Gear

The Weigh-Up: Jackson Pro Plus Pure Metal Limited Edition Kelly (Gear Review)

/10

Jul 12, 2025

7 min read

I’m going to say it from the jump, I have been hanging for one of these to arrive since the moment Jackson announced them. The Jackson Pro Plus Pure Metal series is a limited run of Gloss Black models with Crème binding, single Fishman Fluence pickups and Chrome hardware, including a Floyd Rose 1000 series trem. No bull, no fluff, just a super classic looking metal guitar that’s here to demolish. I specifically asked for the Kelly because in my opinion, it’s the best of the point Jackson body shapes. Every time I see someone rocking a Kelly on stage, my instinctual response is ‘hell yeah.’ The stock photos looked cool and all, but man, when I pulled this thing out of the gig bag, I audibly gasped at how rad it looked.

I’ve had a few Indonesian built Jackson’s come my way over the last few months and where I was initially very sceptical, I have to admit that the quality they’re producing is very impressive. My first instinct with any import is always to meticulously check the fretwork and they’re really nailing all the little things that count in the long run. Once my initial inspection was done and dusted, I plugged this into my Kemper and lost hours of time having so much fun ripping on this guitar.

Fast, this thing goes so fast. I’m usually a fan of natural finish necks, but it just wouldn’t work on this guitar. Full gloss all the way and it works so well. The body sits great in classical position when you’re sitting down, but sadly a little top heavy when playing standing up. I admittedly wanted to see how it might look if I was rocking it live and found that there was a bit of neck dive, but nothing too crazy.

I love a neck pickup, I’m a huge neck pickup guy, but it has no place on a guitar like this. The single Fishman Fluence Modern humbucker does exactly what you expect it would do, crushes when loaded up with a tonne of gain and has a tonne of punch for chunky rhythm tones. Yes, it actually cleans up fairly well and the different voicing option operated by the push/pull pot is a handy feature that makes this one trick pony much more versatile than you’d think.

The Floyd is great and was setup perfectly out of the box. I never expect imports to arrive in optimal setup shape, but this was pretty much spot on from the moment I put my hands on it. I pulled my best Dimebag impression and ripped a tonne of trem dives to find the guitar was still perfectly in tune. I’m not much of a trem guy, but if you put one in front of me, I’m certainly going to use it for it’s intended purpose.

Gloss Black with Crème binding just can’t be beaten, in my opinion. I have a Les Paul Custom in the colourway and it’s such a timeless aesthetic, regardless of the body shape. This is such a sharp looking Kelly, and the Chrome hardware offers a wonderful contrast to the finish and the Ebony fretboard.

I say this about any extreme shaped guitar, but a hardcase is just a plain old necessity for anything like this. The gig bag that comes with Pro Plus Pure Metal Kelly is absolutely fine, but you’re probably going to do some serious damage to the guitar the moment you start going to gigs or rehearsals. So, word to the wise, anyone getting their hands on these needs to immediately secure a form fit case to keep the guitar in good shape.

This guitar just does everything right. It looks great, feels great, sounds great and I genuinely wish I had a musical project that a guitar like this would work for, but sadly that’s not the case. I really like what Jackson are doing in this price point right now and it seems to be connecting with players, so here’s hoping they keep delivering killer limited runs like this for years to come.

Review by Nicholas Simonsen @blackechomusic