Presenting the Jackson Dinky JS32Q DKA – Upgraded with the help of Bareknuckle and Sustainiac….

The base of this project is already an amazing guitar. The Jackson Dinky is near legendary in its looks and playability. Taking the “Super Strat” title to new heights. Even being in the ‘affordable’ range of the Jackson Dinky lineup, it still packs a hell of a punch for its price tag.

The 12″-16″ compound radius bound amaranth fingerboard gradually flattens toward the heel from its more rounded profile at the nut. This makes for comfortable and natural-feeling chording and riffing near the nut, with optimal shred articulation and bending nearer the heel. You can wail away at will as the Jackson-branded Floyd Rose® licensed double-locking bridge provides dynamic trem action with tuning stability. Because Jackson has used a Floyd Rose licensed system, it allowed us to upgrade it with a Floyd Rose Fat Brass block, just for a bit more low-end.

With the classic Jackson style, the JS32Q DKA is wrapped in a Transparent Green Burst finish with their signature pointy black headstock and all-black hardware, including the standard strap buttons and sealed die-cast tuners.

When you have an instrument with a high styling and hardware pedigree as this, to push it over the edge, you have to step up the electrics. And that’s exactly what we did! The stock Jackson high-output bridge humbucker was replaced with a Bareknuckle Nailbomb. The non-screw matte-black cover blends beautifully with the rest of the guitar. Possibly raising the question, why wasn’t this done in the first place? 😜

The neck pickup has been replaced with the Sustainac Stealth Pro system. Now, if you’ve been on our site for more than 2 minutes, you’ll already know that we like our Sustainiac upgrades quite a lot around here. But in this guitar, it fits like a glove. In conjunction with the Bareknuckle humbucker, the system works great. Giving all the harmonic feedback you’d ever want.

We’ve replaced the stock master tone pot with a push/pull pot to give a stealthy on/off switch to the Sustainiac system, while keeping the master tone pot functionality. The mode selection is accessed with a black 3-way mini toggle switch, mounted near the master tone control. To finish things off, we also upgraded the master volume pot to CTS and upgraded the 3-way pickup selector switch and the jack socket.

We’ve taken an already great and thoroughbred guitar model and pushed its tonal flexibility with some fantastic electronic upgrades.

Construction

Poplar body with Quilted Maple art-grain top.
Bolt-on maple neck with graphite reinforcement and scarf joint
12″-16″ compound radius bound amaranth fingerboard with 24 jumbo nickel frets and pearloid sharkfin inlays
Floyd Rose locking nut.
25.5″ scale length.

Electrics

In the neck is the Sustainiac humbucker driver. This pickup has been wired as a standard neck pickup when the Sustainiac system is turned off. When the driver is in pickup mode, it is voiced much like a PAF-style humbucker, which is very close to the Seymour Duncan ’59
The bridge humbucker has been upgraded to a Bareknuckle Nailbomb covered humbucker.
3-way selector switch
Master Volume control with treble bleed circuit.
Master Tone control, with Push/Pull Sustainiac on/off switch.
Sustainiac 3-way mini toggle switch for mode selection (Natural-mix-harmonic)
Switchcraft stereo jack socket.

Hardware

Floyd Rose®-licensed Jackson ® double-locking tremolo bridge system with an upgraded Floyd Rose Fat Brass block.
All other hardware is original to the Jackson Dinky model, including tuners and locking trem system in black.
A Gotoh 9-volt battery box has been routed into the back of the guitar to allow easy access for battery changing for the Sustainiac system (not that this happens too often).