• The Best Guitar

  
  As reviewed by Lisa Bridenstine on 11/18/2011

  I purchased this guitar in "natural" about two years ago. It is the best guitar I've ever picked up. I used to work at GC, but we didn't have this in stores, so I ordered it directly from Jackson (Fender). I used to have a Dinky and I loved it, but I wanted to get a better guitar, specifically one with a neck thru body construction. I also really wanted to have one with a natural flame maple top, so that narrowed down the list. I love how wide and thin Jackson necks are, so I didn't even look at other brands. This one has active EMG pickups rather than passive Seymour Duncans, so that was another reason I went with this model. It's also really nice that Soloists come with custom SKB hard cases. There's no room for an instrument cable in the case, but they are really solid and I feel like my guitar is a lot better protected in it than in some other cases. I had tried out some guitars in GC that had the back of the necks painted (Schecter and Ibanez) and they didn't feel right to me after playing a guitar with a practically unfinished neck for a few years, so I was worried about not being able to try this one out before I bought it. But, I bought it anyways and figured, if anything, I'll get used to it. Luckily, the neck on this guitar didn't feel like those ones, this was a lot smoother and my hand doesn't feel like it's sticking to the lacquer, so it doesn't make it difficult to play fast. I actually felt uncomfortable playing the Dinky after I got used to playing this one. These are extremely well built, solid guitars. The neck and fretboard are perfect. It feels, plays, and sounds soooo much better than my old guitar or any other guitar that I've picked up. It is heavy compared to a lot of them too. I was kind of surprised by the weight. Also, apparently Alder is a really hard wood, because I was changing the strap buttons to strap locks and I could not get the screw to screw back into the hole. I ended up having the guitar tech at GC do it while he was setting up the guitar for me and he struggled with it too. He couldn't even use a power drill without the screw stripping. I haven't had to change the 9V that powers the pickups yet, but the little plastic thing that pops out that the 9v sits inside seems extremely convenient. Both of my previous guitars have Floyd Rose bridges, so I'm not sure why this one is different for me, but when I change strings, they tend to pop out of the bridge end when I'm changing the next string (sometimes the ends unravel a little). It's pretty frustrating. Maybe I had them too tight or not tight enough. People have told me that's just something that happens with Floyd Rose setups, but it didn't happen on my other guitars. I don't use the whammy bar, but I like the bridge being flat and the fine tuners and tuning locks come in very handy. I rarely have to retune my guitar. I never do during shows. It's only like maybe once a month or so that the strings will be just slightly flat or sharp. After two years, this guitar still looks and feels brand new and I plan on playing it for a long time. I definitely hope nothing happens to it, because it's too expensive to replace.

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