Guitar World Verdict
Small issues aside, for beginners who love heavy music, I really can’t recommend the JS11 enough. It’s got plenty of heft in the bridge pickup to cover the vast majority of metal tones from modern to classic, and more importantly, it’s got a brilliantly fast-playing neck that will enable the slinky playability needed to learn how to play metal guitar.
Pros
- +
Superb playability from the slim neck profile.
- +
Pickups can absolutely handle high-gain metal tones.
- +
Feels really well put together, and looks great.
- +
Outstanding value for money.
Cons
- -
Neck pickup was a little wooly on clean and dirty tones.
- -
The tremolo feels like an afterthought and needed a setup.
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What is it?
Aiming to play a large part in breeding the next generation of metal guitarists, the Jackson JS Series Dinky JS11 is an incredibly low-cost instrument, even for this day and age, where guitars are getting ever cheaper. But can this beginner electric guitar that costs just above the $150 mark really hang with drop tunings, shred licks, pinch harmonics, and palm-muted chugs?
Typically, if you're on the hunt for a full-size metal guitar, you'd expect to shell out over $200. But the JS11 is here to prove that starting your metal career doesn't need to drain your wallet. Sure, Ibanez has their Mikro short-scale beauty hanging around in the same ballpark, but when it comes to full-size options, you'd likely have to dive into the second-hand market to snag an axe this cheap.
Boasting a lightweight poplar body in the classic Jackson super-strat body style, a lightning fast maple neck which sports a 25.5" scale length and an amaranth fingerboard, as well as a duo of "high-output humbucking" pickups, the JS11 certainly looks appealing on paper, but does this beginner electric guitar deliver the goods in practice? Let's find out.
Specs
- Launch price: $169.99/£149/€179
- Made: China
- Type: Six-string electric guitar
- Body: Poplar
- Neck: Maple
- Fingerboard: Amaranth
- Scale length: 25.5" (647 mm)
- Nut/width: Plastic, 1.6875" (42.86 mm)
- Frets: 22 frets
- Hardware: Jackson Sealed Die-Cast tuners, 2-Point Fulcrum Tremolo bridge
- String spacing at bridge: 51.4mm
- Electrics: 2x Jackson High-Output Humbucking, Volume, Tone controls, 3-Position Blade: Position 1. Bridge Pickup, Position 2. Bridge and Neck Pickups, Position 3. Neck Pickup
- Left-handed options: No
- Finishes: Gloss Black, Metallic Blue, Metallic Red (as reviewed), Snow White
- Cases: No
- Contact: Jackson
Build quality
Build quality rating: ★★★★☆
Pulling the JS11 out of the box, I performed my typical close inspection of the instrument to see if I could pick out any issues. I'm happy to report that it passed the test with flying colors, and I couldn’t find anything amiss with it in terms of aesthetics or how it’s put together. That said, the fretboard was very dry-looking and was crying out for some oil.
That small issue aside, the metallic finish has been evenly and cleanly applied all across the body, the knobs and selector switch felt nice and solid, and there were no sharp fret ends to speak of.
In my opinion, this Dinky feels more than capable of holding up the rigors of a beginner, chucking it around, taking it to practice in a cheap gig bag, and even using it at their first gig.
Playability
Playability rating: ★★★★½
Sitting down to play the Dinky JS11, I was immediately taken aback by how good the neck felt. It’s a slim, shredder’s profile that is incredibly comfortable, and it didn’t take me more than 5 minutes to get nicely acclimatized to it. Jackson doesn’t list the size of the frets in the specs, but they feel like jumbo frets to me, making it feel super slick when bending notes higher up the fretboard.
It feels great laying into some heavy riffing, and the flat radius fingerboard makes it super comfortable to play no matter where you are. It handled every metal riff I could throw at it, from simple but effective Gojira-type riffing to the more complex machinations of bands like Between The Buried And Me. The stock strings aren’t heavy enough to warrant serious down tuning, but can certainly handle drop D and D standard without feeling too slinky.
Getting stuck into the tremolo, I found it to be pretty much unusable in its default state. Not many guitars around this price point have great tremolos, admittedly, and it might be that a proper setup could cure it of this problem. Every time I leaned on the tremolo, it sent the guitar out of tune. As it’s a guitar aimed at beginners, I think Jackson would be better off just leaving it as a hardtail for the sake of stability.
Sounds
Sounds rating: ★★★★☆
Plugging the JS11 into my amp modeler, I felt obliged to load up a 5150-inspired high-gain amp model to see if the JS11 really does chug. Pleasingly it does a damn good job of delivering searing metal tones that go far beyond what you’d expect from the price point. The humbuckers ain’t subtle, but if you want modern or even classic metal tones, they absolutely do the job.
Played dirty, the bridge humbucker has plenty of cutting treble and gutsy mid content that made light work of palm muting and tremolo picking with higher gain settings. Aiming for crunchier tones, it wouldn’t please any proper tone hounds, but it sounded absolutely fine for someone to hone their craft on before moving on to something with a little more harmonic complexity.
The bridge humbucker has plenty of cutting treble and gutsy mid content that made light work of palm muting and tremolo picking with higher gain settings
Switching to the neck pickup, things aren’t quite so nice, though. Through various amp and EQ settings, it feels wooly and a little muffled rather than warm and full, like a good neck pickup should be. I could never quite coax the sound that I wanted out of it. That said, through the lens of a beginner, I can’t see it holding anyone back. Okay, it won’t satisfy those with a little more experience in tone shaping, but for a novice, it's more than servicable.
Despite being ceramic, the pickups never felt too harsh, even when I ran the guitar through the dirt channel of my Orange tube amp at rehearsal and really cranked up the volume. Again, it’s not going to give you vintage-inspired PAF tones, but for the heavier stuff, it really does a good job, in particular on the bridge pickup setting.
Verdict
There’s a lot to like about the Jackson JS Series Dinky JS11, not least of which is that incredibly low price point. The playability of it, arguably the most important aspect for a beginner, is seriously good, equal to guitars priced much higher than this one. That doesn’t just apply to metal lovers either, it’s equally at home with fingerpicking or open chords.
It is let down by a few issues with the setup, in particular the tremolo. It’s forgivable on a guitar aimed at beginners, but it does beg the question why Jackson sought to include one, when a guitar like this would’ve benefited from the stability of a hardtail bridge.
Guitar World verdict: Small issues aside, for beginners who love heavy music, I really can’t recommend the JS11 enough. It’s got plenty of heft in the bridge pickup to cover the vast majority of metal tones from modern to classic, and more importantly, it’s got a brilliantly fast-playing neck that will enable the slinky playability needed to learn how to play metal guitar.
Test | Results | Score |
|---|---|---|
Build quality | Feels very solid, despite some small setup issues. | ★★★★☆ |
Playability | Astoundingly good for the price. | ★★★★½ |
Sounds | Bridge pickup is brilliant, but the neck tone could be better. | ★★★★☆ |
Overall | For beginner metal guitarists it’s a great choice. | ★★★★☆ |
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