I've been a Jackson/Charvel guy for years. I have owned some of the original 80's San Dimas guitars as well as the some of the limited runs (B/W bullseye), some MIJ 2010 era and currently own a Dark Amber DK24, so I have some perspective on these guitars.
Let's remove the 80's because nothing is going to touch those.
I have owned about 7 MIJ Charvels (currently my Socal is one of my main gigging guitars). All 7 were very consistent, solid feeling, good fret work , good sounding guitars.
the DK24 I have, needed quite a bit of work. The electronics were crap, the pickups were very thin sounding, needed a serious shim, and had horrible fret spout. thankfully Steve Morrill (best luthier in the Boston area IMO) does the work on my guitars, and now with a Tonzone/Breed neck combo in there with 2 push/pulls pots and a 3 way, it's finally the shred machine I was hoping for. Push in trem arm assembly as well.
It's effortless to play, the neck shape is outstanding, huge frets, the aanj is a nice upgrade. The only complaint is have about it is that the neck wood feels "young". It's not aged as much as the MIJ necks were , which IMO were the best sans the originals, so if feels kind of "soft" to me. By luck, I got mine used locally with a case for a very good price, so dropping a little money into it was not that big a deal to me.
My advice would be to play a few if you can find them, as some will be great right out of the box, some not so much. My DK is now in my gigging rotation and fills a niche that I needed filled.
