Marshall JH-1 Jackhammer

This pedal is very fiddly to use due to the poor construction of the knobs. You will never keep the same sound twice. It is impossible to get a good sound as there is not one at all.

Sounds rubbish. The Distortion mode is so dark sounding - it will not cut through at all. The overdrive is stale like boss ds-1's


It is not that noisy though

It is solid but the rubbish sound means low score

n/a

No good. I have seen guitarists use these in bands and I just do not understand why. why did Marshall stop the Shredmaster?

The two knobs of contour and bass treble on this pedal are probably the worse design I have ever seen. It seems that it is impossible to get a sound decent out of this really. It gets a four due to this.

How does anyone use this pedal for anything, and why did Marshall discontinue the Shredmaster for this? It sounds terrible and mushy. The OD setting is the only one that comes close to being any good but you will never have the same setting twice on this pedal. Lacks any sort of dynamics or mids as well.

Built like a brick s**t house. Only a 7 because of itssound

N/a

I would not use this. I was given by a mate and then sold it for ??30 to some nu-metal loving guy. Says it all. The quality of the actual build saves it from a 1.

I usualy find it easy to create a good sound with my setup, but this thing is quite difficult. The contour is messy and doesn't realy bennefit the pedal creating better sounds, it take the sound from muddy to muddy with less top end and more or less mids.

I use 2 strats 1 with EMG's the other a 2006 Deluxe into a big stone phaser, delay, Big Muff into Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.

I bought this thinking it would be a good addition as a distortion peddal, but in the Distortion/JCM2000 mode it is muddy and unclear, without the crisp, boomy sound of a real JCM2000. In the OD/JCM800 mode you can get a decent overdrive sound as long as you keep the Contour at o'clock, the gain up and volume down.

It is solid as a rock, but i never trust any piece of equipment that relies on complex circuitry to do whatever it may do. The 8 is for construction not reliability of it's function.

If you are a tweaker i'm sure you could get some good sounds out of it. As i said the distortion is Crap, Buy a RAT.

Not so easy to use. The real nightmare begins when you start messing with the contour/frequency controls using the distortion mode. It just takes so much tweaking to get your tone in the sweet spot.

Like others have said, the overdrive on this thing is pretty raunchy! I originally bought this pedal as an alternative to my crapped out Metal Zone, and may end up just getting the Metal Zone fixed and back as my main distortion (plus a Big Muff) but still keep this in my chain as an overdrive/booster. Still, I think it is a decent alternative to the Metal Zone, and I actually enjoy the fact that the distortion mode is bassy - I use a Boss Enhancer EH-2 after the Jackhammer to clean up the lows and squeeze out some higher tones when needed. Perfectly giggable, nice looking pedal too. Probably a good idea to jot down the settings in a notebook, so if you lose them you can come back to them. It'll take hours to get used to the contouring/frequency controls but once you've got it you're sweet to go.

No problems whatsoever. This thing weighs half a KG!!!!! The actual casing is stronger than anything Boss has produced - very very solid! Even the knobs are heavy duty.

Cheap. Good for heavy stuff. Really good for gritty rock-n-roll overdrive. May not sound great out of the box, but spend some time with this thing and you will be surprised!

It's quite a hard-to-tweak unit, I would say.

First off, the dual pot on Gain/Volume and Freq/Contour are something that may need some time to get used to. Secondly, the Contour control is a nightmare. Probably designed for huge versatility, it's very touchy.

I use in the following configuration with the following setup:

Tom Anderson Drop Top -> Cry Baby GCB95 -> T-Rex CompNova -> Jackhammer -> Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp -> Volcane One.50 (a custom made tube poweramp) -> Engl 2x12 (Celestion V30)

I mainly use it to get a different flavour of crunch from my setup, and does the job pretty well. I get a very Marshall-like tone out of it. The trick (for me) was to use Dist mode, keeping the highs low (LOL) and the Contour/Freq almost flat. Every attempt to touch the Contour ended in a awfully sounding mess, the same goes for the Treble.

I got a very touch-sensitive, bluesy crunch tone, good for soloing and also for rhythms. Adding some drive with the CompNova gives a raw tone that screams "Rock & Roll", very nice for open chord rhythms.

It isn't noisy, but I use it at relatively low gain setting so I wouldn't expect it to be.

Strangely enough, I have tested it with a JCM800 and the whole thing sounded like crap - it's not the first time that I feel like Marshall OD's aren't at their best with Marshall amps.

It's made of metal and look pretty sturdy. I wouldn't care too much.

The knobs look like cheap plastic crap, but they're out of foot reach, so they shouldn't fear any harm.

Never dealt with them.

I'm just a rocker, been playing for 15 years.

If it were stolen I'd probably have another one. I just needed a pedal to give me a good crunch tone, I got it, don't think there's much more to say.

Too bad for the Contour control - I'd love to get a good old Treble-Mid-Bass tone set instead.

It's very easy to get a bad sound out of this and very hard to get a good one.

Place to start IMO is OVERDRIVE mode.

Dano U2 into Crybaby into Jackhammer into Boss Delay into Park 50W Bass amp (today - Class A valve arriving tomorrow).

Previously I had just used it to get a mild crunchy overdrive. Had it on all the time (as an amp simulator I guess). Worked well for this, very british libertines-esqe sounds.

Today I got a wah pedal, found a nice tone spot, and turned the gain up in O/D mode. Was getting THE sweetest harmonics I have ever produced. Really enjoyed playing, kinda sonic youth meets Jimi Hendrix (neighbours might disagree with that analysis).

Sound got a bit tiring after a while though.

Would be surprised if it broke

Very Versatile pedal. Used to own a Boss DS1. I Like the Jackhammer much better. Can't think of many styles this won't be useful for.

Not a beginner's pedal IMO as is hard to use well. Can get lost in the controls if you don't know in your mind what sound you're after.

Well... I find it quite hard to get the sounds I want out of this box. There are too many controls! Seven in full. And they are hard to tune. For example if you turn the "upper" knob like the TREBLE it also changes the position of the BASS knob beneath. You must hold the BASS steady to only let the TREBLE spin. Don't want to think about me fiddling with those knobs under a gig...
The manual seems to be good.

I play through a Yamaha guitar with soapbar humbuckers and a Fender 100 watt transistor amp. I find this pedal very metalish, you can get crazy distortion sounds out of it. I play mostly '60s and '70s rock like Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and Thin Lizzy. Also Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, U2 and RHCP. I managed to only get one or two tones that had some sort of connection to the early rock. It just did not fit my style. In DIST mode I couldn't get any nice sounds.

It weights about half a kilogram and is completely made of steel. Fantastic! I love the design on the Marshall stomp-boxes and they are rock solid. I would give it a 10 if the controls weren't that weak. The pedal button is very nice, but the controls are poor.

Never dealt with them.

As I said this pedal does not fit my music style. I've been playing for a few years now and have a few distortion pedals. This one wasn't as good as I hoped. Next week I'm getting a Marshall Bluesbreaker II because of the warm tube-overdrive like sound i missed in this box. If I lost my JH-1 I would not get a new one, just complaining about the money I lost.
So for the past months I have barely touched it. Now I'm looking forward to the BB-2 arrives :-)

Fairly Simple Turn the Knobs And Push The Foot Switch

Good Metal Sounds
I tend to Get Alot of feedback when i use alot of Distortion (not Good as its a metal pedal)

Its Fucking built like a tank
I gig It and rehearse cwith it at least once a week

Never Needed There Help

I got it dirt cheap and use it loads Its all good :)

easy enough.

I give it a 7 because of one thing: noise. It is way noisier than, say, my MT-2, or some of my valve-driven pedals. This is most unfortunate since outside the noise, I really like the tone. With the contour disabled (by turning both knobs completely counter-clockwise), I really like the sound of it (I am using a very nice single channel JTM clone). But as I said earlier, it is very noisy. I'm hoping somebody will come up a with a mod for this pedal to get rid of the noise. I think it has a lot of potential. The noise isn't so bad that it renders the pedal unusable. I think most non-musicians wouldn't notice it. But as I said, compared to a MT-2 it is very, very noisy.

In overdrive mode, with the gain set low, it is good, too and not as noisy. Though it can do high gain tones (not nu-metal), it has served me better as an overdrive pushing my already distorted amp further.

Its a very sturdy pedal, very gig worthy.

I just hope someone with the skills will look into this pedal and see what can be done - Aramat? Keeley? I'll even let you use mine as a prototype if you so desire.

Not hard to use, just a pain to get a good sound out of it.

Waayyy too much Bass. Ok, I did finally get some decent sounds using the OD...could almost match my amps (Peavey Classic) OD sound. I liked using this more for blues and older classic rock. This is a decent sounding pedal for the most part once you find your eq settings, but I also found this pedal to be very frustrating. Kinda like "touching cotten"... It is almost the shit, but it just as easily turns to shit. If you are paying full price for this pedal, I would recommend the Nady TD-1 or Ibanez Tube King for that price range. I have found that the Tonebone Hot British and the Maxon ROD 880 to be the cream of the crop when looking for a pedal with that Marshall Sound in a pedal. Another decent pedal is the Digitech Hot Rod Distortion (which is easier to get good sounds out of).

I am sure it is very reliable. I sold this pedal. Built like a tank!

This is a pedal you will either love or hate or both at the same time.