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I hate writing reviews but Tom asked me to say a few words about this one when it showed up so here goes.
Basically it's a full-sized, chambered, P-90 equipped, archtop singlecut Les Paul. The back is 1/2" mahogany and the top is 3/4" maple, the chamber is about 1" deep throughout. They left quite a bit of wood around the bridge pup cavity but interestingly they didn't leave any under the tailpiece and the inserts pass all the way through the top. Even though it's chambered it's a fairly heavy guitar, easily a couple of pounds or more heavier than any Jackson I own other than the Roswell.
The neck is mahogany and has a rounded profile. It's fairly thin as necks on Les Paul style guitars go, the thickness is very similar to the SLATQM I just picked up but the profile is a little more rounded. The board is ebony with abalone inlays. The action is a little high by Jackson standards but pretty good by normal standards and very playable. The fretwork is very nice, the overall feel is very smooth. Not an effortless player but the strings seemed heavier than the 10s I normally use so perhaps that'll change a bit when I get them changed out. The G & B strings were binding a bit at the nut probably due to the heavy string guage but I'll attend to that soon.
The pups are custom Seymour Duncan P-90s hand wound by the man himself. I just spent about a half an hour with it plugged into the Vetta and I like 'em but I'm very obviously going to have to tailor some patches for this guitar. The bridge pup is very raw, kind of like a Strat on roids but without the glassiness of bride S/C. The neck pup is much smoother and warmer as you'd expect but still has that great raw sound (Santana and Brian May tones were pretty easy to get). Very quiet on clean & moderately overdriven patches but the noise rises exponentially on some higher gain stuff, so much so that it's unusable on some extremely high gain patches but that's about what I expected of these pups.
Hmmm, what else can I say? This was a Winter NAMM '01 guitar, if anyone has pics of it there I'd love to see them. Those are probably two of the most obnoxious colors I've ever seen on a guitar but they don't photograph well. Both main colors are richer than the pics show, the green is a shade darker than it appears, and the orange is brigher and less washed-out looking. A few small gripes (most visible in the pics below): there are a few gaps in the filler around some of the inlays, a very small paint bubble or two along the neck joint, the large control cover is flush with the body on one side but just a little raised on the other, and they painted conductive paint over only the areas where wiring runs rather than doing the whole surface as is necessary to really shield the guitar. There are some nice little touches like the abalone markers on the binding. Overall I'm very happy with it, probably a keeper and definitely one I'd buy again.
Basically it's a full-sized, chambered, P-90 equipped, archtop singlecut Les Paul. The back is 1/2" mahogany and the top is 3/4" maple, the chamber is about 1" deep throughout. They left quite a bit of wood around the bridge pup cavity but interestingly they didn't leave any under the tailpiece and the inserts pass all the way through the top. Even though it's chambered it's a fairly heavy guitar, easily a couple of pounds or more heavier than any Jackson I own other than the Roswell.
The neck is mahogany and has a rounded profile. It's fairly thin as necks on Les Paul style guitars go, the thickness is very similar to the SLATQM I just picked up but the profile is a little more rounded. The board is ebony with abalone inlays. The action is a little high by Jackson standards but pretty good by normal standards and very playable. The fretwork is very nice, the overall feel is very smooth. Not an effortless player but the strings seemed heavier than the 10s I normally use so perhaps that'll change a bit when I get them changed out. The G & B strings were binding a bit at the nut probably due to the heavy string guage but I'll attend to that soon.
The pups are custom Seymour Duncan P-90s hand wound by the man himself. I just spent about a half an hour with it plugged into the Vetta and I like 'em but I'm very obviously going to have to tailor some patches for this guitar. The bridge pup is very raw, kind of like a Strat on roids but without the glassiness of bride S/C. The neck pup is much smoother and warmer as you'd expect but still has that great raw sound (Santana and Brian May tones were pretty easy to get). Very quiet on clean & moderately overdriven patches but the noise rises exponentially on some higher gain stuff, so much so that it's unusable on some extremely high gain patches but that's about what I expected of these pups.
Hmmm, what else can I say? This was a Winter NAMM '01 guitar, if anyone has pics of it there I'd love to see them. Those are probably two of the most obnoxious colors I've ever seen on a guitar but they don't photograph well. Both main colors are richer than the pics show, the green is a shade darker than it appears, and the orange is brigher and less washed-out looking. A few small gripes (most visible in the pics below): there are a few gaps in the filler around some of the inlays, a very small paint bubble or two along the neck joint, the large control cover is flush with the body on one side but just a little raised on the other, and they painted conductive paint over only the areas where wiring runs rather than doing the whole surface as is necessary to really shield the guitar. There are some nice little touches like the abalone markers on the binding. Overall I'm very happy with it, probably a keeper and definitely one I'd buy again.
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