The most 'un-boutique' guitar I have tried but it's not bad! The Jet Guitars JS-400.

When I visited the Guitar Show UK, I had a list of guitars that I wanted to try out, most of which were mid range and up in price but I did have an outlier that I wanted to check out. Jet Guitars.

Jet Guitars are a budget guitar company that claims to do the following:

"JET guitars offer a premium playing experience at an affordable price."

So there must be hundreds of brands doing something similar such as Squire, Cort, Harley Benton and many more, so how is Jet going to stand out?

The Jet Guitars JS-400 in Sea Foam Green Relic

So I have to say that I was setting a low expectation.  I knew how cheap these guitars retailed for and surely any profit they make would be based on many unit sales rather than per unit at these prices, especially as they work through the distributor Hal Leonard, who would need to have some kind of margin.

My expectation with Jet Guitars was that I was going to be trying out something that was probably going to be well built but not something that was going to be excited...

So how surprised was I!

In the picture above you can see the Jet Guitars JS-400 in Sea Foam Green Relic.  As you can see it is another S-Style copy.  On the stand there were T-styles and LP styles too.  I don't have an S Style so I wanted to try this one out as it caught my eye with the retro colour and, weirdly, the relic finish (  I am not usually a relic finish fan, I tend to do my own relic work on my guitars, often by accident!).

Before I plugged it in I gave it a strum.  The neck is a roasted Canadian maple neck with a modern C shape and a 9.5" radius. The neck even had a bone nut. It felt lovely and would be comfortable for most players. The fretboard was rosewood and there were no sharp frets sticking out.  It was very comfortable to play.

The pickup configuration was a HSS style (there is an SSS style with the JS-300) installed on a basswood body.

The trem was a six point trem and in the ten minutes or so that I tried the guitar I could hear that the tuning was stable.

As for the finish, I thought that it was eye catching, the finish was very high quality.  It was impressive how the relic finish was done.  I was particularly taken with the attention to detail on the metal work e.g the aged chrome machine heads and bridge as well as the aged look of the control knobs.

The five way switch and knobs were solid and a format that I preferred e.g two knobs versus usual strat three knob set up.  Historically I have been a T-Style player so this format is great for me.

What did it sound like?

Based on the fact that I had less than ten minutes on it within a cacophony of the inevitable racket of a guitar show, at first pass I think it sounded great for a guitar at this price point.  I would definitely take the guitar out on a gig and use it.  I found myself eagerly playing SRV licks on it and being happy with what I heard.

Let me get to the point...

There was only one downside for me, and this is subjective, the set up needed some work.  Not much, more of an adjustment that works to my taste but this guitar is about £350 and before I tried this out I had tried guitars at the show that were double the price and the set up was just as good.  Most people would be delighted with the set up and beginners would have no problem with playing this guitar.  I would go as far to say that at this price point, the guitar set up was great.

So the point is, if I hadn't done my research and I didn't know the pricing and had simply rocked up to the stand and started playing, I would have assumed that these guitars were going to be priced upwards of £500.  How Jet is retailing these at such low prices is beyond me but these are great guitars and worth exploring for beginners or for more serious hobbyists.

Then I got one on loan!

I managed to find out who was marketing Jet Guitars in the UK and they very kindly sent me a JS-400 SFG with the relic finish similar to the one I tried on the stand.

Below is a video demonstrating the tones that come from this guitar.

In the video below, I give my final thoughts on this guitar having played with it for a number of weeks.

Jet Guitars are worth taking a punt on, you won't be disappointed!

Find out more about the Jet Guitars JS-400 HSS Roasted Maple, Sea Foam Green Relic.

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