Now this is my idea of a legit budget guitar, I bought it on a whim as I had been wanting to get into 7 string, but wasn't quite sure yet. This guitar was cheap, affordable, and high quality. I was seriously impressed by the hardware; the pickups sound just as good as any of my proper higher budget guitars. The only downside is that the fret ends on mine needed a tiny bit of work (but it's absolutely nothing I wasn't able to fix myself.)

Nice work Jackson!

For the price this is an outstanding guitar! From the factory, the specs weren't bad. I like my guitars to play extraordinarily well, so I lowered the action, adjusted the intonation (it was expectedly a little off), and raised the pickups just a bit. All this was very easy to do, and I have a very fine instrument that I've already started recording with!

This is a very nice guitar, especially for the price. There are some things that could be better, but are common with most budget guitars. There is some string buzz on the first fret, action and truss rod should be adjusted. Also, if you want to play in lower tunings, you may want to have the nut adjusted to accommodate a lower string gauge. That shouldn't cost more than $, and out of all of my guitars, these pickups are the best. It's not perfect out of the box, but take it to a professional luthier and it might cost about $ make it absolutely perfect. (for the reasons listed, other mods will cost more) Easily the best budget guitar.

So some background information. I was a guitarist who was interested in playing heavier metal guitar music, and eventually started to wonder if I should invest in a 7 string guitar.

Pervious from having a 7 string guitar, I would use a 6 string standard guitar that I would just tune down to a 7 string Drop A tuning and would compensate with a heavy string gauge. In theory, I had a 7 string guitar, that was just missing the high E string. However I DO NOT recommend doing this. A 7 string guitar has a completely different feel than a standard 6 string guitar.

This guitar however is an excellent entry to the 7 string guitar world.

It is like the Little Caesar's of 7 String guitars.

By this I mean that it's Great, for the price. It's nothing crazy, it just meets all the requirements of a 7 string guitar. It has 7 strings, it has somewhat high output humbuckers, and it's comfortable to play. This guitar is affordable, not cheap. It doesn't have any crazy features like a floating trem or name brand pickups. It's just simple and gets the job done.

Now somewhat of a side note, I will admit this is the first time I purchased a guitar from Sweetwater Online. I was worried that it might be damaged when it arrived to me. But it wasn't at all. They took care of that guitar like it was an expensive high end instrument. It came in 3 boxes, and two of them were covered in bubble wrap and packing material to make sure that guitar didn't move at all during the shipping process. The guitar was in perfect condition when it arrived to me. Now yes, it wasn't in tuned, but that's to be expected. To my knowledge you don't want to fully tune up a guitar and then ship it because you risk breaking a string and getting it damaged because of all the temperature changes it goes through during the shipping process. But still the strings weren't de tuned to the point they were floppy. I always worry about running up when the strings are floppy cause I always feel like they will more likely to break that way. But when I did tune it, I was ready to play it.

As soon as I plugged it into my amp, I immediately went to a high gain metal patch on my amp and began to play my favorite riffs… but lower. I did have to adjust my amp's EQ to accommodate for the lower string, but that's just something to be aware of. Other than that it sounded excellent. I was using my Boss Katana with a few pedals, so it was a very beginner level set up, but it still sounded great. It was exactly what I needed and wanted.

I highly recommend this guitar to anyone who is considering getting a 7 string guitar. It's the best for the price as well as a great guitar in general. I know that Jackson also make 7 strings variants of the King V as well as the Rhoads V, but I recommend this S style Dinky, just because it's more ergonomic than a V shape. V's look cool but awkward to play sitting down, but that's just my personal opinion.

I do suggest that you buy a pack of strings or two just in case a string breaks, just for the fact that you probably don't want a 7 string guitar with 6 strings but that's just me. I also recommend you play a 7 string in general just so you know the how it feels compared to a 6 string and how it does feel way different from a standard 6 string

I have had this guitar for about 5 months now and it still plays great and work excellent for my needs. It's an excellent instrument and work horse and I haven't had any problems with it at all.

Overall, this is a great entry level 7 string guitar as well as an overall great instrument. I highly recommend this guitar and I highly recommend you get it from Sweetwater because they will make sure it arrives to you in perfect condition and take care of all your worries.

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