Cheap guitar of the week #21 - Jackson JS22 Dinky

This is the Jackson that every metal guitar player kid wanted in the '90s.

If you thought last week's Ibanez was great, the Jackson JS22 Dinky is just as good, but for different reasons.

In the '90s, the decade which was the latter half of my teen years and the beginning half of my 20s, metal players only played two types of guitars. Jackson and Ibanez. That was it. If you played metal, you played one of the two and there was no question about it. You absolutely did not play Fender nor Gibson if you were expected to be taken seriously.

If Jackson had this guitar at the price it's selling for right now back then, it would have been the #1 metal guitar. The question is not "Why buy one?", but rather "How could you not buy one?"

When you take a look at the specs, you understand quickly why it would have been a top metal guitar:

• Arched body top. That's a premium option.
• High-output ceramic magnet pickups. Crazy-good for hard rock and metal playing.
• Compound radius 12-to-16 inch fretboard. Again, premium option.
• 24 jumbo frets. Effortless soloing.
• Bound neck and bound headstock. Once again, premium option.
• Sharkfin inlays. And again, a premium option.

This guitar made back in the day would have easily ran over $1,000. Check out how much it is now.

What's the only thing keeping this Jackson from being a top-of-the-line model, feature-wise? No Floyd-Rose tremolo system. But who cares? Seriously. To get so much premium option stuff in a guitar priced so low is insane, almost like Jackson is giving these things away.

Is Jackson skimping on build quality just to make a buck?

That's the crazy part - no, they're not.

The JS22 is another example of how modern guitar manufacturing processes have progressed to the point where a crazy-good guitar can be built at a rock bottom cheap price.

Higher prices only come into play when the Floyd-Rose is present, such is the case with the Jackson Soloist guitar. You will notice that the Soloist is very similar to the JS22, but when that Floyd-Rose is added on, the price jumps up significantly. Why? Floyd-Rose systems, even of the less expensive variety, aren't cheap to make nor are they cheap to install.

However, if you don't need the FR trem or can just live without it or just outright don't need it, grab a JS22. If you need reasons why, scroll up and look at the specs again.

Published 2015 Aug 5