My Kelly Professional Std.

[Jason]

Cool forum! I took my old Japanese Kelly out of the closet to clean/rehab it after not playing it for several years. I thought I would share pics of it here. Sorry for the poor quality of the pics. I took them at night and I was having trouble finding good light and it's a new camera of which I am unfamiliar. Here's what I have so far. I used to play the hell out of it and you can see where my pinkie wore through the finish below the high E string.

[warlok]

Welcome! I had to look that one up in the scans, never seen one of those. 1997 KE4.. First time I've seen the woodgrain on a Kelly. Pretty cool.

[Force]

Welcome Jason. If your finger did that, I'd hate to see what your feet do to your shoes

Looks like this has been refinished without grain fill & undercoat, I like it.

At least your guitar has been played like they were made for, not kept in solitary confinement.

[toejam]

Welcome! I had to look that one up in the scans, never seen one of those. 1997 KE4.. First time I've seen the woodgrain on a Kelly. Pretty cool.

Yep, KE4 with a satin-finished ash body and regular JT580 trem. A Kelly Standard would have a poplar body with clear gloss finish and low-profile JT580 trem.

Nice guitar, and welcome to the forum!

http://audiozone.dk/guitargallery/?c...1997Page11.jpg

http://audiozone.dk/guitargallery/?c...4-95Page07.jpg

[Jason]

Thanks for the welcome. Thanks for the scans Toejam. I did not realize that they changed the model numbers; I just saw that the standard model had no neck binding and plain dot inlays. I bought the guitar used sometime in 1996-1997. Not sure why the original owner traded it in. When I first picked it up, I fell in love with the feel of the neck and the action was excellent. The neck pickup sounds really good with high gain. It gets a really good thrash/death metal sound. The neck pickup is weak, however. In order to even out the volume between the two, I had to adjust the bridge pickup way down and the neck pickup way up. I thought about installing a set of D-Activators if I get ambitious. The Takeuchi locking trem has excellent tuning stability. I can completely slacken the strings and it comes back to correct pitch over and over again. The reason that I stopped playing it was that the input jack was buzzing. I am going to take it out and find a quality replacement online.

Yesterday I measured the fret wire with a digital calipers and got .052X.115 which I guess is standard "jumbo."

I also have a 1998 USA Candy Apple Red DR-II. I really like that guitar as well.

[toejam]

No problem. My first Jackson in the early '90s was a Kelly Standard. I sent it right back to Musician's Friend because I didn't like lo-pro trems at the time, but I probably should have kept it. Takeuchi trems are nice and do work well.

D-Activators might work well in yours. I've got a 7-string set in one of my guitars that I really like.

[jdr94]

nice kelly, id take that finish off and stain that badboy!