It Deserves Loud - Review of the Jackson American Series Virtuoso
A shout out to Ryan and the team at The Arts Music Store who enabled this review.
In some recent reviews I have detailed concerns that I have discovered and fixed. I will still share discoveries but will no longer engage in fixing any review products. I will tweak things that any owner would do, but that’s it. That is a personal choice and anything needing addressing will be left to the provider of the evaluation unit.
Overview
This Jackson American Virtuoso is made in Corona California and comparably priced to other USA made S style shred oriented machines. Do not assume that this guitar is only for shredding or metal, but be assured that if those things matter, you will love this guitar.
If comes with a Floyd Rose 1500 bridge assembly, Seymour Duncan pickups, a super rigid 5 ply neck and locking tuners. I found it a bit heavy, but one of the realities of Alder is that its weight per cubic foot tends to vary widely. It has 24 jumbo frets on an ebony board and the truss rod adjustment wheel is easily accessible at the base of the neck. The layout and engineering are superb. The colour of the evaluation guitar is called Specific Ocean and looks like generic seafoam green until you get close and see the very subtle sparkle elements in it. It really pops when the light hits it properly but is otherwise quite calm. The finish work is excellent. Other colours include Mystic Blue, Satin Black and Satin Shell Pink. As I do not like satin finish instruments, I am glad that I got the lovely gloss top coat on this guitar. All the photos of the instrument are from Jackson and I regret to say that they do not do the finish justice.
The image from an iPhone doesn’t do the case justice. Sorry about that
The case is a foam lined durable soft sided but rigid case where the foam lining is closed cell and fits the guitar really snugly. I have to say up front that the case is one of the finest that I have encountered. It’s built for players, not closet keeper. It also includes the necessary straps and rings to be able to carry it like a backpack. Normally I want a really fine MONO gig bag, but for this guitar, there is no need to spend one cent more for transport. FMIC owns the Jackson brand, and could really stand to steal the Jackson case design for their own guitars it is just so practical.
Specifications
The following specs are direct from Jackson.
Pointy. As it should be
I really appreciate that the designers of this instrument chose to go to the third party market for components. Gotoh tuners, Floyd Rose 1500 series bridge and Seymour Duncan pickups are smart decisions at this price point and convey a better impression than in house versions. I know that the spec sheet says satin, but the Specific Ocean finish model I received is definitely gloss as I suspect the Mystic Blue to be.
Initial Inspection and Playing
I expect a lot for this kind of price point, and while I felt that the Jackson JS32 Rhodes that I had reviewed was a decent guitar for the money, there was a lot of work needed to make it playable. Thus my expectations for this were rather low. I am very pleasantly surprised. The fretwork is outstanding and there is zero fret sprout which was a major issue with the admittedly much cheaper JS32. The frets are well polished, although at this price point, I would want stainless steel frets. The Floyd Rose bridge was not well set up and the factory strings which are .009 to .042 would not hold tune. While some owners of guitars with Floyd Rose bridges are uncomfortable setting up their bridge, I am not. I will say that once I got the bridge properly set up, the guitar played fantastically and stayed pretty much in tune. However, I am underwhelmed overall by this bridge as it took much longer than usual to get it setup where the guitar would come close to holding tune and where the plate would return to the same position every time. The guitar had three tension springs installed and provided one more, but I left the three in place and made do. Once setup, the vibrato is very smooth, with no lash and returned to neutral smoothly. If you were to purchase a guitar with a Floyd Rose 1500 my guidance would be to pay for a professional setup before you take the instrument home. Get good strings on it at the same time. I did not like whatever came on it. They did not feel great and seemed to require endless stretching.
The volume and tone pots are pretty smooth, and the only issue there was that the tone knob was riding on the instrument surface. The case is so robust I cannot see how this would have happened in shipping and as I did not consider unlocking the retaining screw and raising the knob a bit a fix, I did it because I did not want to see the knob scratch the surface finish. The finish is actually beautiful and the colour grew on me in the time that I hade the guitar. The neck is fabulous. Very smooth indeed and I credit the company for using a five ply maple neck which improves stiffness and reduces the probability of neck movement. The neck is bolted on with the mounting bolts recessed in the back and thus there is no external neck plate. This combined with the high fret cutaway means access to the upper frets is very easy and doesn’t require long fingers to get there. I like the streaked ebony fingerboard very much, although if this was my guitar, I would apply a couple of coats of Monty’s Instrument Food when I changed the factory strings.
After cleaning the strings and tuning up, I plugged the guitar into my Fender Tonemaster Blonde Deluxe Reverb. Not a good pairing, so I moved to my D. Kowalski Dark Gene Red tube head. It’s a little 0.5 watt thing and is connected to a Celestion speaker in an Orange 1x8 cabinet. The cabinet is fine, but the original Orange speaker was, let’s go with, NOT fine. The Jackson sounded awesome through the Kowalski using either channel, but an 8” speaker in a small cabinet without some computational audio is not a good thing for serious playing.
I then moved to my Bogner Mini head which is plugged into a PRS Stealth 2x12 cabinet. Hello! Now we were talking. While the Jackson can do clean, and the Bogner can be induced to do cleanish, that’s not where either really excel. Let the guitar push the preamp and the sound is glorious. The Bogner is not as dark as the Freidman but not as bright as the Soldano SLO Mini and in my opinion makes an excellent pairing with the Jackson American Virtuoso. I always wish that I had bought that Mesa Triple Rectifier when I had the chance, because I think that this guitar and that amp would make lovely music together.
When it came time to recording, I decided on a couple of routes mostly due to circumstances where loud amplifiers could not be used during the review period. I think that the Seymour Duncan pickups are excellent choices and they provide a nice variance in tonal quality and are both capable of pushing most preamp stages into overdrive. In addition to the amps that I had already tried, I used my Spark 40 with a Mesa Dual Rectifier patch and then moved to my old Line 6 Helix Floor for some other options including a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Bogner Mahaveda, a Peavey 5150 with a Phase 90 and a Mesa Boogie Mk V on Channel 2.
I recorded everything direct into Logic Pro via USB. Once I finished recording, I edited the samples for duration and then mastered for MP3 using a a TC Electronic MIDAS DYN 3000 and a TC Electronic MASTER X HD. The samples are all in the single clip and are as follows:
#1 - Dual Rectifier Bridge Pickup
#2 - Dual Rectifier Neck Pickup
#3 - Dual Rectifier Bridge - drop D
#4 - Fender Deluxe Reverb
#5 - Bogner Mahaveda
#6 - Peavey 5150 with Phase 90
#7 - Mesa Boogie Mk V, Channel 2
Good To Go Kit
When getting started or even upgrading, there is often more to the success than just the guitar, so I have decided to include a Good To Go recommendation kit. For this guitar, here’s my kit list.
Jackson American Virtuoso
This is an upper mid tier guitar and I would suggest looking at an amplifier in the same space. You will have to decide what kind of sound you are looking for, but I would be inclined to consider something like an EVH 5150 50w head and EVH 5150 III 4x12 cabinet. You will want an amp that suits the instrument’s market. For home practice, I would suggest a Spark GO.
High quality guitar cable - 20ft or less. Good cables last and are quiet. Cheap cables are a horror show. Consult your sales professional for their recommendation but I like cables from Pig Hog, Ernie Ball, Digiflex and D’Addario. Avoid coiled cables, they look cool to some but are noise factories.
Gig Bag - No extra $$$ because the guitar comes with a FANTASTIC case
Guitar Stand - Hercules make the best stands but you can often get a house brand that will hold the guitar when it is not in its case and you are not holding it
Guitar Strap - Every guitar needs a strap and every player, even sitting should use a strap. Gravity always works and a strap will save your guitar at some point. I recommend real leather that has suede on the inside, which helps rein in instruments that are neck heavy. My favourite straps come from Walker and Williams.
Tuner - No guitar is complete without a tuner that goes with it all the time. Pedal tuners are great, but every player needs an in case tuner, and the Snark tuners are hard to beat. I prefer the cheaper models that take clock batteries as for the difference in price to the rechargeable unit, you can order a sheet of batteries from Amazon, or you may find a card of them in the shop from D’Addario priced very low.
String Changing Tool - The D’Addario tools are great. One tool has a string winder, a string cutter and a bridge pin puller. Every guitarist needs this as every guitarist should learn to change his or her own strings. It’s not hard, and that quality guitar shop might even offer a free session on how to do string changes efficiently that you can attend live. Also, there will be about a zillion YouTube videos on the subject. As this guitar has a Floyd Rose, I would strongly recommend getting a Shredneck Tremblock from Solo Guitars. It makes string changes and intonation work a dream instead of a horror show.
Wrap Up
This Jackson American Virtuoso plays like a dream when properly set up. The pickups sound great, the neck is great and does not bring on fatigue. The compound radius is perfectly comfortable. That said, I think that for $2749 CAD MAP, it should have stainless steel frets and I would much prefer a Gotoh GE1996T bridge instead of the Floyd Rose 1500, because it was such a nuisance to get set up. Some folks will not like the absence of the familiar Jackson shark tooth style inlays, but Jackson has other instruments if that matters to you. The Luminlay side dots are nice but the light needs to be pretty dim to see them glow. I did like the tool holder that is affixed to the back of the headstock. This is a great idea, but you will need to be patient on the first tool insertions as it is quite snug. I will reiterate that this is not a guitar to buy online from a generic shop. You want to deal with a professional stop, like The Arts Music Store who will check the guitar over completely before shipping and I would strongly advocate ordering a professional set up by an experience guitar technician before getting it shipped or taking it home. If you like what I do please become a member on Patreon. Your support helps keep this channel going.
