Jackson

Jackson

The company Jackson Guitars is an American manufacturer of E-guitars and E-basses. The
Headquarters are in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jackson is part of the Fender group.

Grover Jackson, who originally worked together with Wayne Charvel (Charvel Guitar Repairs) started the company in late 1978 as Charvel sold his store and the name rights to his partner Grover Jackson.

In 1979 Grover presented his first Charvel guitar to the public. The word spread very fast and soon well known guitarists and bass players such as Alan Holdsworth, Billy Gibbons, Roger Waters, Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee, Vivian Campbell, Gary Moore, Dave Murray und Adrian Smith etc were coming to order guitars from Grover Jackson.

Following the built-to-order principle, guitars were only made to order. Absolutely no instrument was made for the shelf. So basically the Charvel/Jackson shop was the first custom shop ever. Charvel/Jackson stayed a pure custom shop till the early 90´s

Grover Jackson & Randy Rhoads got together in 1981 to develop the Randy Rhoads model. Compared to all other Carvel models the Randy Rhoads model is so different and wild, that Grover decided to put his own name on the headstock. This was a security measure to protect the brand Charvel, if the Randy Rhoads would fail.
Grover Jackson is seen as the inventor of the "Jackson Superstrat". Jackson used an extreme cutaway to extend the fret board to 24 frets. He also mixed the standard single-coil-set up with Humbuckers. The standard vibrato was exchanged with a complexer construction and set new standards for other manufactures.

Since 2002 Charvel/Jackson belongs to the FMIC Fender Musical Instruments Corp. Fender, one of the most renowned guitar makers on this planet, took over Jackson and is now in charge of production and quality control and is very successful with the positioning of Jackson. Jackson guitars impress with a very high grade of craftsmanship and offer a brilliant value for money. Jackosn doesn’t manufacture a uniform mass of instruments, but always try´s its best to build premium, individual instruments.

Fender is known in the guitar scene for making high quality instruments with a warm but defiant and brilliant sound. Fenders ticket to the Heavy-Metal scene, came with Jackson. HiGain sound and modern designs are crucial for success. The Metal players like the Jackson Pro-, Jackson JS- and Jackson X-series. The Jackson King V, Jackson Kelly or Jackson Rhoads have become legends.

Jackson guitars are famous for their very demanding finishing quality, the optimal handling and the killersound. Jackson are played by Christian Olde Wolbers (Fear Factory), James Root (Slipknot), Scott Ian (Anthrax), Kevin Bond (Superjoint Ritual), Rob Cavestany (Death Angel), Phil Collen (Def Leppard).