NGD: in harmony with the universe again (and it matches my bass!)

The universe insists that I may only keep black instruments I might manage to get away with sunburst, provided I go with black pickguards, but if I stray any further, a more colorful instrument will never stay long.

So it was with the G&L Legacy that matched my amplifier



… and my car



It looked good, it sounded good, but it never felt quite right. So off it went … so I could replace it with something black. Of course.

At least it matches my bass. All my basses, really. And my other guitars, too.



I don’t choose the black; it chooses me. As I debated keeping or selling the red guitar, along came this Jackson Dinky: made in Japan in the early ‘90s, with an uncommon but appealing array of Seymour Duncan pickups, and something I had never seen before—an onboard active gain boost. It seemed like it might actually do what I wanted the red guitar to do; and given the universally decreed finish, it seemed like a safe bet to ship it here once I shipped out the Legacy.



It felt exactly right, right away. Jackson necks just feel like home to me, whether with four or five fat strings, or six skinny ones. The pickups give me a variety of useful sounds, all at least a bit different from the Les Paul that gets most of the guitar work around here. The gain boost has a knob to adjust the center frequency of the boost, with a middle setting that instantly takes things into cocked wah Slayer lead territory—and it even sneaks a bit of flashy color into my otherwise blackened, bassy world.