FD
Amazing guitar with great specs ruined by serious design issues
This guitar is exactly what I would choose for a custom build: the Rhoads shape, an EverTune bridge and a single Fishman Fluence pickup. It arrived looking beautiful and sounded excellent. The setup was correct out of the box, neck relief perfect and the fret levelling was very good.
While changing the strings and setting up the guitar for E standard with my preferred gauge, I immediately noticed a crack in the ebony fingerboard around the 15th–17th frets. That alone is unacceptable on a guitar at this price and was my initial reason for returning it. There were also visible finishing marks around parts of the neck binding.
But then, I discovered an even more serious problem. I already own another EverTune equipped guitar and am familiar with setting up the system. On this guitar, the string height adjustment on all six saddles had limited range. At a certain point, further turns of the adjustment screws no longer raised the saddles. The high E and B strings also went flat after bends, despite being set up correctly.
I contacted EverTune and sent him photos of the bridge from the rear. The setup looked correct, so they could not initially explain the behaviour. I then discovered that, because the direct-mounted pickup cavity opens into the EverTune cavity, the pickup support foam had been glued directly to it and was pressing against the EverTune mechanism. When I showed this to EverTune technician, he confirmed that nothing should apply pressure to the EverTune and they strictly tell manufacturers to not use foam directly to the EverTune modules.
This constant pressure restricted the movement of the modules and appears to explain both the action adjustment and tuning stability problems. Rubber pickup-mounting tubing around the screws, or another solution that does not touch the EverTune mechanism, should have been used instead according to guys from EverTune.
Jackson did not respond to me. Fender acknowledged my report and said it would be forwarded, but I do not know whether the problem has been addressed.
This could be a phenomenal guitar: excellent sound, beautiful guitar, outstanding features, a great neck and very good fretwork. However, the cracked fingerboard, imperfect finishing and especially this unacceptable design flaw make it impossible to recommend.
If Jackson corrects the problem in a future production run, I would very likely buy it again. In its current form, I would not.
While changing the strings and setting up the guitar for E standard with my preferred gauge, I immediately noticed a crack in the ebony fingerboard around the 15th–17th frets. That alone is unacceptable on a guitar at this price and was my initial reason for returning it. There were also visible finishing marks around parts of the neck binding.
But then, I discovered an even more serious problem. I already own another EverTune equipped guitar and am familiar with setting up the system. On this guitar, the string height adjustment on all six saddles had limited range. At a certain point, further turns of the adjustment screws no longer raised the saddles. The high E and B strings also went flat after bends, despite being set up correctly.
I contacted EverTune and sent him photos of the bridge from the rear. The setup looked correct, so they could not initially explain the behaviour. I then discovered that, because the direct-mounted pickup cavity opens into the EverTune cavity, the pickup support foam had been glued directly to it and was pressing against the EverTune mechanism. When I showed this to EverTune technician, he confirmed that nothing should apply pressure to the EverTune and they strictly tell manufacturers to not use foam directly to the EverTune modules.
This constant pressure restricted the movement of the modules and appears to explain both the action adjustment and tuning stability problems. Rubber pickup-mounting tubing around the screws, or another solution that does not touch the EverTune mechanism, should have been used instead according to guys from EverTune.
Jackson did not respond to me. Fender acknowledged my report and said it would be forwarded, but I do not know whether the problem has been addressed.
This could be a phenomenal guitar: excellent sound, beautiful guitar, outstanding features, a great neck and very good fretwork. However, the cracked fingerboard, imperfect finishing and especially this unacceptable design flaw make it impossible to recommend.
If Jackson corrects the problem in a future production run, I would very likely buy it again. In its current form, I would not.
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