Jackson Pro Series King V KV: A Guitar Named After a Giant

Every V-shaped Jackson in this project traces back to Randy Rhoads’ asymmetrical Concorde design, but the King V took a very different route to metal stardom than the Rhoads or the Kelly did. Its name has nothing to do with royalty or aggression — it comes from a 6’5″ guitarist’s nickname, and the guitar itself started life as an oversized custom instrument before being scaled down for players of more ordinary height. From there, it became the defining visual signature of one of thrash metal’s most recognizable frontmen, and later, coincidentally, shared its name with an entirely unrelated metal icon.

This is also the fifth and final article in this particular thread, closing out a run of Jackson guitars that turned up an unusually rich set of genuine artist stories after a long stretch of Ibanez coverage where the same five recycled names rarely matched the actual guitar in question. The King V caps that run with maybe the strangest and most layered history of the bunch.

Built for a Giant: The Robbin Crosby Origin

The King V’s direct ancestor is a guitar called the Double Rhoads — a symmetrical variation on Randy Rhoads’ V shape, with two long horns of equal length instead of the Rhoads V’s deliberately mismatched wings. Overkill guitarist Dave Linsk requested the first one. Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby saw it and wanted something similar for himself; Jackson built him two, one red and one black, with a white version following later. Only around ten Double Rhoads guitars were ever built, and none went into mass production — the shape was simply too large and unwieldy for most players, since it had been proportioned for Crosby’s own considerable frame. Crosby stood 6’5″ (198cm) and had earned the nickname “King” among his bandmates and crew well before Jackson built him anything. When the design was scaled down into something a more average-sized player could actually manage — smaller wings, a shorter overall footprint — Jackson named the resulting production model the King V in his honor. Crosby, notably, still preferred his oversized custom Double Rhoads for most of his own onstage work throughout Ratt’s 1980s run, meaning the shape’s most direct namesake wasn’t actually its primary player.

The very first serialized King V, bearing serial number J0001, was reportedly built as a white example in Jackson’s San Dimas shop originally intended for Judas Priest’s K.K. Downing — a connection covered in more depth on Downing’s own gear guide. Whether or not that specific guitar ended up in his hands long-term, it places one of metal’s most influential dual-guitarist bands at the very beginning of the King V’s production history.

Dave Mustaine and the Guitar That Defined Thrash’s Image

The artist who actually cemented the King V’s reputation was Dave Mustaine, and his connection to the shape is about as strong and as thoroughly documented as any artist-guitar pairing in this entire project. After recording Megadeth’s debut, Killing Is My Business… and Business Is Good!, Mustaine approached Jackson in 1986 for a custom-built instrument. Jackson modified the existing King V design for him, adding two extra frets to the standard 22 for a 24-fret neck. That guitar, and the closely related King Vs that followed it, became inseparable from Mustaine’s image through Megadeth’s most celebrated run: Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, So Far, So Good… So What!, Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction, Youthanasia, and Cryptic Writings were all written and toured on variations of this shape. Full details of Mustaine’s guitar history, including his years with B.C. Rich before Jackson, live on his own gear guide.

Jackson eventually formalized the relationship into an official signature line. The King V Pro, later renamed the KV1 in 1995, became Mustaine’s officially licensed signature model from 1996 to 2001, built with a poplar or alder body, neck-through maple construction, a 24-fret ebony fingerboard, and Seymour Duncan TB-4 (bridge) and SH-4 (neck) humbuckers — though Mustaine himself reportedly kept preferring his older, personally customized guitars for live use even after the signature model launched. He also had a genuinely bizarre King V doubleneck built, pairing a 12-string upper neck with a standard 6-string lower neck, used specifically for songs like “Mary Jane” and “In My Darkest Hour” that required the extra range live. In 2000, Jackson released the Y2KV, a redesigned Mustaine signature with rounded body edges closer to a traditional Gibson Flying V rather than the King V’s sharper angles — a genuine departure that Mustaine reportedly liked, though it was discontinued in 2003 after Mustaine couldn’t reach a contract extension with Jackson’s then-parent company, Fender. Mustaine subsequently sold his entire personal Jackson collection and moved through endorsement deals with ESP (2003), Dean (2007), and eventually Gibson Family Brands (2021), meaning none of his current signature instruments use the King V shape at all — the connection is entirely historical, though it’s arguably the single most important artist relationship this shape has ever had.

It’s worth noting just how central the King V was to Mustaine’s public image during those years — for an entire generation of thrash fans, a black, sharp-angled Jackson V in his hands was as instantly identifiable as Slash’s top hat or Angus Young’s schoolboy uniform. That level of visual association is rare even among the artist connections covered elsewhere in this project, and it’s a big part of why the King V remains one of Jackson’s most enduringly recognizable shapes decades after Mustaine himself stopped playing one.

An Ironic Coincidence: Kerry King’s Signature King V

One of the stranger footnotes in the King V’s history involves a guitarist whose surname makes for an almost too-perfect coincidence. Kerry King of Slayer had his own USA-made signature model, the KV3, produced by Jackson from 1998 to 2001. It’s a genuine, documented signature relationship — not a naming mix-up — though it’s worth noting upfront that King’s primary and much longer-running guitar identity runs through B.C. Rich rather than Jackson, as covered in full on his own gear guide. The KV3 remains a real, if relatively brief, chapter in his broader rig history rather than the defining instrument of his career, but the fact that a real guitarist named King ended up with his own signature model built on a guitar shape called the King V, entirely coincidentally, is too good a detail to leave out.

The Modern Signature: Corey Beaulieu of Trivium

The King V’s most recent dedicated signature artist is Corey Beaulieu of Trivium, whose model is built on an alder body with a flame maple top, a quartersawn maple neck-through-body neck, a 24-fret ebony fingerboard with pearloid shark fin inlays, active Seymour Duncan AHB-1 Blackouts pickups (AHB-1B bridge, AHB-1N neck), and an Original Floyd Rose tremolo, available in Transparent Red Burst, Transparent Black Burst, and Gloss Black finishes. A newer variant swaps in a mahogany body with a quilted maple top in a Winterstorm colorway. It’s also available in a 7-string configuration, a modern touch that neither the Mustaine-era King Vs nor the original Crosby-inspired design ever offered. Beaulieu’s full gear history is covered on his own page, and his signature stands as proof that the shape has continued attracting real, working metal guitarists well past its 1980s thrash heyday.

Construction: What the Pro Series KV Actually Is

The current Pro Series KV builds on the same neck-through philosophy established by Mustaine’s earliest custom instruments. The body is beveled mahogany, paired with a one-piece maple neck featuring a scarf joint and graphite reinforcement rods for stability. The fingerboard is ebony, cut to Jackson’s signature 12″-to-16″ compound radius, with 24 jumbo frets and Alumiloid shark fin inlays — more curved near the nut for comfortable chording, flattening out toward the body for fast, wide-bending lead work. Electronics are a Seymour Duncan Distortion TB-6 in the bridge and an SH-6N in the neck, wired to a three-way toggle switch with master volume and tone controls, feeding a recessed Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo (specified as either the FRT-O2000 or the Floyd Rose 1000 Series depending on year and retailer listing). Binding is single-ply, in black on the Ferrari Red colorway and white on the Deep Black option, with Jackson sealed die-cast tuners rounding out the hardware. Neck thickness runs on the thinner side for a Jackson, at roughly 19.7mm at the first fret and 21.2mm at the twelfth, which reviewers generally describe as favoring players with smaller-to-average hand size over those with particularly large hands. New units typically list around $1,200 MSRP, with street prices generally landing under $1,000.

Family Tree: A Long, Complicated Lineage

Few shapes in Jackson’s catalog have accumulated as many historical variants as the King V. Beyond the KV1 and Y2KV already covered, the lineup has included the USA Select KV2, Kerry King’s KV3, and a later KV4, alongside Japan-built KV-J series models and an Indonesia-built KVX10 budget line from the early 2000s. The current catalog splits primarily between the Pro Series (this article’s KV, plus the trem-equipped KVT and KVTMG with active EMG pickups) and the X Series, whose KVX and KVXMG variants use rosewood rather than ebony fingerboards and a maple-and-basswood body combination, at a meaningful discount to the Pro Series while reportedly offering very similar playability according to most comparative reviews. A Natural Satin KV MAH edition uses all-mahogany construction with gold hardware for a more understated, unpainted look, while a KV Two-Face colorway splits the body finish down the middle for a striking visual effect. At the very entry level, the JS32T King V trades neck-through construction for a bolt-on neck to hit a lower price point while preserving the core silhouette.

Three Angular Shapes, Three Different Solutions

Having now covered the Rhoads V, the Kelly, and the King V across this thread, it’s worth stepping back and comparing all three. The Rhoads V is deliberately asymmetrical, designed specifically to avoid looking like a standard Flying V. The Kelly abandons the V concept for a modified Explorer shape with a single long lower horn. The King V returns to true V symmetry, closer to Gibson’s original concept than either of its Jackson siblings, but executed with Jackson’s own sharper angles, neck-through construction, and pointed six-in-line headstock. All three trace back to the same San Dimas custom shop and the same early-1980s creative moment, but each solves the “aggressive metal guitar silhouette” problem differently — proof that Jackson’s design language in that era was less about a single house style and more about rapid, artist-driven experimentation.

Tone Recipes

Classic Thrash Rhythm: Bridge humbucker, high gain, mids present rather than scooped for tight palm-muted definition — the setting behind Mustaine-era Megadeth staples like “Peace Sells” and “Holy Wars.”

Cutting Thrash Lead: Bridge or neck humbucker depending on desired warmth, moderate-to-high gain, and a focus on picking articulation — Mustaine’s rhythm-guitarist-turned-frontman background shows in phrasing that prioritizes clarity over pure sustain.

Modern Active-Pickup Metal: On EMG- or Blackouts-equipped King V variants, expect a tighter, more compressed signal that needs less amp-stage gain to reach full intensity — useful for lower tunings and heavier, more percussive riffing in the style of Beaulieu’s modern signature model.

Doubleneck-Inspired Layering: Not a practical recipe so much as a nod to Mustaine’s 12-string/6-string doubleneck experiments — pairing a King V’s bridge humbucker tone with a shimmering 12-string overdub in the studio can recreate some of that expanded, layered texture without needing the actual instrument.

Buying Guide & Known Issues

Owner reports on recent Pro Series KV units flag a handful of consistency issues worth knowing about before buying: uneven clear coat on the headstock, visible fibers under the paint on some examples, and neck binding that some owners describe as looking cheaper than expected for the price point. A few isolated reports mention fretwork problems and dead spots on the fretboard, along with a volume knob positioned closely enough to the body to occasionally rub against it — all suggesting some batch-to-batch quality control variance rather than a systemic design flaw. On the positive side, the neck-through construction earns the same praise found across every other Jackson model in this project: excellent sustain, comfortable upper-fret access, and — despite the V shape’s imposing look — genuinely stable intonation even in extreme detunings, with one owner specifically noting reliable performance and resonance after successfully setting up their KV in Drop G tuning. Buyers comparing the Pro Series KV to the X Series KVX should know the differences are mostly cosmetic and material-based (ebony versus rosewood fingerboard, mahogany versus maple/basswood body) rather than a meaningful gap in day-to-day playability, according to most side-by-side reviews.

Frequently Asked Questions

Closing This Jackson Chapter

This thread’s five guitars — the Dinky, the X Series Soloist, the Rhoads RR24, the Kelly KEX, and now the King V — have told a genuinely different story than the Ibanez run that preceded them. Where that earlier chapter of this project found the same five shred-icon names recycled onto guitar after guitar with little accuracy, this Jackson run turned up real, verifiable, often surprising connections at nearly every stop: Phil Collen’s actual Dinky-platform history, Mana’s stray Soloist sighting, Christian Andreu’s literal RR24-branded signature, Marty Friedman’s six-figure Kelly, and now the accidental King/King V pun that connects Slayer’s Kerry King to a shape named after a Ratt guitarist’s height. Not every spreadsheet name held up, but the guitars themselves consistently delivered better stories than the recycled list ever could.