Jet Guitars - JS 400 Matt Black Palissandre

The Jet Guitars JS-400 BK doesn’t split its identity between looks and sound. Everything is black — the roasted poplar body, the pickguard, the hardware — and this total visual consistency isn’t just a catalogue quirk: it’s a statement. The instrument sets a tone even before it’s plugged in, and the good news is that the sound lives up to the promise.

The roasted Canadian maple neck is the centrepiece of this model. The heat treatment profoundly alters the wood’s cellular structure: the neck gains longitudinal rigidity, the attack of the notes becomes more defined, and the guitar responds differently to changes in temperature and humidity than an untreated neck — which matters when playing in a club, a rehearsal room or at an outdoor festival. The 241.3 mm (9.5″) radius across 22 frets maintains a balance between chord playing at the lower end of the neck and sustained bends in the upper register, without the strings catching on the fingerboard.

The ceramic HSS configuration with a 5-way selector switch is the same setup as on the rest of the JS-400 range — but against this all-black finish, it takes on a different character. The bridge humbucker delivers authoritative low-end on distorted chords, whilst the single-coil pickups in the middle positions offer brighter, more biting tones—the very ones blues-rock and alternative rock demand in the choruses. The single volume and tone controls remain within easy reach without cluttering the body. Finally, the tremolo allows for pitch bends without destabilising the chord, provided the tuning is correctly adjusted — and the double truss rod offers plenty of scope to fine-tune the action according to the gauge of strings used.