Single-pickup Royalty Raised from the Shadows
It’s always a treat when one of the Jackson Custom Shop’s make their way through Sweetwater’s guitar gallery — especially when it’s a model as darkly distinctive as this Jackson Custom Shop King V. Built by Jackson’s most masterful luthiers in Corona, California, this King V brandishes a moody black-on-black-on-black collection of hardware and trim. Beneath this guitar’s ebony exterior lies a quarter-sawn maple neck-through-body construction with alder wings that ensures your lead lines sing with rich, full sustain. Moreover, the compound-radius ebony fingerboard and 24 jumbo frets make screaming bends and lightning-fast licks all but an afterthought. To match this King V’s austere aesthetics, the Jackson Custom Shop then loaded up this 6-string with a non-nonsense configuration of a single firebreathing DiMarzio X2N humbucker, a sole volume knob, and a time-tested TOM-style hardtail bridge. Naturally, an arsenal of dusky appointments rounds out this Jackson Custom Shop King V, including black Gotoh tuning machines, black shark fin inlays, and a slight variation from “none-more-black” protocol in the form of dark blue Luminlay side dot markers for easy visibility on dark stages.
A trio of time-honored tonewoods
A time-honored tonewood trio, this Jackson Custom Shop is handbuilt with methodically selected slabs of alder, maple, and ebony. As the axe’s aural anchor, the alder body elicits sonorous, full-bodied tones that are focused and balanced, with a mild EQ-curve scoop that’s made alder a prized tonewood for rockers of all styles. The maple neck imbues your sound with a smoldering brilliance, adding warmth and shimmer across the spectrum, while teeming with inherent note-separating capabilities that keep every chord, lead, lick, and riff articulately voiced. Up top, an ebony fretboard becomes your runway to superb sustain, crystalline depth, and unparalleled precision that power through every register. Thanks to the neck-through-body construction, these properties harmonize with immense resonance and presence.
Single-pickup simplicity
A single bridge-position DiMarzio X2N humbucker is all this Custom Shop King V needs to scream with the best of them. This punishing pickup leverages a dual-rail design and a blistering output to clock in as one of the most hard-hitting passive humbucking designs on the market. It’s a natural for metal and hard rock applications, slamming the front end of any amplifier like a sonic sledgehammer. Paired with a single volume knob, this pickup emboldens the Jackson Custom Shop King V with a firebreathing fury that few axes can match.
Sustain-enhancing hardtail setup
An ultra-stable hardware configuration further sharpens this King V’s high-performance vibe, starting with a blacked-out TOM-style bridge. Reliable to the core, there’s a very good reason why this bridge design has been trusted by guitarists around the world since the 1950s. What’s more, this bridge’s string-through-body tailpiece only enhances your sustain and resonance. Finally, while there’s no denying the allure of a dive bomb, hardtail guitars like this Custom Shop King V simply excel in applications when you need to quickly switch tunings or drop your low E down to tackle a particularly brutal track on your set list.
Jackson Custom Shop King V Features:
- Crafted by Jackson’s finest luthiers in the brand’s Corona, CA-based custom shop
- Quarter-sawn maple neck-through-body construction with lightweight alder wings
- Ebony fingerboard with a 12-in.–16-in. compound radius ensures comfortable riffs and chords with smooth bends up high
- 24 jumbo facilitate effortless bends up and down the neck
- Stable, solid, and sustain-enhancing TOM-style bridge and string-through-body tailpiece
- A single DiMarzio X2N humbucker unleashes a screaming high-output blast of dual-rail destruction
- High-performing Gotoh tuning machines
- Glorious “none-more-black” aesthetics throughout, punctuated by dark blue Luminlay side dot markers
- Bold black binding and black shark fin fingerboard inlays
