Jackson Custom Shop Dinky Archtop

This guitar was made at the USA Jackson Custom Shop in Ontario, CA in 2002. It is #18 out of 30 made in a limited run for Drum City Guitarland. There were 10 made in three different colors: Natural, Root Beer, and Trans Black. My guitar is Trans Black with a near perfect, tightly quilted maple top. This guitar has a mahogany body, quilted maple top, birdseye maple bolt-on 22 fret neck and a rosewood finger board with "piranha tooth" mother of pearl inlays. It has the old San Dimas neck carve that is very comfortable and fast. It came stock with a Duncan JB in the bridge position and a Duncan Jazz in the neck. Shortly after I bought it I changed out the Duncans for an EMG 81/85 set up. It has a tuneomatic style bridge with strings through body and a 25.5 inch scale. It has a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way toggle. It would have been nice to have a seperate volume knob for each pickup but overall it is a great, straight up rock guitar with great features and upgrades for the money.

This guitar sounded great with the stock compliment of Duncan pickups but since I already had a couple of guitars with Duncans in them, I decided to go with the EMG's instead. The guitar sounds great with the mahogany body giving it a lot of warmth and depth. The bolt-on maple neck helps round out the sound. It has clear highs and mids but enough low end chunk to round out the sound quite well. The active EMG's give it great punch and clarity. Although this is a great rock/metal guitar, you can still achieve great bluesy tones out of it which makes it a pretty versatile guitar overall.

I play this guitar through my Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier loaded with 6L6's and my Mesa/Boogie Rect-O-Verb loaded with EL34's and it sounds increadible out of either amp. The EMG's in this guitar sound killer going through an all tube head and the mahagony body gives it just the right amount of warmth to balance out the tone.

As you should expect with a USA custom made guitar, it came right out of the box set up perfectly and in flawless condition. The bookmatched quilted maple top is one of the best I've seen and the birdseye maple neck is stunning as well. I lowered the action slightly due to personal taste but other than that everything was perfect.

I use this guitar to plays gigs and it has always been very reliable. The only problem I had with this guitar was with the toggle switch that started to go bad after having the guitar for about 8 months. I brought the guitar back to Drum City Guitarland where I purchased it and they replaced the switch and sent me on my way at no charge in about 15 minutes. The guys at Drum City Guitarland are always extremely helpful so I've never had to deal with Jackson directly. I think Jackson is starting to use better hardware like Switchcraft switches in their USA made guitars and since they have a lifetime warranty, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another Jackson.

Like I mentioned, I've never had to deal with Jackson directly so I can't comment on their customer service.

I use this guitar and my PRS Custom 24 to play gigs with. Both guitars are incredible but there are sounds I can get out of this Jackson that set it appart from my other guitars. I have a total of eight guitars, four of which are Jacksons and this is one of my favorites. You can't beat the value of this guitar either. There are guitars with the same features that cost thousands of dollars more. Overall I have been very pleased with this guitar and think that anyone would be hard pressed to find a better guitar for the money.