Jackson DK2M Review

[marnold***]

Great review, Matt, and congrats again on the new guitar! It looks great.

Thanks. I was able to get my hands on a tremolo arm yesterday and put it through some abuse. I didn't check with my tuner, but the guitar stayed in tune with itself. Usually if something is set up wrong, one dive bomb will tell you in a hurry.

As an aside, I was going to sell my Floyd after I got my Carvin but decided to keep it to use for alternate tunings. I had it on Craigslist for a week and there was a lot of interest for basically what we paid for it new!

Everything's been really slow up here--bad time to try to sell guitars. Plus the population is relatively sparse up here so that limits the number of potential buyers.

[marnold***]

Just as an update, yesterday I was playing my DK2M and thoroughly abused the whammy bar as if it owed me money. I could pull it sharp about two full steps (I probably could have gone even sharper but I was paranoid about breaking a string, even though the guitar itself wasn't giving me any indication that I was in danger of that). I dive bombed until the strings stuck to the pickup poles. Lather, rise, repeat. When I checked it with my tuner today I was surprised to see that my low E had gone the tiniest bit flat and the high E the tiniest bit sharp, but that was about it. Rather impressive. So do I feel the need to immediately yank the JT580LP out and replace it with an OFR? Nope.

What I do desperately feel the need to do is fix the intonation. That's going to drive me a bit crazy. I don't know if I want to get a trem stop and then do it or just figure out another way to block it temporarily.

[marnold***]

I placed an order with Axcessories.com on Monday for a trem stop and extra springs so that I can go back to four springs. I prefer the extra stiffness (sig material right there). Since shipping is a flat $6.95 no matter what you order I ordered a trem arm (they have the ones that Ping makes, like my old Speedloader) and a set of black Schaller strap locks. If GC comes through with a trem arm soon I'll just keep it for a spare. Otherwise when this order comes in I'm just going to call them and tell them to credit my card for the amount that I paid for the replacement. Eventually I'll order a set of Schaller buttons for my bass.

[marnold***]

Got my stuff in the mail today! It's now got four springs on it. The trem stop is in place, awaiting the inevitable string change. I found out that unlike my previous guitars, the screws for the Schallers are the same diameter as the originals, just shorter. No need for the old wood-glue-and-toothpick trick. I also figured out that Schaller uses a 13mm nut on those strap locks. Thankfully I bought a set of metric wrenches a while back. I also found that a 5/8" wrench does a good job of keeping the other side of the strap lock in place while tightening the nut down. The new Ping-made trem arm does the trick. It's angled away from the guitar more than I'm used to, but I don't mind it. It also seems easy to keep it in place, which is very nice.

Going to call GC and try to get credit for the trem arm tomorrow.

Now that I can finally play it with a strap, I discovered that it is very well balanced. No neck-dive at all. Even though it is heavier than my previous guitars, it doesn't feel heavy at all with a strap.