Jackson Guitar Shapes Explained!
Published on 27 February 2025
Are you a fan of Jackson guitars? Do you love their wild ‘shape’ guitars? If you’re new to the brand - or to guitars in general - then you might get a little confused about which shape is which. Allow me to keep you on the true path here, with my guide to the Jackson guitar shapes! I’ll make sure you can tell a King V from a Rhoads, and everything else in between!
Contents
No Superstrats
Jackson are well known for their extreme shapes, but they’re equally as famous for their lethal superstrat designs. If you are needing to brush up on the subject of superstrats, I just so happen to have already written a Superstrat Guide for you! Hit that link there and come back here when you’re full of info!
Now, since today is all about the crazy shapes, there’s not too much scope for Strat-shaped guitars, but here’s a very rough way to distinguish the main types, just as we’re passing…
- Jackson Soloist: A superstrat with a ‘neck-through’ style of neck construction. This means there will be no perceptible join between the neck and the body. Otherwise, it’s a slightly sharper Strat body with a pointed headstock!
- Jackson Dinky: A superstrat with a traditionally bolted-on neck and an ever so slightly smaller body. You can’t really notice it unless you compare one with, say, a Soloist. In every other way, it’s very similar to a Soloist.
- Juggernaut: signature model of Periphery’s Misha Mansoor, another superstrat but with extended cutaways and no whammy bar. Other specs change fairly frequently.
Okay, Jackson superstrats are now superficially dealt with! We’re on the journey of the wilder shapes today, so step right this way and I’ll get you seated…
Jackson Randy Rhoads (RR)
The Jackson RR is often called a ‘Rhoads’ since its proper name is the Jackson Randy Rhoads. This was actually the first guitar made by the Jackson brand in the early 80s, after the Ozzy Osborne guitarist collaborated with Grover Jackson on a special idea he had for a guitar shape. Unsure about using his Charvel brand name on such a bold new design (Grover had previously worked for Charvel and eventually bought the brand), it was decided that his surname - Jackson - should be applied to Randy’s wild new offset take on the old Gibson Flying V design from the fifties.
Initially called the Concorde, the first of Randy’s models was a little bulkier and squared compared to the refined, sharper, sleeker one that followed. The second - and first that was made commercially available - is the Rhoads we all know today: a distinctly sharkfin-like guitar with one leg/fin/pointy bit longer than the other. It’s simultaneously familiar and fresh, the sign of great design.
Jackson King V
The Jackson King V is perhaps the most obvious one to understand, since there are already many V-shaped guitars in existence. The body of the King V is symmetrical and the points of the V are tapered thinner than historical V’s such as the GIbson Flying V.
Interestingly though, its genesis was not directly from the Gibson guitar: Jackson had developed a model called the Double Rhoads, a guitar with two of the longer fins from the RR guitar instead of one long and one short fin. It was huge, so a slightly downsized model was specially designed for a particular player…
So why is it a King? I’m glad you asked! The first widely noted user was Ratt’s lead guitarist Robbin Crosby, whose nickname was King. He was called King because he stood at a towering 6ft 5 inches tall, and the Double Rhoads that he played was a fine fit for him, but somewhat on the large side for most other players. Thus, when Jackson issued the slightly smaller new edition, they used the name of the guy who put the guitar on the map in the first place, and so the King refers to Robbin Crosby!
Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine was a big King V user until he switched to ESP (and now Gibson), and Anthrax’s Scott Ian is a huge fan with several signature models.
Like most Jackson guitar styles, the King V is available in a wide range of ranges, at a wide variety of price points. This will be true for everything I’m showing you today, so delve into the affordable JS range for amazing value, the X Series for affordable high quality, and the Pro Series for very high performance guitars.
Jackson Kelly
The Jackson Kelly is an eccentric redrawing of the Gibson Explorer body. At this juncture, I can send you towards my Jackson Kelly blog if you want more in-depth data on this one, but stick around and I’ll give you the main points right here.
The Kelly is another one whose name comes from a real person. Much as we’ve just learned about Randy Rhoads’ collaboration with Grover Jackson for the RR guitar, Heaven’s lead guitarist Bradford Kelly took a design to Jackson and had it made in the flesh, as it were.
The Kelly is one of those designs that is instantly recognisable, looks super cool but is also (and this was presumably intentional) a very practical design. It’s comfy to sit with, hangs well on a strap and offers - like the other designs we’ve seen today - perfectly uninhibited access to those upper frets. Let shred frenzying commence!
Jackson Warrior/Star
The Jackson Warrior is as metal as it gets. It’s possibly Jackson’s most extreme shape, but that’s really a matter of perspective, given what we’ve seen so far!
The Warrior is Jackson’s more stylised take on their own Star shape, which itself is somewhat based on a guitar that Eddie Van Halen (him again?) made at home in the 80s. These days, it is used as Gus G’s signature guitar.
It’s kind of difficult to describe the warrior shape outside of saying it's a vague ‘X’ shape and is also not a million miles away from an Explorer, whilst looking resolutely nothing like a Kelly!
Was that helpful? Pictures are your friend here, so check out the pics in this section.
The Jackson Star isn’t one we see too often, and looks more retro in its style of curves, compared with the curves of the Warrior.
Now, here’s a wild take for you: apparently, each ‘section’ of the Warrior body is made to resemble the Jackson headstock! Look closely!
Jackson Monarkh
The Monarkh is Jackson’s pretty unorthodox take on the ‘classic single cut’, which is what we say when we mean the Gibson Les Paul. Jackson being Jackson, they’ve managed to fit some pointyness into the headstock shape and the treble cutaway, but it’s still a fairly clear LP-type. It’s an almost traditional style for the brand, though Jackson have changed their silhouette to a more offset look that I’d say robs less from its source than other brands!
Marty Friedman is a huge Monarkh user, who has enjoyed signature models in the recent past.
Surfcaster/Outcaster
Quite the anomaly in such a mosh-friendly guitar lineup, the Jackson Surfcaster has more in common with the psychedelic 60s than 80s thrash. Coming in like a mix between a Rickenbacker and a Danelectro, this semi-acoustic offset had a set of lipstick tube pickups, a ‘slash’ f-hole and a six-a-side headstock. Still, being a Jackson, it also sported sharkfin inlays, which - crazily enough - fit right in with the aesthetic.
Surfing is also really ‘Californian’, culture-wise, so in some ways it's a kind of obvious addition to the catalogue!
The Outcaster was the hard rock sister model: same overall silhouette, but a solid body bad boy with high output humbuckers and often a Floyd Rose tremolo. Rob Caggiano, formerly of Volbeat, based his signature Jackson Shadowcaster on this. Lamb of God’s Mark Morton adapted this style, fattened up the body slightly, and achieved his own Jackson Dominion signature model. The current X Series Jackson Surfcaster maybe has more in common with the Outcaster than the original Surfcaster from the early 1990s.
All of these models come and go in popularity (and used prices), so they are very interesting for collectors, particularly since they sit slightly outside the regular Jackson wheelhouse.
What Makes Jackson Different?
Jackson are a brand with real heritage, but it’s based on the hard rocking 80s rather than the golden age of the 50s and 60s. The designs speak to a range of generations for massively different reasons: older guitar fans might feel like Jacksons are a modern breath of fresh air; slightly younger fans will love their thrash metal dominance, seeing them as classic guitars form their own childhoods; and younger guitarists still may appreciate how iconoclastic they are compared with the usual classic shapes.
Of course, there are loads of companies who build exaggerated rock axes, and most of them don’t attain the status of Jackson. Why is this? I’d perhaps volunteer a couple of notions:
- Jackson was created off the back of an already successful company, Charvel. This meant that there was a client base and expectation in place that fledgling companies don’t generally start with.
- Charvel worked with some very significant, visible artists, and Jackson followed suit with Randy Rhoads and others. They doubled down on this, right in the era of MTV becoming huge, so their brand was highly visible.
- Jackson’s designs just worked better, aesthetically, than many other ‘redrawings’ of classic axes. It’s hard to offer a new shape to the market and have it stick, but Jackson’s designs are almost all now classic: that means the designs themselves just flat-out work.
- Finally, Grover Jackson seems to have really known his business side, his design side and his artist relations side. Credit where it’s due - and I’m sure Jackson was and is full of excellent people - but Grover is obviously a bit of a force in the guitar world, and the planets just aligned for him with Randy came knocking.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Loud, pointy history.
