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Review: Jay Turser JT-200 Serpent
Chris Bereznay
2001-11-26

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A few weeks ago a brand new shiny Jay Turser JT-200 Serpent appeared on the MGR doorstep. While we had heard of the Turser brand, we did not have the pleasure of laying our paws on one of their fine guitars until now. There are many brands out there offering decent quality guitars in the sub $1000 price range, so we were interested to see if the Serpent had what it takes to stand out in the crowd.

After un-boxing our “Serpent”, we stood in awe at the beautiful purple sunburst top and the shiny gold hardware. Also quite impressive was the cream colored binding found around the body’s edge which is usually not available on guitars in this price range. Nothing, though, prepared us for the exquisite multi-piece Abalone and Mother-of-Pearl, 17 fret-long Serpent inlay. For what was an already stunning guitar, this was the icing on the cake!

The JT-200 Serpent is based on a classic design and although there was no question that this axe epitomizes the phrase “eye candy”, we needed to take it for a long, long ride before we determined if it had the “goods”. More often than not we’ve come across one sweet looking guitar after another, only to find when we fire up the tubes that they sound flat, dull or lifeless.

From the factory, the Serpent was set up a little too high for our liking. This, of course, is a matter of personal choice. This guitar screams heavy metal and although we could articulate notes and chords beautifully with the higher action, we like the strings “down in the dirt” where we can blaze through our favorite licks and solos. Adjustment was a piece of cake with the Tune-O-Matic style bridge. We had the strings awful close without buzzing and the guitar managed to maintain near-perfect intonation after this adjustment. Soon we were on our way through the workout.

We started with our Line 6 POD 2.0 running through a Mackie 808S PA. At ear popping volume levels, we worked this axe through every lick we know utilizing every setting on the POD that we could find. Probably the most fun we had was blasting through the licks in “Still Of The Night” by Whitesnake. With the POD on the Rectifier setting, this rig was reminiscent of Adrian Vandenburg’s signature tone on that album. This guitar offers that classic Paul tone so many have come to know and love. Visions of the hair band days danced in our heads. Next up was our Yamaha DG80-210A, which also provided a nice range of modeled tones to work this Turser guitar through. The Yamaha offers a less overdriven set of modeled tones that are more appropriate for different styles of music such as blues and country. The covered dual humbucker pickups have the sweetest tone when given a little distortion or gain, and although they sounded pretty good on most of the 210’s settings, the true test still remained.

Finally, we flicked the toggle switch and lit up the tubes on our Fender Bassman 50. This awesome 1969 model is running into a Fender DT412 cabinet loaded with Celestions. The true test, in my opinion, is when you’ve got a guitar that can burn up the fretboard when overdriven, but still sparkle when a clean tone is required. The result? Not too shabby! Although the humbucker configuration sometimes leads to a muddied clean tone that’s better suited for single coil equipped Strat-style guitars, the Serpent performed just fine in this test. So fine, in fact, that we have no hesitation recommending this guitar for those who like to play the blues or even country once in a while. The tone was very full bodied and darn clean for a set of covered high-gain humbuckers – our recommendation is to simply turn down the pickup volume a tad for the cleanest tone possible.

Bottom Line:

The $699 price tag puts the Jay Turser JT-200 Serpent in a very competitive category of guitars that are almost all manufactured overseas. The Serpent is no different from that standpoint and holds it’s own in playability and tone for this range. It’s well built, sounds fantastic and plays very nice, but the features that push it over the edge in our opinion are the stunning visual appointments. If you know a dealer in your area that offers the Jay Turser line, you owe it to yourself to get down there and take one of these babies for a spin. Methinks you’ll be pleasantly surprised.