Question for you guys. When I read this statement: “Jackson-branded Floyd Rose®-licensed double-locking tremolo bridge system.” I can’t help but think of the cheaper bigsbys that are on the electromatic Gretsch guitars. Will this Floyd rose be a significant drop in quality from what might be a “true” Floyd rose? I don’t expect $2000 quality from a $500 guitar but just wanted to get your input in helping me decipher this guitar company jargon.
I'd need to see the bridge in question, but I can say that I have a licensed Floyd Rose on my Japanese Jackson SL2H and it's lasted 10 years with a few of those years with it being my only guitar. I wrote a bit about it in one of my earliest blog posts:
The hair band style of music made popular in the 1980s generally requires guitars called super-Strats. These are guitars shaped like Fender Stratocasters that have been hot-rodded in any number of interesting ways. Usually they include at least one humbucking pickup in the bridge position, and...
www.gad.net
Here it is next to a US-Made SL2H that I no longer have. The import is hanging on the wall right next to me.
I have no idea if that's the same FR as the one you're getting, but I do have other Jacksons with real Floyds on them and the big difference seems to be the quality of the metal used. That doesn't show up in playability directly. Where it shows up is in things like screws stripping where they wouldn't on the originals.
BTW I didn't like the US-made SL2H because the top is completely flat aside from the forearm bevel while the Sam-Ash special import SL2H has an arched top that I freaking love. That led me to seek out the uber-rare '90s Japanese Professional Pro models that also have arched tops, but are made as well as (if not better than) the US Jacksons. Rumor has it they stopped making them because they were taking sales away from the US models. Anyway, now I have two of those as well: one with EMGs and one with passives, oddly enough with adjacent serial numbers though I bought them weeks apart on Ebay from different sellers. In 10 years of looking they're the only two I've ever seen for sale.
Sorry... what was the question again?
Oh yeah! I think if you're not touring and you don't play the guitar for 10 hours a day every day for a year you likely won't have a problem. So long as the FR is up to snuff when you get it, it should last a long time.
My love of the arched-top super-Strat led me to find a
Guild Liberator Elite that you can read about on my blog if you haven't already.
