“A true high-performance 7-string designed for players with exceptional chops and a discriminating ear”: Jackson Pro Plus Dinky MDK HT7 MS review
Multi-scale madness in a go-faster hot orange colorway, this weaponized 7-string is not for gentle turnarounds and fingerstyle folk. But for metal and shred players? holy moly...
The Jackson Pro Plus Dinky MDK HT7 MS is a true high-performance seven-string designed for players with exceptional chops and a discriminating ear for perfect intonation and consistent feel.
Pros
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Multi-scale fretboard.
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Fishman pickups provide outstanding clarity across entire extended note range.
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Slimmed-down Dinky body provides excellent playing comfort. Simple control design.
Cons
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Almost exclusively for soloists and shredders.
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There’s a saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover. That may be true, but you can often tell a lot about guitarists by the instruments that they choose to play.
With its bright orange matte finish, black hardware and seven-string multi-scale design, Jackson’s new Pro Plus Dinky MDK HT7 MS is boldly designed for players who demand to be seen and heard. This Jackson is the guitar equivalent of a Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato with Arancio Borealis paint–it’s built with an emphasis on high performance and head-turning looks while also providing luxury and comfort.
Many seven-string guitars can be a bit bulky, but this model’s slim Dinky-style body made of basswood and generous sculpted contours keep its weight at a minimum while maximizing comfort and playability.
The bolt-on neck, featuring three-piece maple/wenge/maple construction, has a wide, flat profile, 12-to-16-inch radius and measures 1.875 inches at the nut to enable precise, fast playing. The multi-scale neck provides a 27-inch scale for the B (lowest) string and 25.5-inch scale for the E (highest) string, with the scale lengths for the remaining strings at separate lengths in between.
(Image credit: Jackson)
The angled, swept-fret design with 24 jumbo stainless steel frets is super comfortable to play and very easy for players with years of experience playing standard scales to adjust to almost immediately. The ebony fretboard features offset pearloid dot inlays between the lowest two or three strings and Luminlay side dots with excellent visibility on dim stages to help players stay oriented as they blaze and shred.
The fixed Hipshot 7 is also angled – our test example arrived from the factory with the saddles positioned to spot-on perfect intonation. Gotoh locking tuners and the Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut keep the strings solidly in tune even after the strings are violently bent and stretched.
(Image credit: Jackson)
The pickups are a pair of Fishman Fluence Modern PRF-MH8 active humbuckers, which you may recognize are eight-string pickups. However, because the pickups are angled both for tone and aesthetic purposes, the wider dimensions allow the pickups to capture each string’s vibrations at full strength. The neck pickup has alnico magnets while the bridge pickup has ceramic magnets to provides warmer neck tones and brighter bridge tones.
The master tone control’s push/pull function allows users to select two different pickup voices, with position one (down) delivering bold high-output tone with rich body while position two (up) provides crisp, articulated tones with airy treble and more focused mids. Other controls consist of a master volume knob and three-position blade pickup selector switch.
(Image credit: Jackson)
Because a low B string gets into baritone or bass territory (especially when tuned down a whole step to A), many seven-string guitars can sound flabby or muddy in the lower regions. This is not a problem here as the Fishman pickups deliver impressive clarity, attack and dynamics across the Jackson’s entire frequency spectrum.
The Fishman pickups deliver impressive clarity, attack and dynamics across the Jackson’s entire frequency spectrum
The multi-scale design maintains consistent-feeling tension across all seven of the .009-.054 strings, particularly on the critical low B string, which never feels rubbery or too easy to bend out of tune and maintains desirable metallic twang.
The bold color and design of the Jackson Pro Plus Dinky MDK HT7 MS makes it an ideal choice for players who demand attention. This is not an axe for casually strumming cowboy chords, just like you wouldn’t want to drive a Lamborghini a half mile at 20 mph to pick up a quart of nonfat milk.
When you strap on this guitar, it defiantly exclaims that you mean business, so you’d better have the chops to back up the aggressive, high-performance image it projects.
Chris is the co-author of Eruption - Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. He is a 40-year music industry veteran who started at Boardwalk Entertainment (Joan Jett, Night Ranger) and Roland US before becoming a guitar journalist in 1991. He has interviewed more than 600 artists, written more than 1,400 product reviews and contributed to Jeff Beck’s Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll and Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories.
