New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

[nickname009]

I've finally got my very first jackson kelly I'm not sure the model is, here's a link.

jackson kelly

I enjoy the neck, it's smooth and fast but I don't enjoy nething else bout the guitar, the finish is too weak, if a hair falls on it there's a crack, the tremolo's so old and rusted it's hard to turn the fine tuners or nething else for that matter, also, there's no truss rod wrench for the guitar and i need to set it up properly to fix all this mad fret buzzing!

Because of this I have dilemma, sell the guitar? Or take time to restore it (and if i choose to restore it, what should I do to restore it?)

Please give me your advice!

[Inazone]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

The old neck-thru imports of that time period are very good guitars, so if you can get it fixed up for a reasonable price, it would be worth it. It should take an Original Floyd Rose or Schaller trem without modification, and the truss rod will either take a standard allen wrench (forget which size) or a socket-style wrench; Stewart-MacDonald sells a truss rod kit if you can't find what you need at a hardware store.

I bought a beat-up Soloist Pro and liked it so much that I paid for a refinish, pickup replacement and custom wiring at GMW, so if you like the feel of the guitar, I'm sure you could get many years of use out of it for the price of a simple setup and possibly a trem replacement.

[RacerX]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

Inazone, it should already have a Schaller....

[nickname009]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

I'm not sure if it's an original, but it says floyd rose on the opposite side of the tremolo arm... serial # J401907

has 1 tone, 1 vol and 3 way toggle switch, duncan pickups they're not duncan designed, but they're not real duncans either, it's weird, the bridge pup has a sticker on it that says "DCL" while the neck pup says nothing but the usual seymour duncan made in america logo.

I hope this helps

[VitaminG]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

would the trem benefit from a complete dismantling and cleaning? Break the whole thing down and give it a thorough going-over and oiling, maybe replace a couple of parts as-needed. If the edges & posts are good, it might be enough to revive it without costing you much.

re: trussrod, you can either shell for a proper tool or make do with a socket, as others have mentioned.

Sort these couple of problems out, give it a good setup and you should have a very playable axe that'll last you for years. Looks like a good guitar and you've already said the neck is a good neck is everything. The auction described it as a little knocked around, so someone else has given it it's first blems. Don't worry about damaging the finish. Just play it! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[RacerX]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

its

[img]graemlins/evilimages/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

ITS, dangit! Fvck that apostrophe! [img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

[Steve]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

Originally posted by nickname009:
I've finally got my very first jackson kelly I'm not sure the model is, here's a link.

jackson kelly

I enjoy the neck, it's smooth and fast but I don't enjoy nething else bout the guitar, the finish is too weak, if a hair falls on it there's a crack, the tremolo's so old and rusted it's hard to turn the fine tuners or nething else for that matter, also, there's no truss rod wrench for the guitar and i need to set it up properly to fix all this mad fret buzzing!

Because of this I have dilemma, sell the guitar? Or take time to restore it (and if i choose to restore it, what should I do to restore it?)

Please give me your advice!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">nice axe man !! killer !! //Steve

[straycat]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

The neck thru pros are great guitars just as good as the usa made stuff of the same era well worth taking the time and money to fix the little problems.Refin if you want to but I would do a good cleaning of everything,dismantle the floyd check it clean and lube make sure the knife edges are in good shape check the studs.Most of the rust will come off with a good cleaning use a lube and protector(break free) works very well and can be purchased at wal-mart in the gun/hunting dept.very cheap and lasts a long time.This stuff cuts rust like you wont believe,I've used it on machine guns for many years.For example I took a very rusty JT-6 trem and did a complete teardown cleaned and reassembled it and all the rust was gone, handed it back to the guy and he thought I'd switched it with another one I had.

[Inazone]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

Originally posted by RacerX:
Inazone, it should already have a Schaller....

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, but I thought maybe he was thinking of replacing the trem due ITS high degree of funk. [img]graemlins/idea2.gif[/img]

I like the Schaller trems just fine, but on a USA Hamer that I bought some years back, one or two of the intonation screw holes had been stripped to the point that I ended up buying a whole new trem.

[Newc]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

And those are real Duncans - DCL means it's a Duncan Custom made by someone whose last name starts with L, and the other pickup's sticker is probably in the pickup cavity - it may have fallen off. Or it may be an older Duncan before the stickers, or it may be one I don't recall the model name of offhand. You can check at www.seymourduncan.com for a Sticker Chart (search) and it will describe the pickup (pole pieces, coil screws, sticker, no sticker, etc) and tell you what model it is.

Newc

[RacerX]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

This makes me wonder why pup manufacturers don't ID the stuff better. Why not model initials right on top? Would cost too much maybe. At least EMG has color-coding...

[trip hamer]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

i agree plus why dos'nt jackson ID the guitars? how many posts start with HELP ME ID THIS GUITAR !!!!!

[RacerX]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

A lot of the Pro series Jacksons WERE ID'd....with the model name inscribed on the truss rod cover.

[nickname009]

Re: New Member! NEW Jackson Kelly! (ya i know)

I think I'm going to buy a new tremolo but i'm not sure what I wanna look for? I don't really wanna spend much less than $100 if possible, bang for your buck tremolo that overall does a good job. What brand tremolo do i want? wilkinson? gotoh? ofr? schaller? no name licensed versions?