Fender Jeff
Thursday, September 15th, 2011The Jackson Rhoads – A Heavy Metal Icon
The birth of the Jackson Rhoads Electric Guitar…
The Jackson Rhoads electric guitar was born when Randy Rhoads(formerly of Quiet Riot) and at the time playing with Ozzy Osbourne approached Grover Jackson of Charvel about building a unique and distinctive guitar for him. Randy provided Grover with some line drawings of his vision of what the body of the guitar would look like. The body was an asymmetric V-shape with the lower wing about half the length of the upper wing. Jackson, a fan of Gibson’s Explorer(so am I – love ‘em), came up with a headstock design based on that of the Explorer but somewhat narrower and more aggressive in appearance. The headstock design would come to be a trademark of the Jackson electric guitar family.
The original guitar, called the Concorde, was a heavy beast with the entire center block and wings made of maple. Jackson was in a bit of a quandary as to branding the guitar. The Charvel line of guitars was much more conservatively designed with most
bearing a resemblance to the Fender Stratocaster. Jackson was concerned that the body style of the new guitar was too radical for the typical Charvel customer. Jackson and Rhoads agreed to putting Jackson’s name on the new guitar instead of the Charvel name.
In addition to the guitar being heavy, it was also a big instrument and looked somewhat like a chopped up Gibson Flying-V. Rhoads decided that he wanted a more elegant, distinctive design. As a result he and Jackson again got together and spent hours coming up with a revamped design.The result was a much sleeker, more elegant design with an even shorter lower wing making the design much more distinctive. An added benefit of
the design was that the body was more slender than the original, making it easier to reach the higher frets. The new guitar was not only the birth of the Jackson Rhoads electric guitar but also the birth of Jackson Guitars.
Design, Construction and Playability…
There are a number of versions of the Jackson Rhoads electric guitar, ranging from lower end models appropriate for beginning guitarists to high end models designed for the professional guitarist as well as several Artist Signature models. Regardless of the model, the components and workmanship of the Jackson Rhoads electric guitar are always of the highest quality.
Every Jackson Rhoads electric guitar shares the same body style, neck style and headstock. Woods, electrical components and tremolos differ from model to model as well as the method in which the neck is affixed to the body. The lower end models tend to have bolt on necks and Floyd Rose licensed tremolos(on the models which have tremolos, of course) while the higher end models tend to have a neck-thru-body
design and original Floyd Rose tremolos. In addition, different Jackson Rhoads electric guitar models use different pickups. Regardless of the differences between models, all components and construction are of the very highest quality, as mentioned before.
The Jackson Rhoads electric guitar is a very sweet instrument. Its size and design make it extremely easy to reach the frets in the higher registers even if, like me, you have small hands. The fretboard has a compound radius meaning that it is slightly more curved at the nut and gets flatter as you approach the body of the guitar. This makes it easy to chord along the entire length of the neck.
Every Jackson Rhoads electric guitar has a shallow, classical guitar shaped neck and widely spaced, jumbo frets which makes it easy to play the instrument with speed and accuracy. And the sound? Well, let’s just say that a Rhoads on its worst day sounds better than most guitars on their best day. In fact, this can be said of all Jacksons. In addition, if you’re like me and you love to use artificial harmonics in your playing, the Jackson Rhoads electric guitar is one of the screamingest harmonics machines I’ve ever picked up.
Conclusion…
Every serious Rock or Heavy Metal guitarist needs a Jackson Rhoads in their collection. I have one in mine.
About the Author
Jeff Irick has been involved in music for over 30 years. His experience ranges from school choirs to school bands, Rock bands and playing Classical guitar semi-professionally. He is the owner of Electric Guitar Wizard which is devoted to his main musical passion, the electric guitar.
For detailed information on the various Jackson Rhoads models visit http://www.electric-guitar-wizard.com/jackson-rhoads-electric-guitar.html. See you there.
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