Anyway, I had the urge for a more modern styled instrument (which has been a trend for me in the most recent years after being somewhat of a traditionalist for most of my life - musical midlife crisis?!
) and purchased an Ibanez RGAAIX6FM which is a fantastic instrument. Would have been happy to keep blasting away on that until I noticed the below on trade me about mid year. I watched it for ages, but he seller was only wanting to sell it a few hundred less than retail, which I wasn't going to go for. It disappeared after a few relists with no interest but cropped up on Facebook about a month ago, with a much more reasonable price point. Got chatting with the seller and worked out a deal and had this delivered to me on the weekend. It's a Jackson HT6 Juggernaut which is the sig. guitar for one Misha Mansoor of Periphery. I've been a big fan of this band for almost a decade and already own a the signature PRS SE for their other guitarist Mark Holcomb. This is the 'Pro' version, which is the non USA made model, but it's a pretty tasty bit of kit regardless of origin (made in Indonesia FYI). The USA version comes with Mansoor's signature Bare Knuckle pickups, also called Juggernauts, but the Pro version includes some Jackson-made ones that Mansoor helped design and they're honestly a lot better than what you normally get when it comes to most stock pickups. I may swap out to the Bare Knuckles in the new year though, but I'm pretty happy with these for the time being. Plus, they actually look like BK's, which i think was deliberate.
This won't be everyone's cup of tea aesthetically, or to play but it's got a huge array of sounds - the five way switch has your usual 3 pickup positions but 2 +4 split the inner coils, meaning there's some single coil action. The tone knob is push-pull, but pulling it up only removes it from the circuit... which is odd, but must serve a purpose
Tonally, the cleans are very crisp and ambient, mid gain stuff is crunchy and percussive and engaging my highest distortion setting is brutally brutal. Comparing it to my PRS, the Jackson is second place but i put a lot of that down to the SD Alpha + Omega set of pickups the PRS comes standard with. Overall a really cool guitar that does the modern metal thing well, but would also have a bit of a flex in other tonal pockets. - jackson 3.jpg (69.91 KiB) Viewed 3041 times
- jackson 2.jpg (55.02 KiB) Viewed 3041 times
