Bobby | soldguitars

1986 Jackson San Dimas Soloist Custom

"Bobby"

#J2125

This is a wonderful guitar, made in the San Dimas Charvel / Jackson factory in early 1986.

Seriously. It's lovely.

Now we've established that, we'll move on.

This was made shortly before the San Dimas factory was moved to Ontario, so is a proper, old-scholl San Dimas build. It has a factory-installed Floyd Rose trem (with an old-school screw-in arm), which is mounted on large hex-nuts, which gives away its age, as does the vintage-style 'TM' waterslide logo, with the 'Made in USA' below the 'Jackson' script, not after it. The nerds amongst you should pull up a picture of a modern one (now called the SL-2H) ... there are differences. The control cavity is the correct old San Dimas shape (new ones have the now standard big-assed control cavity), but the fingerboard binding has no 'nibs', which would have dated it a little earlier.

It is fitted with EMG pickups (81 & 85, thought to be factory-installed). Which scream. Like a stabbed pig. Which, just so we understand each other, is a good thing. It also came with a bee-yooo-tiful ebony fretboard ... as dense as I've ever seen and as black as night. Its very hard to come by ebony this good these days. But to be fair, its very hard to come by a GUITAR this good these days.

There are no modifications, as far as I can tell, except for the requisite strap-locks. Everything else is bone stock 1986. Most soloists from back then had Kahler trems by the way, which are ok (I've got lots of those around here), but the factory Floyd install makes this a little bit special. Also, the Floyd isn't recessed into the body, but floats over the top like a proper old-school Charvel should.

A beautiful guitar from the halcyon days of guitar building, which came shipped from the States in its original case. Its bloody heavy, by the way. As far as tone, some would say that its robbed of some clean ability by the EMG's but ... you know what ... I can't imagine ever needing to get a really nice clean sound out of this. If you want to play jazz, I'm guessing that you're not going to want to play this. It was built to do quite a particular job. And it does it very nicely.