Jackson: SLS-3 Soloist

Here's a Jackson guitar which is rather removed from its other siblings in terms of design. It sports a 3 tuners per side headstock & tapered body edges.

The SLS3 also sports a rear, bass-side taper. In Ibanez-speak, it's an S-series but not quite. The manufacturer wisely left the rear treble-side alone, no tapering there & it managed to avoid the design liability, otherwise, Ibanez would be all over the situation. I wonder if both manufacturers traded silent blows by stealing bits of design stealth from each another because much later (the SLS-3 debuted in 2008), Ibanez came up with their Xiphos design which, in Jackson-speak, is a Warrior by another name (you could say Jackson ripped BC Rich off with the Warrior design because it looks like the latter's Stealth model).

Whatever the case may be, the SLS-3 is a wonderful guitar for us players who rate design ergonomics highly. The guitar is light-weight & has lots of wonderful tones for drive/ distortion-inclined fans, dispelling the myth that more wood equals more ear candy. The neck profile is a winner with shredders but it's not Ibanez-thin so it attracts fans who don't shred to save their lives, especially so when it features a pair of Duncan '59 humbuckers which aren't exactly shred-grade. It's not accessible price-wise for many of us, listing for slightly more than $3K but if you value the SLS3 for its capacity, that would be 'reasonable'. I managed to try this guitar at Swee Lee recently & enjoyed the experience, definitely a worthy guitar in my books.