Jackson’s signature 7-string Soloist for Northlane guitarist Josh Smith has officially been released and it sounds every bit the state-of-the-art metal guitar that it promised to be when the spec was first announced.
As Smith reveals in the demo video, the Pro Series SL7 ET Soloist has in some shape or form been in development for a decade now – or at least what he imagined the ideal signature guitar to be. The Aquamarine finish on the SL7 is unique to this model and is taken from from his trusty Jackson B7 that he had refinished after a Seafoam Green vintage Fender Stratocaster caught his eye.
The headstock, too, is something different for the Soloist. Where typically we would have a 4+3 or seven-in-line configuration, here Jackson and Smith have gone for a license Strat headstock, and giving it a matching Aquamarine peghead.
If that over-sized headstock facing looks like a paddle, accommodating all those tuners – locking tuners, of course – the entire design looks like a hyper-trophied S-style, with its scale extended to 27” for extra brutality in extra low tunings, and in eschewing any markers or inlays on that 12” to 16” compound radius ebony fingerboard, it looks like the fretboard just runs and runs without end.
Like any Soloist worth its salt, we have 24 jumbo frets, its 2022 so there are of course Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side-dot markers to help you navigate in low lighting, and the guitar has a caramelised maple through-neck and an alder body. The neck is reinforced with graphite to keep it stable.
Smith says that it had to be a Pro Series because “the best value you can get for the specs that it has” and the EverTune F7 bridge and Bare Knuckle Impulse humbucker and single-coil pairing would bear that theory out.
These electric guitar pickups are controlled by a three-position blade switch with individual volume controls for each pickup. The Strat vibe is once more invoked with the skirted black plastic controls.
Elsewhere, you’ve got Dunlop dual-locking guitar strap locks, a dual-action truss rod that’s adjustable via an easy-to-access wheel mounted at the top of the fingerboard, and it ships in a Foam Core case.
You can check it out in action above as Smith talks about its design and demonstrates just how fierce that chug is on the lower strings when the gain is maxed out.
The Pro Series Josh Smith SL7 ET Soloist is available now, priced $2,699 / £1,609. See Jackson for more details.
