Brandon Ellis’s Signature Jackson Kelly Now Built for Soloing, With 27 Frets and a Shorter Scale

The signature guitar market for metal players often means extended-range or pointy shapes, but Brandon Ellis has been steadily refining a platform that puts upper-fret access and precise soloing ahead of raw aggression. His latest collaboration with Jackson, the Pro Plus Series KE7 Kelly, makes that focus explicit. It’s a 27-fret design with a 25.1-inch scale length—a deliberate choice to ease bends and shift the instrument’s response.

Ellis describes the guitar as being “for soloing, specifically.” The slightly shorter scale is paired with an R2 locking nut that tightens string spacing, a maple fingerboard for snap, and a nyatoh body that he says balances brightness without going too dark. Stainless steel frets are a practical upgrade on the Pro Plus tier, and Luminlay side dots keep things visible on dark stages. The inlay pattern flips above the 12th fret, with more visual weight on the treble side, a small navigational cue for a player who spends a lot of time in that register.

The Gold Crackle finish and maple board nod to a Custom Shop build by Metal Joe Williams, but the electronics are all business: a Seymour Duncan Parallel Axis Dyad humbucker in the bridge with asymmetrical coils, and a hum-cancelling Parallel Axis Stack single-coil at the neck. It’s not a radical departure from Ellis’s earlier Kellys, more a tightening of a working formula. No release date has been announced yet, but the details suggest a tool built for specific demands rather than broad appeal.