There isn’t much that Phil Collen’s new Jackson PC1-E can’t do. It has DiMarzio’s nuclear option as the bridge humbucker, the active PC1 Sustainer Driver at the neck, with Collen’s signature stacked ‘bucker in the middle position...
And there is a push/pull coil-split and a five-way selector switch for making full use of its HSS format.
You half expect that there’s a cigarette lighter push-pull on the volume pot, or that if you point it at the TV you could change the channel. Presumably the electric toothbrush is inside the case. And just look at it. The PC1-E comes fresh out of the Jackson facility at Fender’s Ensenada plant with a distressed nitro finish that makes it look like it has been in active service since 1986, the year the Def Leppard guitarist started playing Jackson's hot-rodded electric guitars.
And for a list price of £1,699/$2,199 it might just stop people complaining to Collen that his USA model is too expensive (well, it is not cheap), which is something he gets all the time. So does it get any better at this price?
“No, it absolutely doesn’t,” says Collen, joining MusicRadar from his home in California, because new model, the PC1-E, is a chip off the old block. It does everything the US model that he’s been playing since the ‘90s does
“I’m actually playing it on tour, actually. It’s just great,” he says. “You can do anything on them. On Hysteria we used EBows, but these things have Sustainers, and you can replicate all of that stuff. And then it’s got a Floyd on it. It’s got…”
Everything?
“Everything you could ever, ever want!” he says. “I’ve used mine and it sounds like a Les Paul. It can sound like a Strat. It can sound like a Tele. You can do all this stuff.”
The fundamentals of the PC1-E are as follows. You’ve got a classic Jackson Dinky body, which of course means that we’ve got a bolt-on build, with a caramelised maple neck reinforced with graphite and topped with an ebony fingerboard.
There are 24 stainless steel frets. The fingerboard is carved into the 12” to 16” compound radius so preferred by Fender’s portfolio of high-performance brands – Jackson, Charvel, EVH Gear – and a truss rod adjustment wheel is conveniently located at the top of the fretboard.
The reverse Stratocaster headstock is very cool. Indeed, Collen is too cool to be bothering with fret markers. There’s one pearloid sharkfin inlay at the 12th fret and that’s that (but fear not, Luminlay side dot markers are available along the edge of the fingerboard).
The hardware is gold, which is kind of fancy but offset by the fact that all that mahogany is poking through the black paint. Collen is 100 per cent okay with that.
“I love relic guitars,” he says. “They feel totally worn in, and you put them on, you go, ‘Ahh, okay!’ And they breathe a bit better. Guitars with brand new paint and all of that stuff, they tend to not sound as comfortable or whatever. This thing, just straight off the bat, you plug it in. It’s like, ‘Yep, woo-hoo! Here we go.
“I know there’s some people don’t like relic guitars – ‘you’ve got to do it yourself’. I’ve done it myself through a lot of my guitars, and they’ve got really worn in, but this one sounds and feels like one of those. So it’s amazing. I love them.”
But the electronics is where this thing really distinguished itself from the rank-and-file in the Jackson catalog. The PC-1 Sustainer unit is driven by an 18V preamp with switches so that it can either infinitely sustain the fundamental note or the harmonics.
As Collen says, if you’re the kind of player who has been frustrated trying to nail those sweet volume swell sounds on Hysteria and can’t be bothered with an EBow, the Sustainer is a godsend.
It would be an amazing tool for the soundscaper, too, and of course those hesher players who’ve long tried to nail Slayer’s Dead Skin Mask intro riff and failed. The Sustainer unlocks all that stuff.
“It’s incredible,” says Collen, who sounds a little like Dirty Harry talking about his magnum when he gets onto his electric guitar pickup choices.
“I’ve got a DiMarzio X2N, which is the most powerful pickup they do,” he say.s “My ones, I actually have a coil split, so you can actually make it sound like a Strat. I mean, it’s crazy the different tones you can get. I’m blown away with some my PC-1s, but yeah, this one actually does it all.”
That DiMarzio Sugar Chakra in the middle position – a pickup co-developed with Collen – is a stacked ‘bucker but it too can pull a double-shift and give you some spankiness.
The combination of the X2N and the Sugar Chakra is actually amazing. I’ve done that on some of the Def Leppard albums, and I think it was on was the last one, Diamond Star Haloes
“Again, it’s really powerful, but you can also split that as well,” says Collen. “The combination of those two, the X2N and the Sugar Chakra, is actually amazing. I’ve done that on some of the Def Leppard albums, and I think it was on was the last one, Diamond Star Halos where I’ve done that, and it has such a unique sound – especially when you keep the Sustainer on for some of the clean stuff.”
That’s right, try sustaining those in-between sounds with a clean tone, with an expensive reverb, maybe, some delay too, or maybe. Rockman X100 to fully embrace the spirit of this guitar. Collen promises that all kinds of things will pop out the speaker.
“It’s like, ‘Whoa!’ Again, a sound I’ve never heard before, so I use that a lot,” he says. “So, yeah, pretty cool stuff! It’s lovely. And especially if you jam it between the two pickups, like on that five-switch type of thing, just between the two, really clean, it’s just incredible. It’s beautiful stuff.”
There is one major difference to the actual PC1s Collen likes to play. The neck will be a lot thinner. Collen has thing for fat necks, and got his tech, John Zocco, to swap his out. As Jackson players go, he’s in the minority on that score.
“Well, the one that I had initially was pretty mainstream,” says Collen. “But the one I play is, yes, it’s a fairly monster neck.”
The Pro Series Phil Collen PC1-E is available now. See Jackson for more details.
