to vary greatly on this series, and try-before-you-buy should be the watchword if you don't want to get involved in a fair amount of after-sale DIY.
Made in Korea, purchased new in February 2006 from Peter Cook's Guitar World in Hanley, London (great dealer, strongly recommended). No accessories at all - it comes in a cardboard box, and a fitted hard case will be hard to find given the large dimensions of this jazz box's body. (I use a soft gigbag and take lots of care when negotiating doorways, etc.)
Neck has a comfortable flattened C-section, looks like maple through the sunburst finish; board is rosewood, fair quality, with small, slightly iridescent dot markers and triple binding at sides and at end. Twenty frets, eighteen just about clear of the cutaway. Headstock is vaguely Rickenbackerish in shape though symmetrical, triple bound with the name "Black" inlaid into the black headplate in the same iridescent MOTS material. Trussrod adjuster is at the head end - adjustment by Allen key, I forget the size but it's one of the common ones. Plain black trussrod cover is shield shaped. Scale is the typical twenty-four and three-quarter inches as per Gibson.
Body is the conventional deep f-hole archtop, single Venetian cutaway, trapeze tailpiece. Top and back moderately arched. Materials are probably all laminated given the price - and the weight! The top appears to be spruce and its grain is unremarkable, but the back and rims have the appearance of maple with quite strong figuring. Mine has the top and back finished in an antique tobacco sunburst, a lot lighter than the typical Gibson finish, more like the sunburst used by Epiphone hollowbodies during the sixties. The sunburst finish is well applied and the high gloss top coat is faultless everywhere. The f-holes are plain-bound in white.
The bridge is a Korean copy of a Gibson ABR-1 Tune-o-Matic, gold finished as is all hardware on this model, sitting on a rosewood plinth coloured to look like ebony. Tuners are gold finished Grovers, a surprise on this budget axe - at least, they look like Grovers and have "Grover" clearly embossed on them. Large black floating pickguard has a white (non-laminated) edge and looks OK. The small volume and tone controls are mounted on the scratchplate. Tailpiece is a large plain harp-shaped unit.
You get quite a lot for your money here, so a high 9 for features.

Really, sound is pretty archetypal for an single-pickup archtop of this type - limited to "that" jazz sound, with some variation if the amp's EQ is used judiciously. The mini-humbucker sounds quite good through my Roland Cube 60 on either the acoustic simulation or the Jazz Chorus channel. Varying the four equalisation controls of the amp will allow either a nice middly electric jazz chording tone or a bright acoustic tone for fingerstyling. Probably not as good as a Gibson mini-humbucker but quite acceptable for the price, hence 8 here.

Right, that's the description and all the good points: now the brickbats. All the woodwork and plasticwork on this product is excellent, really good craftmanship for the price. However, some of the bought-in hardware leaves a lot to be desired, as does the assembly. The tuners are fine. String spacing is a little close at the neck end for jazz chording, but you get used to it with practice. The mini-humbucker (presumably locally sourced) is well-finished and works well, but was mounted slightly off-centre on the end of the neck; I cured this with some judicious shimming. The tailpiece really is a piece of crap: it looks cheap and clunky; it moves freely sideways on its pivot, causing all sorts of tuning and intonation problems; and it bends upwards under the tension of the strings, giving an involuntary Bigsby effect when you touch it. I've replaced it on my instrument with a Frequensator copy that looks, and functions, far better. The ABR-1 bridge copy is also rubbish: poorly made and subject to all sorts of rattles and unwanted movements. I've replaced it with a simple compensated ebony archtop bridge with vertical adjustment only, quite adequate for acoustic and amplified jazz playing. Finally, the potentiometers of the tone circuit fitted below the scratchplate were making contact with and rattling on the top of the body. I???ve removed the tone control and its pot altogether, since I never use tone controls, and moved the volume control and its pot from their position nearer the bridge to the old tone control position, which also allows me more space for flying fingers on the picking hand. Finally I???ve realigned the pickguard to cure the contact problem.
The fretting on my example is quite good, but on a couple of others I tried there were quite serious fretting issues. The frets themselves are good quality and the ends nicely finished, but you need to look out for proud frets giving buzz even at moderate actions. Of course these can be dressed down, but they shouldn't come from the factory like this.
Factory action out of the box was quite good, but the factory-fitted strings were, as usual, piss-poor. I now have Gibson Brite Wires 10s on and they're just dandy.
Really just a 5 for this category, since the assembly quality seems so variable and leaves so much to be corrected.

This is a big and seemingly very heavy guitar for a hollowbody, probably due to the laminated construction. This is not likely to be a problem as jazz playing is usually done sitting down. It seems very solid, and, if not used as a tennis racquet or a truncheon, should last for years. The finish is also pretty armour-plated, by all appearances.
I'm hoping the replacement bridge and tailpiece will obviate all the tuning and intonation problems I found with the originals, so that a backup instrument will be unnecessary. (However I usually take two instruments anyway - you never know, do you? And it looks more showy.)

Dealer warranty was one year which has expired. I do all my own adjustments and minor repairs so should not need to contact the manufacturer. Besides, Korean isn't in my portfolio of languages...

I'm almost forty years into playing in all styles except jazz and Classical, and have more guitars and other stringed instruments than you could shake a Strat at: for more details, see some of my other HC reviews. However, this is my first proper jazz box. In retrospect I wish I'd got into eBay sooner as there are usually plenty of bargain used Ibanez and Yamaha jazzers there. However, my self-improved axe is quite respectable, looking and sounding the part, so move over, George Benson, here I come. "Tall and tanned and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking..."