Marshall JH-1 Jackhammer

It's realy ease.

On my super amp it sounds perfect.

Yeah...

So so...

For Metal its oki.

The Jackhammer isn???t that difficult to use. After a couple of minutes I pretty much got a sound I was happy with (Upgraded by Von Lehmann).

I have my Jackhammer plugged into a clean Blackheart amp and it sounds great. My Jackhammer was recently upgraded by Von Lehmann. I found the original sound of the Jackhammer was not really that great. You could get a good sound out of the O/D mode but the distortion was a bit to messy and I notice a bit of noise (it could also been my home power supply). After the upgrade I found that I could get a really good sound very quickly on both modes. The noise improved a lot and it is much better to play. I can play songs from bands like AC/DC, Linkin Park, King of Leon, The Killers, Bloc Party to the slow and clean distortion of Coldplay. I have found that with this upgrade I can also get a good metal distortion.

It is very reliable never had a problem with it. Works like a charm.

I bought it straight from the shop but later I got it upgraded by Von Lehmann and found them easy to talk to and deal with.

After the modification:
I play a lot of Alternative Rock and don???t mine a bit of metal and I find that it is a great match for me and if you are planing to buy or have a Jackhammer I truly recommend it to be modified by Von Lehmann because it was really worth it.

Is rather 'knob twiddley' at first but with time you get used too it and can change tones completely with relative ease. Contour/frequency may be a bit overkill when you have these built into your amp anyway but be patient and it can be a nice touch.

I run this with either a hot rod deville 2x12 and my Gretsch Corvette G-Love signature guitar or thru a Vox AVD-T 100 head and 4x10 Marshall cab with a Fender FMT or Burns Brian May 'red special'.

Have too say...agree with previous comments on the Distortion sound. Find it very murky and sloppy almost. OD sound though is wonderful. I play everything from Bloc Party/Muse/Pearl Jam through too Thin Lizzy/RATM/Pink Floyd and find the Od setting enough for most of these. Have tried/had Ibanez tubescreamer,Boss Od/Ds pedals before and didnt like them at all.

I run my amps VERY clean and with odd settings...Bass@12,Mid@2,treble@2 with a fair amount of compression which really tightens up the sound but do realise that most people will use a classic Rock 'scoop' eq in general.

This is my second time owning this pedal...but only 'cause my first one was stolen!! I gig about 150/200 nights a year and never had a problem with the reliability of this pedal. I t has taken serious abuse...from drink being spilled in it too a cab falling on it and still the thing gave me the finger and kept going!!

Should always have backup though..mine being another Jackhammer!!

Only dealt with Marshall once and took an age so i cant give them good marks i'm afraid but issue was sorted in the end.

Because of it's Jekyll and Hyde persona between OD/Dist i would suggest haveing a definate idea of what your looking for when trying this pedal out. It wont suit everybody but those who do like it will love it. It isnt a good pedal for Metal,Thrash,Death Metal in my opinion but classic rock and alt rock it's perfect.

In the end...it's pretty cheap and punches above it's weight but only if you use it as an OD pedal and stay clear of the Distortion.

Not so difficult to use, it has on O/D switch, gain, bass, treble, contour and freq. Needs a little time to figure it out, but when you figure it, it's easy.

I'm using it with Cort X-11 into a Peavey Renown 400. I heard about JH-1 and it interested me because I heard it wasn't like a regular dist pedals, and when I tried it amazed me. I wasn't expecting that kind of sound from Marshall pedals... Before I bought it, I was using a Gibson Epiphone S-310, and tried it with that guitar. It sounded really great.

Only objection that i have is that it needs a little more treble.

I like to experiment with sounds, and I really like this configuration. I don't think I will trade this pedal for another for a long time...

I've bought it about a year ago, and it fell from a height of 50cm, and it's like a rock. A scratch was left on it. It's the most reliable pedal I have for now, it's made all from metal.

They only introduced me with the pedal and their opinion was helpful to some limits.

I play Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, and it's almost a perfect match. It's a universal pedal, I even play blues with it. I've been playing it for a year. I have digital delay, wah-wah and a chorus pedal and I combine it. I sounds very, very good. If I would lost it or had stolen, I would definitely buy another one.

Very easy, 2 modes Overdrive and Distortion, Gain, bass midd and treble very self explanatory

I???ve tried and played with many different distortion pedals... but the Marshall jackhammer is by far the WORST!, probably the worst distortion I???ve heard in my life! no real tone, just a loud fuzzy mess!, the only part of this entire pedal I would say anything positive about is its overdrive, it does provide you with a fairly nice crunch when playing with the distortion on your amplified. Having said that, for what you pay the overdrive is AVERAGE at best! You would be better off buying a different pedal specially designed for overdrive. My advise STAY CLEAR OF THIS PEDAL!

My set up is a Kramer 5150 EVH, with digitech GNX3000 Fx's box and a marshall mg 50watt amp.

well for the hole 1 DAY that I owned this pedal before taking it back for a refund it did not break.

overall this pedal was a total dissapointment! horribal distortion... average overdrive and one BIG waist of money!

The mode switch, The Gain and Volume Dial and the Bass and trebble dials are self explanatory. However the Contour dials did and still do confuse me.

I literally fluked the settings on those. The manual kind of helped but it comes down to you interpreting the instructions properly

Im running my Epi Zakk Wylde Bullseye through this and into my Marshall Zakk Wylde Ministack.

For starters IMO you can forget about the Distortion mode.
Its just way too compressed and Muddy.

I use the O/D mode and have the Gain at full 100%
Volume is set as per needed to get equal volume between on and off.
Bass is at full 100%
Treble is a little past 1 oclock (about 70%)
Contour Frequency centre knob is just past 9 oclock (about 20-25%)
Contour Volume outer knob is at 5 oclock (about 95%)

With these settings and my amp set at Bass 8, Contour 4, Treble 3, I have pretty much got the sound I was after.
This sound I seeked lies somewhere Between "The Darkness" and "Zakk Wylde"

I will admit the sound I was able to get was a little more on "The Darkness" side of things than "Zakk Wylde" but I am very happy and think its anything but the Harsh and Brittle tones others have claimed it has.

I actually removed my Boss MT-2 Metal Zone from my pedal board to put this in its place.

I am no longer into the hard edged metallic sound it puts out and wanted something smoother which this gives me.

Yeah Definately If the Marshall tone is not your bag then this aint the pedal for you but if a nice JCM800 roar is then go ahead and try this pedal and I reckon you will be satisfied.

Im only giving it an 8 though because I really was disapointed by the flat muddy tone of the Distortion mode.

I dont gig any more so this pedal wont see much if any road action. But I would say its built tough and well.

Cant comment. no dealings in regards to this item.

I did once contact Marshall for an email or E-book of the manual to the ZW mini stack. cause i didnt get one whan i bought it (display stock) and never heard from them.

I play Metal and Hard rock. Kind of Sabbath meets Tool meets Black Label Society. This pedal gives me the tone I wanted for that.

I thought of maybe a Boss DS-1 but had some people tell me they were too weak and not too good for heavy stuff. I kind of just had a brain click one day and thought id try this pedal out so I got on here and read some reviews then tried it out and like what I heard.

As I said in my review of my SV-1 Supervibe I REALLY like the way the switch is mounted on an angled face and the knobs are set back on a lower platform which keeps the swith very accessible and the knobs out of the way of stomping feet.
I have some MXR pedals too and with the flat mounted switch and knobs all on one flat surface can sometimes = squashed knobs.
A big + to Marshall for the style of switch mount.

Only minus is that the Chrome knoba and small position markers make it hard to see where ya are dialing them in at.

Probably the most difficult part of my gear to control. Too many knobs, doing almost nothing but F***** up my sound. It takes me too much time to make a good sound. The volume knob is very difficult and it causes me troubles during gigs because there is a volume difference between the clean and the dirty channel.

Its o/d is almost perfect. I would give a 10 if it was only for o/d. But the distortion is !@#@&$*%(.
But, in general, it's got a pretty nice sound.

It is reliable! Made with metal, it's built like a tank.

Never dealt with them.

Really easy to use. Have to be retarded to not figure it out.

I was completely shocked at how good this sounds. I bought it for $40 on a special sale but definitely worth resale. It's very versatile all the saturation you could need. If you know how to manipulate it with the settings of your amp, you can get any sound you want. I'm playing with EMG's through a fender hot rod deville. EMG's are going to give you a much hotter saturated sound as well, so that's part of the reason there is so much saturation.

so far so good

never used

nothings perfect.

This pedal is relatively easy to use, although the contour / frequency knobs can be a bit tedious if you haven't used anything similar before. The manual is pretty self explanatory, gets to the point and even gives you a few instructions for different sounds.

I WAS using this with my Jackson JS30RR rhoads v, into a randall 75 watt amp. It's not even close to the level of distortion i expected / wanted, at best you will get a hard rock sound out of it. I play thrash metal, melodic death, and so on so i needed something with a little more grunt. Other then that if you are into blues / hard rock i highly recommend it, great sound for those genres.

I can definitely depend on it, most solid pedal i have ever used. Built like an absolute tank, and i would have total confidence in using it without a backup.

Haven't dealt with them.

I play metal and surprisingly this really doesn't deliver. I expected it would be a great choice for my genre of music, but i suppose in the end it wasn't. If it was stolen i wouldnt replace it, seeing as A) i have a boss metal zone on the way, and B) i'd just get something else.

7 knobs to tweak make this pedal not the easiest to use upon first sight. On the other hand it is the most versatile distortion/ overdrive pedl I know and it is very easy to get a good sound out of it, no matter which guitar and which amp you use.

So for those of you using a standard configuration like a Fender Strat through a Twin Reverb or a Les Paul through a Marshall JCM 800, this pedal might be confusing. For all the others this pedal is what you need. It can give you a first class overdrive and/ or distortion sound with any quality guitar and amp, you might use.

I am using this pedal in front of the "normal" channel of my VOX AC30CC1. I am playing Rickenbacker and Burns guitars. The sound quality of this pedal is superior. I have compared it to many other pedals: VOX Cooltron, several BOSS pedals, several Ibanez pedals, Hughes & Kettner Tube Factor, MXR Distortion etc. - the MArshall Jackhammer was by far the best sounding and most versatile pedal of them all. You could get a similar sound out of a BOSS pedal - but only with an additional equalizer.

I have owned it for about two years, so I cannot tell yet. But it appears to be solid as a rock.

Great. The best distortion pedal on the market as far as I can tell.

Ease of use:
Takes a bit of getting used to, and it is pretty touchy. However, tweak it a bit and you'll bet what you're looking for.
Manual:
Uh...says thanks for buying and gives a few suggested settings...not much to it, really.

Sound of favorite artists?:
Well, I thought the idea was to sound like yourself...
Setup:
Dean Zs, Dean MLs, Dean V 79 reissue, all stock as a rock. H&K amps, greatest clean tones in the world. By and large, absolutely KILLS any solid-state distortion on the planet. Does it beat a good tube driver? Uh, no. For the money though, it does a great job.
Sound:
Depends on what you're trying to do. If you're looking for a pretty fair approximation of several Marshall tones, GET THIS BOX. However, if Marshall sound is not your thing, or you absolutely must sound JUST LIKE a SuperLead, then don't. Basically, I find a very good copy of most Marshall series in this little box. It is a bit weaker than a Super Lead for gain, a bit too dirty for a "light" Plexi. Good voicing, not too harsh. A bit too touchy on bass response in the distortion mode.
Noise:
There is a bit, depending on what you're doing. I found ZERO noise on the OD setting, regardless of gain. Distortion setting, though, gets a bit noisy after about the 2 o'clock position. My Hush (pedal version) keeps it clean and singing without any buzz or fuzz. Anything less than about 2 o'clock, and you'll get sweet ring and easy feedback (distortion mode)

VERDICT:
Great toy if you like the Marshall sound. BAD IDEA if you want it to do anything else. I love mine.

Built like a bomb shelter. No issues at all.

Gig without backup plan = stupid

Never had to talk to them....

Honestly, I think that this little guy is as well made as a solid state box can be. It's tough and sounds good. Really, what else can you ask of a pedal? Hard to compare this with other distortion boxes...most of what I've played with in the past have been tube-driven, and there really IS no way to compare them. One thing I wish it had is a presence and saturation control. The sound is "tubey," but NOT tube sound. A bit of saturation control may give it a bit more shimmer. In any event, very good overall.
My experience:
About 20 years playing, 15 or so gigging around in bands. I use an expansive pedal box with all sorts of wonderful toys inside. I use this one mostly for Iron Maiden and similar tunes in which Marshall tone is REQUIRED. It gets me through pretty well. My own tunes get the tube treatment.

Well. let's see, it has two modes, jcm 800 and the plexi, but don't take my word for it it all comes down to tweaking. Important:1.you need to tweak 2.do not have a flat EQ after (on your amp) this.
you will need to do some tweakin but with the tweaking you can get all the sounds in the world.
the manual explains good how it works but you got to experiment with it, then you see its' full power. my first effect box was a magicstomp so now I think everything is easy to tweak:D. when I first got it I sucked with tweaking but now I can do anything with it.

well artist sounds can you copy all youll' ever want. from norvegian blackmetal to 60'rock. zakk wylde and arch enemy if you have the right eq or pickup combination (I find the EMG 81 and 85 togheter good for archenemysounds you can prolly get closer with a good EQ before). The OD\Dist; I use both of them, mostly dist with treble at full bass at 12 , contour both ca. middle.on my amp a little bit treble and 1\4 mid, flat bass. Remember to listen to the front of the speaker not the sides because on the sides you get a sound with more bass and more mid-tone. I like it better than boss mt-2, a buddy of mine has it and we compared. the noise is as expected, not too loud but would be fun if it was lower,. but you only hear it after 2/3 full gain. If you buy this and regret it I'll eat my hat. 9 cos a little too much bass on dist ( I tweak it away though)

this is heavy metal, I love it. really good and solid, the only thing you need to be careful about is the double pots, you might kick them crooked but all you nedd to do to fix them is take them up, out some grease on and bend back and put them back together.

I've already gigged with it twice and going to gig with it december the 7th.

This is my little screambaby

metal and hardrock are the most common of my styles, best match ever. you can create your own sounds in a flash and others' in a dash XD
Its been a year since I got it and it still sounds wonderfull, own a modded strat type guitar with EMGs 81,SV,89 (85 split version) onboard booster and 700hz(fat)control. boss pw-10, yamaha magicstomp, roland cube 30, Crate VTX212B, Boss FV500h, zoom g1x, boss ns-2. boss tu-20.
I cant live without this pedal, but I would like to get another one (maybe this or a metalplanet) for having two different sounds with quick switching.
I wish it had cooler graphics:D.(I painted on it so no more problem)
I am the main song & riffwriter in my band and it gives me the tones that I'm after, silky and max distorted at the same time, with a booster in front it gets really cool fuzzy.. always a pleasure to play.

This is a very versitale, really good pedal, but it takes time to get the best out of it. In fact it took me about a year... But now, I can get almost all the sounds I want.
Good advices: use it with good stuff. With a thin sounding guitar or amp it will sound thin and harsh. With a good axe (like a Les Paul or Strat) and a good tube amp it'll sound huge. First get a good, well balanced clean sound on your amp, so you can compensate if you lack middle or treble (you won't feel like having not enough bass). Set the volume about 9 o'clock on the pedal, so it won't be too loud. The overdrive will give you a more open, crunchy sound, whiler the dist mode a heavier, compressed, bassy sound, so compensate it when you switch between the modes. As the manual suggests, turning the contour and frequency full anticlockwise will give you the natural midrange without scooping mids. The contour is basicly a reversed mid knob, but frequency is a bit different. Below 11 o'clock it acts like a reversed presence, from 12 to about 4 o'clock gives you variuos scooped metal sounds, and when turned full clockwise, it acts like the presence knob full down.
So, it's quite difficult, but when you understand how the knobs work, you can get almost any sound you want.

On good stuff, it sounds wonderful. Tried it on numerous tube amps, with my friends Strat and my guitar. Always sounded wonderful.
I use it with an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and a solid state Fender 212M amp. The Fender has a nice clean, but the overdrive sucks. With this pedal I can get really good Marshall-like sounds, from crunchy blues to heavy metal - always sounds thick and has great bite. It doesn't make my amp sound like a tube amp - and never will -, but gives me really good, alive, bity sound. I can get awesome Peter Green, Gary Moore, Dave Gilmour, Santana or at the heavy side Guns or Metallica sounds in minutes.
The problem is, if you count something good on the overdrive, it'll suck on the dist mode. Also, it sounds very different at different places and volume settings, so if you count a great sound at home with low volume, it won't sound the same at your rehearsal room. Ergo you always have to tweak the knobs when you go to new places, but as I sad, after understanding the working of the knobs, it will be easy to get good sound again in 3 minutes.
At high gain settings it can easily feedback, but it's not noisy at all.

It's really dependable and rock solid, I'd gig with it without a backup.

Never dealt with the customer support, and never tried to repaired it.

I've benn playing for years now, but only since a year have quality stuff. I play blues and also have a rock/metal band which plays quite interesting things like mixing traditional metal with moderner sounds and "hippy-style" quiter passages and numbers. It serves me well, as I can get classic blues and rock sounds. It really helps me to evolve musically. If it was stolen or lost I'd buy it again. Wish it had a memory where you could store the different sounds, but oh well it's a pedal, not a multieffect.

i didn't much care for the double knobs. on mine, if you turned the contour knob, the frequency would turn right along with it.

this thing sounds thin, brittle and harsh. all i was looking for was a warm thick overdrive bordering on distortion, kind of a malcom young meets johnny ramone sound. Problem is, the jackhammer doesn't do warm or thick. i tried this thing every which way, and didn't like any of the tones. ran it through a peavey ranger and butcher. those two amps run the gamut from clean to dirty and the jackhammer sounded bad in both of 'em. there are several metric tons of gain on tap here, they just sound bad.

i got it used on ebay, so i blame the seller for the knob twisting problem i had, not marshall. seems rock solid to me.

never dealt with 'em.

i play punk and rock and roll type stuff. this pedal is not suited for that music at all. maybe this is an amazing unit for your nu-metal, i wouldn't know. if you don't do modern metal, avoid this thing.

If you do your settings in bright light and don't have to make any adjustments "on the fly" you will be ok. It would be a fabulous pedal if the OD and Distortion could be selected by a switch and had some ability to set the levels, contour, etc...for each channel. It has small knobs within knobs that can be difficult for large hands like mine.

I have a very large collection of pedals from cheap to very expensive and this pedal is a really great sounding pedal. I have a 1969 plexi 50 watter and the OD channel is right there. Of course, I am running the pedal through a very good sounding, warmed up, EL84 tube head and 1-12" speaker cab with an eminence lady-luck inside. The distortion sounds larger than life kinda like a JCM 800 series with slightly more bass and compressed. You can turn the bass down and treble up to compensate.

This is a very good pedal. If you are using a thin sounding, sterile solid state amp, do not expect it to sound as good as my setup will.

Works well so far...ask me in a couple of years.

I don't use customer support for less expensive items which can be easily replaced. Just not cost effective to bother with an item like this.

I would class this pedal as a future classic that will be an investment grade pedal. It nails the sounds of two of the most historical rock sounds ever...a Plexi and the badass JCM800.

very easy to find the sound you want

the manual is very clear, it explanes wat every butten does so you kan vind your own sound very easy

onley thing is that the markers to show the level of gain(for example),
wil wear off a bit fast.

the best ever, i used it on a kustom. and it could make it sound like a big marshall. now that i have a big marhsall is sounds even better.

i play on a gibson flying v and in my opinion this is the best set up ever, gibson-marhsall.

it has a overdrive and a distortion stetting on it. the distortion i barley use becouse i dont play metal but is sounds dam good, a mercyless pounding marshall. on the overdrive setting you get more led zep, black sabath sound. old school overdrive, i use this the most. and if you turn the gain a bit lower you have a briljant blues sound.
so screw the marshall blues braker or the guv'nor, this thing has them both and more

mine broke one time, i don't know the couse. but sinds it was fixed (like a year ago) i never had problems with it. i dont use a back up.

never delt with them, a lokal shop fixed it for me for free. it was stil in the warenty

the best overdrive/dist. pedal ever. but one thing if you don't dig marshall you'll wont want this pedall. the sound is marhsall over and over again. if you love marhsall like me. than it is the best ever.

I already owned a Boss Metal Zone before buying this pedal, so I will compare the two pedals in this review. The Jackhammer has the same controls as the Metal Zone, with one difference - the Jackhammer has two modes, Overdrive and Distortion.

On the Distortion mode, the sound is very dark and bassy. I had to turn the treble all the way up and the bass all the way down. Even still, the Distortion mode is too bassy/flubby, and doesn't do well on any fast guitar playing. The Metal Zone is way better than the Jackhammer's Distortion mode.

On the Overdrive mode, the sound is much more trebly and less bassy compared with the Distortion mode. I use the pedal only on the Overdrive mode, for playing classic rock type stuff (like Led Zeppelin, Hendrix). I'd give the Overdrive mode 10/10.

Overall, a 9/10 because the Distortion mode isn't that great.

Solidly built, I don't forsee any problems.

I've never contacted Marshall about anything before.

A very good pedal for the price, if you want to use it for the Overdrive mode. Again, if you are after heavier metallic sounds, get the Boss Metal Zone, instead.

It's quite tricky to get a good sound out of this unit... Mine is the original version without any upgrades... It comes with a multi-lingual manual...

First of all, I'd like to point out my set up: Peavey Envoy 110, Marshall Jackhammer, Crybaby535 Q, Schecter C-1 FR (Mahogany body, OFR, Duncan custom (b), and Duncan Jazz (n)).

This pedal has 2 modes Overdrive(OD) and Distortion. The overdrive mode is really more for overdriving(boosting) a dirty channel of an amp. It can sound good too on its own, but you won't get "In Your Face" distortion. It's more suitable for classic rock and blues tone. The distortion mode, on the other hand, is meant to be as a stand alone distortion. You can get great hard rock and heavy metal tone on this mode.

This pedal is not noisy, unless if you use a very high gain pickups (X2N, Invader, Active Pickups, etc) and dial the volume and gain knobs to the max...

My fave metal settings:
Mode: Distortion.
Gain: MAX.
Volume: 3 O'Clock.
Bass & Treble: Bypassed
Contour Frequency: 1 - 2 O'Clock.
Contour: 12 O'Clock.

Yes!! I've had this for 5 years... Never had a problem with it... I've used it on a gig, no problem at all... It made of solid steel construction, and a heavy pedal too... It is very dependable...

N/A

I've been playing for 7 years. I play stuffs from hard rock to neo-classical, stuffs like ACDC, Van Hallen, Stratovarius, Dream Theater, Yngwie, Symphony X, etc...

I love the versatility this pedal gives. I've had this for 5 years, and i dont think its going anywhere until its broken. Yes I would not mind buying it again if it happens. I use this pedal as my main distortion tone. It gives punchiness for riffing, and for soloing, my notes are very clear and not blur together. Love this pedal!!

It's not easy to use. There are too many knobs for a newbie to get a good sound from it. I've had it for a year and luckily quickly got a "hot spot". So I stick to it and try not to move any knobs in order not to lose the good sound, which I describe further.
There is a manual with some presets, which aren't very good. There should be more.

Riffs - very good, especially on Dropped D tuning. Although palm mute and harmonics could sound better. But still a nice pedal for a rythm player. 9/10
Lead guitar - crappy. Especially on neck humbucker. The good sound is very hard to find. Blues tones, however, could be easily found by simply turning down volume in your guitar. And, as long as you're playing blues, it sounds very good.
But I play metal mainly, so overally I give 6 out of 10, because it's a pity it doesn't provide me with a good metal lead sound.

I surely can rely on it. Hard as a tank. However, I scratched it here and there but they only gives him better looks. I'd be suprised if it broke inside due to damages from outside.

I'm playing mainly metal and rock, some blues and jazz. See Sound Quality section above.
I've been playing for nearly 3 years.
If it were stolen I wouldn't get a new one.

Very good pedal. I like it knobs. you can play with them and get to many sounds.it will be good to take paper and draw on it in which position knobs are placed. to remember after it.there is 1-1,5 mm difference between to knobs. so you can change the position of knobs easily. it has good metallic cover.great pedal.

For getting good sound you must have good amp. but its really good if you dont want to take your amp. quality is really good. from small overdrived sound to good distortioned sound. the range is too big.

yeas, i am using it without backup. its great. you can jump on it and it wont damged

I dont know. ))

I play from blues to trash. so it suits my music. i use a processor too. its great . i am playing on this pedal for a 6 monthi played on my friends Jackhammer. now i have my own JH1 . i would buy again it if it would be stolen.you can kill someone with this pedal))
ITS GREAT

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.

It's quit easy to use, you have only to get use with the countour and frequency knobs (it cancels some mid-range frequncies)

I use a Les Paul Golden with Gibson hardware on my 73'HH IC-100S amp an a 76'Giannini Duovox (Point-to-point, hande made, all tube, 4 6L6 and 4 12ax7 + 12at7) thru a 4x12" cabinet
The overdrive SOUNDS GREAT !!! it's a JCM800 kind of overdrive, really good overdrive, a masterpiece, it's the best Marshally overdrive stompbox I ever heard, if you want "That Marshall sound" this is the pedal.
But the distortion mode sucks, sound muddy and too dirty, I think it's good for trash or death metal, but not too good for rock n'roll

100%, it's very strong, I kick it all the time, drop beer, don't use a case, and it still working perfectly

The Overdrive mode for Rock n'Roll , bules and hard rock is perfect
I've been playing since 92 and I own this pedal since 2001
I would buy another one if mine was lost.
I love the overdrive and hate the distortion mode
I compare it to ProCo RAT
I
I
I
I

One rotary switch (OD/DIST), Three dual-concentric knobs (Gain/Vol, Treble/Bass, Contour/Frequency)

The stacked knobs are a bit fiddly sometimes, and sometimes if you turn the bottom one, the top turns too.

Battery compartment is easy to get into using only your thumbnail to undo the screw - so long as you don't do it up too tight with a screwdriver beforehand.

This is supposedly Marshall's "metal" pedal - the first thing I noticed is JH is also instantly recognisable as the initials of James Hetfield - take that as you wish. This pedal does have that "Marshally" character, despite what you may have read - it's got the Marshall voicing, and it's obviously a Marshall product. The OD setting is supposed to emulate a JCM900, the DIST emulating a JCM2000.

I have a SD Custom 5 on my Washburn, running into a Crate Vintage Club 30 (an unreliable POS amp, but that's another story). It's a nice chunky sound, but it's also interesting with single coils, giving a more harmonic laden sound, and if you put a Crybaby in front of it, it reacts well, unlike some other distortions.

The DIST setting sounds flubby and compressed, it's overly bassy, and sounds very "processed". It sounds like a POD almost, and nothing at all like the JCM2000 it claims to be designed after. Somewhat useful for recording direct, for really rough demos or something where you can't be bothered, but otherwise, ignore at all costs.

The OD setting is where this pedal shines - and there's plenty of gain despite the name of the setting - enough to pull off some heavy stuff, and it also goes right back to that AC/DC crunch if you back off the gain knob. I've managed to pull some convincing early System Of A Down and Rage Against The Machine out of it too.

The tone controls are more than adequate, but there's no way to BOOST the midrange, only cut it, with the contour controls. This strikes me as gimmicky, but I guess some of you nu-metal kids will love it. Good way to get that hollow "guitar at the end of a tube" sound - and hey, that "tube" sound is what everyone strives for, right... *cough*

I've also used this pedal into a Laney 50w tube halfstack, a Fender FM212R, a JCM800 Combo (the model with verb and switching - 4210 is it?) a Jade Storm 15 and a Behringer GX210 (my other guitarist's). I've found that it really depends on which amp you're running it into - through the little Jade practice amp and the Behringer it sounded awful where a more "generic" pedal might sound better, but through a decent clean channel it really opens up.

I worry about the footswitch, which doesn't seem as solid as a decent Carling switch or whatever, but haven't had any problems with it.

I assume the pots are PCB mounted, so I wouldn't go wiggling them around too much, but once again, no problems YET, and I've had the pedal for about a year now.

This pedal is HEAVY, the casing is thick metal. Casing feels more solid than a BOSS pedal, but again, the footswitch and pots inspire the fear of a higher power in me.

Have had no reason to deal with Marshall about this pedal.

It's a good pedal for getting close to the sounds you might hear on rock radio - and somewhat surreal to hear ANY amp take on a bit of that Marshally character.

What a lot of people don't get about this pedal is that the OD setting sounds a LOT better than the DIST setting. FAR better, I cannot stress this enough. If you have this pedal and have written it off as useless, give it another try in OD mode.

Instant "Marshall" channel for a good clean amp, and I'm giving it a 9/10, due to how it can turn any reasonable amp into a Marshall.

Were it lost/stolen, I would go out and buy another as soon as I'd finished noting the good taste on the thieves part...

I don't know why everybody is pooping their pants about how hard this pedal is to use. It takes like ten minutes of tweeking. Just set the main knobs standard like you would any other pedal and mess with the frequency/contour knobs to dial in your sound

This pedal sounds great. Better than a Boss DS-2 for sure. The only thing that sucks is if you dial in a good sound in overdrive mode, it sounds like shit in distortion mode and visa versa. But both channels sound great if you stick to one or the other

I don't know I just got it yesterday, I am playing a show tonight. It seems solid as a rock tho. Its a heavy little faulker

never dealt with marshall

I play reggae/punk/funk/rock and this pedal is great so far. I play through a peavey ultra plus tube amp with 4 12" celestions and it sounds great, no complaints. Also it is only $65 now!! I am thinking about buying another one and using one for overdrive and one for distortion

this pedal is very adjustable, it will take a few days to find out what works for you. battery changing does require a screwdriver though.....

i play bass and when i first tried this pedal i was pretty impressed, then it started to piss me off, now ive grown to like it, again.

i dont i think i was the only one.

as far as bass goes you actually need to REDUCE the bass on the pedal eq to get a good sound, this is important, what you do with the rest of the eq is up to you. when i nievely turned the bass up, thinking this would improve the sound, it sounded like shit, like a fucking dying elephant. it took me awhile to figure that was the problem, now it sounds really nice, makes my shitty solid-state sound like a pushed svt. it's suprisingly kind when you back off the gain.

it seems pretty solid, kinda looks like a 1950's fridge. in a good way.

no, never spoken to them. although ive heard marshall are pretty bad with customer support, being a massive company and all....

if you play bass and dont have to money to buy an svt rig, this is a good compromise..

N?o e muito facil de timbra-lo. Possui muitas regulagens todas muito sensiveis.

Medio. So se for combinado com um GE-7 da Boss. Extremamente comprimido.

Nunca precisou de reparo ou coisa do genero. Seu hardware e muito bem construido e resistente.

Para Heavy meta, meu estilo, e bom somente para base por causa da sua compress?o que e muito forte e a sensac?o do som estar distante.

At first i thought this pedal was easy to use, a learning curve of maybe 1 hour, but after extensive use (10 hours+) i have changed my opinion. It is a relatively hard pedal to get a 80% perfect sound from. Some of the dials make bad things happen!! (more on that later)

Im using a gibson SG Special --> JH1 --> '68 Fender Twin Reverb
I dont really use much overdrive, mainly distortion. When set to distortion and when the gains up full it does emit a fair amount of static and noise through my set up.
I have done a full mental circle with this pedal. At first i thought it was exceptionally good. Then after about 8 hours use i started to notice the sound with full gain was very bass overdriven (farty sounding). It took me a while to work out what the problem was and my opinion of this pedal was slowly slipping, but after reading some reviews here i worked out how to get rid of it. Someone here said the contour dial gets rid of it. Well it doesnt. Infact the only way i found was to turn off the bass in the eq..well turn it down to about 2-3 anyway. Infact the treble is pretty crap too, so i leave them both on 2-3 and it sounds fantastic!! Really meaty / chunky / thick. I encourage anyone hows having the bass problem to turn down the pedal eq and turn up your amp eq instead. Pretty stupid i know but after you do it, it will sound REALLY good. The distortion is slightly buzzy but it was VERY cheap.

I havent had a problem with it (apart from the farty bass problem mentioned above) and its built like brick so i suppose i would have to give it 10 based on those 2 things...

I havent dealt with Marshall before (apart from my valvestate 8080 which is a piece of crap, preamps breaks ever year or 2). When i had the above problem (bass) i looked in the manual for a hint on how to get rid of the overdriven bass noise, and it wasnt very helpful at all, just gave me a stupid graph with no hint on how to get rid of it. Pretty stupid if you ask me. Seems like a fundamental problem with alot of peoples rigs, you would think they would address it specifically. I.e. --> Turn the frigging eq down

I like / play all sorts of music. The stuff i play on my guitar is probably closest related to doom metal but with HEAPS of other influences/styles thrown in. Ive been playing for 12 years. If i lost this pedal i would probably get something else purely to try something new, but then...for 125 bucks it doesnt seem worth while. Stuff all to pay for a pretty dam good pedal (once you iron out the bugs). I love the distortion. Suits me perfectly. I tried a number of valve pedals (V-Twin and Xtreme Tone) and found that they didnt suit my playing style. Considering they are 8 times as expensive, i think i've done EXTREMELY well with this pedal. So to put it simply: once you get rid of the farty bass its really dam good for the price.

You have to play around with the 7 knobs for a while before you discover the huge possibilities of this pedal, the contour and frequency controls are a bit confusing at first, but once you have read the manual it becomes clear.

I am using the Jackhammer with my Rickenbacker guitars (a 650, 620 and a 325) and a VOX AC 30. It sounds fantastic. It seems that you can get almost every sound out of that pedal - from a slight overdrive to very aggressive distortion. And you can use it for alternative and punk as well as for rock and heavy metal sounds.

Seems to be very reliable. Time will tell.

Who needs support for an overdrive pedal of this price?

Great sounding, very versatile, relatively low noise level.

well, originally i got this pedal for me to try out...its easy, if youve owned a metal zone, its cake.

i own a bc rich warlock with an x2n in the bridge, super 2 in the neck. and a mongrel of a guitar with a super distortion at the bridge and a super 2 in the neck as well. i ran it through my JSX with a marshall 4x12...i set everything to unity and it sounded like big ol fat mud. i turned the bass all the way down and got alot of clarity back. the distortion mode, in my opinion, does nothing but kill the highs. pointless, really. i didnt really like it, and figured id just give it to my rhythm guitarist to see what he would do with it. well, i let him borrow it, and several hours later i went over to hear what he did with it, and sure enough he got the biggest, chunkiest sound on earth. we were floored to hear such a good sound from his setup. its being drivin by his jackson rhoads and a super overdrive, just for a bit more gain and grit. into the cleanest traynor amp on earth, and 2 peavey 2x12 cabs. it sounded like my old tone. round, and full. he was originally using a digitech death metal, and what a piece of shit that was. we both love metal, but hate todays metal tones. we like mids, but we dont love them. we like bass, but dont love it. perfect rounded tone for metal, with leads that stand out like a sore thumb. think iron maiden/powerslave.

well, i hear marshalls contact is shit...so if it craps out, im fucked! but it seems sturdy as an ox.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sir

its cool. not for my tone of course, but im speaking on the behalf of my rhythm guitarist. we play real metal, not the drop tune crap. think megadeth...thats us for todays generation. its got that great marshall tone, which is pretty cool, i admit. hes gone through alot of high gain pedals, but the clarity on this one eats them all alive. try it out, you either hate it or you love it.

Not to bad. Reading alot of these reviews, you kinda get the feeling that this box it going to be complicated. If you can work an amp, then you won't have a problem.

I'm using a hamer double cutaway and Epiphone Lespaul through a Crate 212gfx and the sound is great. my opinion and suggestions:
1. get a zero noise adaptor and good guitar cables...trust me it can make or break this pedal.
2.Mess around with the settings. There are alot of ways to make this pedal sound terrible with little effort at all,however if you mess around with the settings , you can get alot of really great sounds...it's really amazing
I have used everything from a dime distortion box, DOD, and digitech...looking for that perfect distortion. Every effect I would try, it seemed like there was waaay to much treble in the distortion...not enough balls to it, warmth, tone whatever!
This pedal I assure you has all of the above...it it great and i recomend it....both overdrive and distortion are excellent in their own ways......o/d will give you a nice bright crunch(think AC/DC)...and distortion delivers a great balls to the wall monster(think metallica S.O.A.D).Some people say it's too muddy....and it can be, but you have to adjust some settings....you just can't plug it in and play ....play around with it, you'll find your favorite tone.

It's a tank

dont know

I play a little of everything...so I wanted something that would give me a bit of everything....and in short...this pedal does the job.....If it were stolen or lost I would have another in no time...I love the damn thing! GET ONE

It actually has eight parameters built into four pots with double function. Setting volume, gain, bass and treble isn`t any different from other boxes, but the parametric eq for the mids takes some time to understand.
It is basically designed like the "contour"-function of the old ShredMaster-pedal, but the center frequency can be shifted anywhere to on the frequency range.

Really good and versatile.
The "Overdrive"-setting sounds really good, appears to have more presence and bite compared to the ShredMaster and A LOT OF GAIN !
I don't like it that much with my old SoundCity-combo, as this amp produces tons of high treble anyway, but with my other two amps ('74 Carlsbro 60-watts all tube head, '88 Laney AOR 50-watts tube lead) I get quite near to JCM800 sounds. Obviously that's what the JH was made for.
"Distortion" setting produces a very fat sound with A LOT OF BASS.
This isn`t too problematic, since you can get rid of the bass overload by means of the "contour"-function.
Even in this setting you get very different sounds from bluesy rhythm chord playing to Satriani-like hi-gain lead sounds.
Scoop the mids any you are in Nu-Metal-land.

Ultra solid and heavy.
Any other pedal looks fragile in comparison.

For the last 7 years, the ShredMaster was my very favourite distortion pedal, now I got the Jackhammer and I love the two just the same. Always difficult to decide which one of the them I will take with me to the next gig.
Great box !

Not thgat easy to use. Lots of stacked knobs. Has a varible Q filter built in, and treble and bass controls.

I have had my JH-1 for 5 years. I bought it when they had just been introduced. I love this pedal !! It has a very bassy, very high gain overdrive sound. It is hard to find a high gain pedal with a good bassy tone. This thing rocks for tone. Not noisey at all. It does feedback on high amp volumes though. I use this pedal with my '62 brit valve amp, it gives me a nice creamy overdrive sound on the neck of my '90 Les Paul Standard, then switch onto the bridge pickup and it's pinched harmonic city. Warning - This pedal will make your amp move around by itself. These things are cheap in the UK. On Ebay they go for ?20, in the USA they cost a lot !!

Very well built, even better than a Boss pedal. No problems in 5 years.

N/A

I play rock and blues, with a leaning to Hard Rock and Delta Blues. I have been play for 16 years. I would get another if it were lost. I use this pedal with a Boss CE-2, sounds AMAZING the best chrous overdrive there is !! I can make my guitar cry with this thing. It's great for balls out rock and roll. No one could be unimpressed with the tone and over the top gain. Great for shredding with, infact the best ever shred pedal. Can sound muddy. My tip is turn the bass control down to 0. It hits a sweet spot there. Email me for advise if you like.

The JH-1 is quite simple to use as long as you understand terms such as contour and contour frequency. These are explained in the manuel anyway.
Although the knobs are layerd (big one on the bottom smaller one on top) this is only confusing the first few times you use it.

I'm using this with an ibanez electric guitar through the JH-1 to a marshall combo amp. The sound quality is perfect as long as the original line sound (bypass sound) is reasonable. You can pretty much get perfect distortion/overdrive sound for whatever music you play from lightly distorted blues to pure metal. I'm in a band and we have roughly a Queens of the Stoneage/Joy Division Sound and the jackhammer is perfect for this. I can get a nice overdrive sound for single note joy division riffs, then when i play fifths they are really crunchy - this is without even adjusting the pedal Perfect!

Well its made out of medal, i have owned mine for two years and we play pretty much every week. The only problem is that batteries die quickly in it unless you remove the input lead which most people usually forget. Just buy a 9V adapter - problem solved!

never needed to - i'm sure they're "incredibly kind and helpful"

I have been playing guitar for 6 yearsand have owned the JH-1 for 2. The only other effects pedal we have is the Zoom 707 II which had crap disortion effects and was made out of plastic and therefore broke within 10 gigs. If the Jackhammer was stolen/lost i would buy it again. Although i have a similar distortion set up in my marshall amp, it does not seem quite as bold even with the same settings. This pedal is so good even when we have gone into rec studios and have POD's and other effects units, for distortion i only use this.

Manual gives some good insight as to what the pedals do, but the suggested settings are utter trash, to be honest. Knobs are pretty straight forward, and its not that complicated, but I imagine a beginner would have some problems with the Frequency and Contour knobs. Other than that, piece of cake.

This pedal isn't THAT bad... if you have a good amp to back it up. When I run this thing into my B-52 AT-100, it does a thoroughly good job of getting the Marshall crunch. If you run this thing into ANY mid/low quality amp, however, you're in for quite a nightmare. My dad has an old 50W Rickenbaucher solid-state amp, and with this pedal, it becomes the muddiest piece of garbage you will ever hear. One of my friends has a Crate 120W Solid state combo, and that thing isn't much different. You almost choke on all the mud. I give it a 5, because even though it gives good tones through good amps, it won't sound for good for anyone on with budget with a standard grade amp, and that's almost every beginner and intermediate player.

Metal casing, roadworthy. Very nice here. Just bring alot of batteries.

Good with good amps, horrible with everything else.

It has 7 knobs: Mode(you can choose between overdrive or distortion), Gain, Volume, Treble, Bass, Freq and Contour. You can get a good tone very easily. The manual helps a lot explaining what's the function of each knob, and giving setting suggestions.

I use a Yamaha Pacifica 012 guitar, a Meteoro Thor Plus(braziliain), and a Boss CE-3 Chorus. It sounds really good, I can get from bluesy to metal tones. The only thing I have to complain is that his sound is kind of trebley depending on the setting you make, and my amp is solid state, so I can't get the best tone the pedal delivers, but later I'll get a better amp.

I depend a lot of it, it's the only distortion unit I have so far.

I didn't deal with the manufacter yet.

I play many styles of music, from blues to metal, and this pedal deliver all of these tones very easily. If it was stolen I would buy another certainly, 'cause of the price mostly. I think that for the price, it's the best distortion pedal you can get, and it's very versatile, which I think it's really important on a distortion pedal.

easy enough,stuff does what it says but i guess in comparison to other pedals its no where near as easy as most pedals.

Now heres my problem the distortions terrible i use soapbar pick-ups on a PRS through a marshall AVT275, now playing the distortion through clean channel is bad as the low e sounds like a fart no matter what settings i use but the higher strings do sound quite good and as an overdrive for solos i can find some use for but not much.

it looks like it can take anything

dont know

an ok pedal i dont find it useable distortion but it does help the high end strings rings

The pre-sets in the manual are good but i think theres definate room for tweeking i suggest using these then changing indivisual settings to modify.

I only use this pedal as an overdrive pedal for my Marshall AVT275 combo as i found the distortion sounds when using a clean channel terrible.
now the overdrive is very good it makes my solos sound a lot better but theres so much feedback neverless this pedla salways in my pedal board.

yup. looks like it could with stand a granade

dont know but as its marshall i would guess very good.

good pedal but a few problems but i think it all depends on your amp and guitar.

At the first look it seams so easy but when you plug it into amp... different story! Overdrive channel is pretty easy to use. "Plug 'n' Play", but when you start to play with dist ch. you need to tweak some pots. Pedal is not easy to use, and you should be aware of this before you start using it! Here is a tip when trying out dist, just don?t scoop any frequency range (just turn the contour off), and put some extra mids and treble on your amp.

I'm using this pedal on both guitar and bass!
My guitar setup is: Squier Tom DeLonge strat with Duncan Designed Invader (Detonator) pickup --> BOSS BF-2 (flanger) --> Marshall JH-1 --> Marshall JCM 800 head. I've also tried it on Haiwat head and some small Marshall MG combo. Using this pedal I can easily achieve the same kind of overdrive that JCM 800 produces it self, but I'm not sure how is it going to work on some other, lower class, or solid state amp. I'm using both modes (distortion mode a bit more frequently then OD). With the distortion mode you can dial in smoother, more saturated sound. As I mentioned earlier, I don't cut any frequency range with the contour knob, so I don't have that "muddy problems" like some guys mentioned. I can easily dial in some HM sounds, or some modern sounds similar to Senses Fail, The Used, Funeral For A Friend...

My bass equipment is: Yamaha BBN4 III --> Boss CEB-2 (bass chorus) --> Boss BF-2 --> Digitech DigiDelay --> some old parametric EQ pedal --> Marshall JH-1 --> SansAmp Bass driver --> Alto parametric 5-band EQ (rack) --> Behringer Ultrafex Pro (enhancer) --> Power Amp --> 4x10 cab. On bass, I usually go for OD, since I don't need that kind of saturation. I think this is one of the best bass OD/DIST pedals! It won't cut all of your bass frequencies off, and leave you with just a bunch of overdriven mids. SansAamp has a great OD sound, but since I use it as a preamp, I had to buy some pedal for OD sounds, and I don't have enough cash to buy one more SansAmp. With SansAmp/Marshall JH-1 combination I can dial in any distortion/overdrive sound imaginable on bass! The sound is so compact and powerful. I would suggest JH-1 to any bass player looking for a good overdrive/dist sound in a pedal!

Mine is Chinese, I have it for a bout a month, and it seems OK for now. I think I can depend on it, but, if I could, I would buy a backup!

I play in a HC/punk (guitar) and EMO/metal band (bass). This is a PERFECT match for these 2. I can dial in similar sound as my favorite bands (Funeral For A Friend, Thrice, Senses Fail, Boy Sets Fire, Finch?). I play bass for 8 years and guitar for about 2 years. I would definitively buy another one in case something happens to this one. I?ve compared it to Guvnor and Ibanez DS-7. JH-1 is way more powerful and versatile. I can dial in much more different type of sounds.

Basic stompbox...the contour/frequency takes a little to figure out a good setting

The stacked knobs could cause some problems...very close quarters there...might cause you to accidentally adjust settings you don't want moved.

BRUTAL...best distortion I've used. Better than my Robert Keeley Modified Metal Zone...better & not as noisy as my Rocktron Silver Dragon. I've seen some bad reviews for this, but it might have to do with other components people are using, and quite a few reviewers here are piss ignorant about gear.

It sounded like crap in front of my Peavey Rage 158...so did every other pedal I used...it's just not "stompbox friendly". My Blue Voodoo didn't like it either...the BV has good enough distortion but I just wanted to try it out on it. It's just not an amp built to take distortion in front of the pre-amp. My Peavy VTM-60 LOVES it! If you have an amp that has a pre-amp configured to work well w/outboard distortion you just can't go wrong with ths pedal. With the VTM on it's lowest gain setting (if you don't know about the VTM it's amp that had modification mini switches...I turned all of the gain switches to off...basically in that mode it's like an old Marshall tone that distorts, but just not much) I put the Jackhammer in front of it w/the gain maxed...the volume 1/3, bass & treble fairly low & fiddled with the the contour/frequency til it got right...the gain on the amp was about 4, the volume about 4, bass & treble about 5 w/mid on 0...EEEEEVIL...works great in front of Fender Hot Rod DeVille too...Like I said, it just depends on what kinda pre-amp your guitar amplifier has...some just don't work well with outboard distortion & sometimes others work where some don't

It's HEAVY...very handsome pedal too.

Dunno

If you have a clue this is a great pedal...there are bunch of dweebs on this site who trash various gear (not that some doesn't deserve it) But, I've been playing long enough to know that sound quality comes from strings, pickups, woods, speakers,electrical current quality, your fingers, etc... working in unision...if you have problems in the chain, crappy gear, sloppy playing, brain damage...you might end up getting some bad sounds from good gear. I tried this pedal in front of a couple of great amps that just didn't jibe well with this pedal (I've tried other pedals in front of those amps & got sucky tone too...they're just not meant to have outboard distortion on 'em...usually when you run in to that problem it's best to just bypass the amps pre-amp altogether & go in to the effects loop) Use your brain & you can make good gear sound good & sometimes get a decent tone from junk too.)
If you have any questions about this feel free to email me. My set up that works perfect is a Schecter C-1 Elite, EMG 81/60 actives (running at 18 volts/2 batteries), a Peavey VTM-60 all tube head, and two Celestion Vintage 30 12s in a sealed enclosure.

Never came wif manual. bought second hand. Prety easy to use.
contour knob and frequency need some tweaking to get right.

MArshall solid state amp.MG15CDR. Mic'ed up to PA. Wanted thE Marshal drive but didnt want to reach over and press a button. I run this pedal into my Zoom 3030. Guitars? Epi S-310 and Epi SG special.
I dun rly copy others sound. Just want to get my own sound that i feel will match most types of Christian stuff i play.
Noisy? surprisingly less than other distortions.

Sound i shall say, the distortion has a different sound to it. It definitely is darker and lacks the crispness to it. Very different from BOSS DS-2, where the distortion is actually brighter and OD is toneful.
BOSS DS-2 VS Marshall JH-1? boss wins for the ability to satisfy both tones.
Individual sounds? Marshall oD provides good tone and good tonal variation.
Ypu get what i mean? I use the OD only. haven't found any use for the Dist.

Looks solid. but it looks only. A little mistake by an indian worker, a wire could get shaken loose. I have a digital pedal to back me up. I guess tt will have to do.

none used. Still working fine.
and not showing nay sign of dying.

I play in the style of classic rock, clapton slow hand blues. i play a little hendrix but i'll us a fuzz fer that.
If lost, i might get a Boss DS-2. I realise my 3030 has a EQ section which i can use anyway. this takes away the boss's defieciency of only a one knob. And i have a sound man in chuch who EQ's everything anyway.
I rly like the ability to have tube lyk response. Where i can put in on medium low gain. strum softly with my strat, the low output single coils don distort the sound. Strum harder? I begins to have a crunchy drive. harder? lovely... reminds me of the hendrix and SRV tribute at rush bootleg or something.
Iiwsh it had a nice distortion. That was big and powerful without being dark and slightly flat. Still a 9 cos it sounds good.

its easy to use, the manual is ok not really helpful to a player with a few years behind them. but to a guitarist starting it out the manual is ok.it has suggestions which arent all that good and dont do the pedal justice. this is an out and out metal pedal. good for metallica, slipknot, korn all that stuff.

the steup im using is tanglewood pioneer>jh-1>kusom practice amp.
the amp is crap but when the jh-1 is jacked up on overdrive or distortion it sounds just as good as a marshall amp.
Some people say the distortion is muddy. i used to think that but now iv realised the distortion on this thing is made to perfection. when turned on dist. with full gain and ifyou adjust the contour and freq. knobs a bit you can get the perfect metallica sound. i think the overdrive is more hatebreed slipknot type and is also perfect for that.

ive neer used this in a gig, but its solid metal how could you go wrong. built like a tank in a tank.

never dealt with them . so ill sit on the fence with this

i play mainly metal thrugh this witha bit of velvet revolver, queens of the stone age. and its good for everything. but mind you you have to really understand what the controls are about although its not hard. if you want the perfect sound you have to get to know the pedal first but that can be said for most pedals. this pedal is a BEAST!

Bueno, los potenciometros y todo eso son faciles de usar pero no me molan nada, por que tienes que tener cuidao con los dedos y eso, lo compre sin manual osea que tampoco puedo ser tan critico con esto, pero todavia no se para que sirve la FRECUENCIA, la verdad no es muy dificil de usar, pero para encontrarle un buen sonido tardas un ratillo ademas depende bastante de la guitarra y sobre todo del ampli

Uso una hamer chaparral con el pedal, es MUY MUY MUY RUIDOSO, pero si te gusta el heavy probablemente le saques buen partido...A mi personalmente no me gusta mucho, prefiero una buena distorsion de ampli, pero para el precio que tiene esta bastante bien tener un pedal asi sobre todo para tocar en casa

En un concierto grande es mas recomendable usar una buena distorsion de ampli apoyada con un overdrive mas suave como un TS o un boss,

Que decir de Marshall??

Esta muy bien para usar en casa y meter algo de ca?a pero suena bastante digital, si estas empezando y piyas uno barato, vete a por el, no creo que por el poco precio que lo venden ahora encuentres nada mejor, pero en cuanto sepas tocar un poco, dejalo de lado y vete a por un buen ampli, SUERTE

Pretty basic pedal; overdrive and distortion settings with 6 knobs to adjust the sound. It's pretty easy to find a good solid drive/distort from it if you play around a bit.

If not set up right, this pedal will sound like ass, but that goes for anything really. Some versatile drives can be attained though. I use if for rock, indie-alternative stuff mostly, from a thick crunch to a light fuzz and it does the trick.
I run a Yamaha BBN5 (bass) through this pedal into a Yorkville 200B mostly. I also run a Godin Exit 22 (guitar) through it into a 1972 Fender Twin Reverb. For the bass, it's perfect. For the guitar, I like it, but I would prefer something like an Ibanez Tube King.

I've been using this pedal, whether my own or borrowed from friends, live without backups for a year or so now. I've never had issues with any of them.

n/a

I love this pedal. For my bass applications, it is exactly what I want, however it's not quite the drive I'm looking for for my guitar sound. I'd definately buy another if I were to lose it. It gives me a versatility in drive tones that I want/"need" and nothing else. I'd recommend this pedal to anyone.

No probs. Just four knobs and a switch.

Better than anything I've heard. I run it throught the effects loop on my Boss GT-3. I never liked the distortions in it, so I used the Jackhammer instead. I use a Yamaha SA2200 Semi-Hollow body electric and a Yamaha pacifica 112 into a Peavey classic 30. this pedal lets me get everything from a "strummable" overdrive to a very heavy "powerchord" overdrive. I prefer the overdrive to the distortion because I like the guitar to have clarity under high gain. The distortion tends to kill all the richness and harmonics but the overdrive lets you keep them...and it sounds heavier in my opinion. You can get everything from Jeff Buckley rhythm playing sounds to Rage against the machine riff-age.

Can't go past it. Like I said, I actualy bought two so that I could have one set for light and one for heavy gain.

Easy to use once you play with it some. It has four knobs that control most everything you could think of. Volume, treble, OD, Distortion. You have to play with it but its not to hard to get what your looking for eventually.

Sound is really mold-able (is that a word)? two settings one for OD the other Distortion. You can get most any sound out of this thing. I have played through my pedal board (total marshall effects) into a Peavey Classic 30 and my Marshall JCM2000 DSL 401. Both sounded great. I could almost squeeze the marshally jangly kind of OD out of the Peavey with it. This wont turn your amp into a Marshall but it will add a new depth to your sound.

Seems to be tough as nails but I havent had the Jackhammer long enough to say for sure. All metal built down to the knobs though.

Havent had to deal with them so I will sit right on the fence with this one.

Goes great with Rock, classic type zepplin to newer Creed stuff in my opinion. I have been playing for 25 years and own a full Marshall pedal board and play mainly through my Marshall JCM2000 DSL401. I like the fact that the jackhammer is not a plug and play type pedal with one volume and one gain knob. This it probably the most tweekable OD pedal I have ever used. If it was stolen I would kick the crap out of them and take it back...or...sigh...buy another one.

It is pretty easy to use, and has lots of controls due to the double-concentric knobs. However the Contour and Frequency controls, though they are the key to getting a good sound (I will go into this later), if not used properly can really f*ck up your sound. For a while I didnt understand what they did. Then I worked it out, and loved it. But if you dont understand, just keep the Contour control on 0 until you work it out, and they will be bypassed. What they do is scoop certain frequencies, Freq. determines which frequency range and Cont. determines the ammount of scoop. These controls are key to getting a good sound, especially with the Distortion setting.

Im using this with a Westfield ES335 copy and a Fender amp. It wont touch your sound if when in bypass, dont worry about that. You can get some noisy feedback and buzz, but just keep the gain low and it shouldnt bother you. You can get good quality drive tones without pumping up by buzz.
It has two modes - Overdrive and Distortion.
The overdrive setting is pretty straightforward, and sounds great! You can get anything from bluesy drive to all-out roar with this. Just adjust the gain and tone controls appropriately. Very versatile, and very nice-sounding.
Distortion is truly awesome... but a little tricky. I see alot of people have commented it is too bassy for them. I have found the key is the Contour control. Just use it to scoop the bass-mid freqencies. Until I worked this out, the distortion did seem far too bassy for me. But with the right scoop... it is transormed and sounds brilliant!
I have found an excellent setting for that Guns N' Roses metal sound.... have your amp slightly overdriven and rather trebelly. Then on the jackhammer, set it on distortion with the gain at about 10 or 11 o clock. Set the Freq. to about 10 or 11, this scoops the low-mids. Set the Cont. to about 2 or 3 o clock. Have treble and bass at 12. Try this out, then adjust the treble and bass so it sounds even. Truly gorgeous! Then just try playing some classic Guns N Roses tracks such as Welcome To The Jungle.
Im using it with a good quality Fender 30watt amp and it sounds great. I used to have an awful little 10watt amp which sounded painfully bad... but this pedal really transformed my drive sound. So the jackhammer will make the tinniest and worst amp in the world sound good.
Both settings are good: as I said, distortion takes some tweaking but you can get some amazing sounds to it.

I have never gigged with it, but it seems pretty reliable to me. It is of solid metal construction so looks pretty durable.

Never dealt with them.

I play all sorts of rock, and this pedal can be used to find any sound with the overdrive and distortion settings. I use it in conjunction with a BOSS ED-1 compressor.
If it was stolen or lost, I would definately get hold of another.
When I look at other pedals such as the BOSS DS-1, they only have three controls, volume drive and tone. Thats pretty much just 1 sound. I couldnt survive with a pedal like that.
It is a great help to my guitar palying.
It looks looks so good too!

An excellent pedal, I reccomend it to anyone looking for a good distortion/overdrive pedal.

over and under knobs are a little touchy,easy to move one,while trying to move the one under it,but you get used to it,overdrive/distortion,nice--I use the over drive channel all the time,distortion side seems weak and to bassy

I run this in my effects loop as a overdrive for my amps distortion channel,which is a marshall g50cd,with a homemade ev equiped ext cab,(yea I know small,but I record and play for hobby),in front of a guitar exiter,and after a danecho.with a johnson over drive before it,(I never use the 2 drives together) with a dunlop wha.after purchase I was not to hiped on it ,but after
a time of tuning it it,the tones came out,and this is one of the best pedals Iv owned,my main guitar is a jackson soloist,give this pedal some tuning time--it will pay you back---great overdrive pedal

heavy metal build--Its marshall-no need to dought its quality-

gigs?--no need to worry

dont know,have no problems

I play megadeath,preist,maiden,dio,metallica,slash,ext--this pedal is great for these,If you take time to coax the sound forth!!helps if your amp has a good sounding distortion channel. unlike the crappy line 6 uber metal--which sucks,this pedal does not have a transister thin sound!!tube amp sounds are there if you search for them--give it time,Im picky on this,most distortion /overdrives sound like a weedwacker on race fuel--shrill,and unpowerful,this jackhammer gives punch,bass,chunck and drive,sweet drive--if you think line six got it down,think again--this marshall hammers,early preist dreamer/deciever lead tone a breeze with this--like slashes tone?--its in this pedal,of course a 10 watt crate aint gonna do this thing justice,or a cheap squire ,even helps sustain some--good pedal for the price,unlike the line 6 cheese toneless crap uber metal!!

With a small amount of tweaking i got a pretty good sound which I was happy with, but then after 20 min of trying out all the options it got much better. The manual is useful up to a point, the dial settings it suggests didn't really work for me. I wouldn't say it could be made any easier for the amount of variables on it (7).

I play a fender jag-stang through a carlsbro cobra which I have found in the past to take the bite of my overdrive setting, but using the controls on the jackhammer to their full potential I have managed to get a very fierce sound.
It is the contour control that I use to stop the excessive bassiness that is present on first listen, rather than the treble and bass knobs: With the freq set to about 10 o'clock and the contour to 3 o'clock the booming sound is scooped out, but without making the overall signal high and scratchy.
I personally much prefer the O/D to the dist, as in my band (c.f, idlewild, smashing pumpkins, mogwai, sonic youth) i mainly thump out big chords and i don't want all the notes to blend together, but for piercing solos the dist would obviously be more appropriate. Shame that you can't just swap between the two and have a good sound immediately without readjusting the other controls. Other than that I couldn't be happier.

I only recently bought it, but it seems very sturdy, and the knobs turn very smoothly indeed, doesn't look like its about to fall apart. I will use it for gigs with no backup.

For the alt rock style which I play the sound is perfect, the notes maintain clarity while the noise is gritty and fierce, you can let chords ring out or keep stabbing at the strings and both will sound cool. My last overdrive was a rocktek one which doesn't compare at all; too dull in sound and not enough scope for getting it exactly how you want.
It will definitely have a place in my line up between acoustic sim and delay unit, also I shall be boosting it for those extra noisy bits with an eq pedal, working the top and bottom frequencies.
Shame the jacks are so high on the sides, to use those little metal connector jacks I have raise the eq pedal off the board a bit.

So so... It'd be hard for a beginner to use just because you have to adjust about EVERYTHING on the panel to get a different sound than the one you had before. But for a veteran, piece of cake.

I'm using a stock Epiphone Les Paul into a shitty little Fender Frontman 15G. When you use it as a clean boost, which is what this thing should be used for, it works like a dream. Creamy mellow tube-emulated tone. I'm still a novice guitar PLAYER, but I know tone. I spend my spare time at Sam Ash checking out new gear.

This isn't for really heavy metal, i.e. Megadeth, early Metallica, Pantera, etc. It's rather a great NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) sounding pedal. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc. can easily be dialed out of this pedal.

It also fits the bill for hard rock, i.e. AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, etc.

Built like a tank, sturdy... you know.

Haven't had to deal with em.

Great rock/NWOBHM tone, but im docking points for not living up to what it's said to do. Also a great tube emulater for solid state gear.

I find the JH-1 very simple to use. After having read a bunch of reviews written by guys(or girls) who found it difficult to adjust the sweep knob(mid etc), I wonder if they ever seen a guitar.???
Hello?? It's 2005, The Big Muff is not, but the JH-1 is hot.

I've tried them all..., Boss DS-1, BOSS MT-2, Boss OD-2 etc etc etc...
I spend a whole day at Andreasson Musik in Gothenburg to figure out which pedal giving the best sound. The Jackhammer is by far the best pedal on the market, the lead-guitar market. It delivers a fantastic sound, totally incredible. I have paid 750 SEK(swedish crowns) to get the same sound as VAI, Lukather, and Petrucci.

As we say in Sweden the Jackhammer is "Stabil". The only downbrack on the pedal is the main button. You can't push it to hard cause it's not like Boss pedals. THE ONLY DAWNBRACK!!! Follow my suggestion and buy a reserve.

N/A

My band plays a little bit af slick, a little bit of new American Rock and a little bit of english pop. This pedal fits perfect to our style. I use it with my Marshall TSL-100 top and my Marshall cabinets.
I get "the sound of my dreams" if I use the Jackhammer on the clean channel. I use a Boss DD-3 and a Boss RV-3 in the loop. Magic!!
The pedal is perfect, the only thing I wish it had is a better button.

Very easy to use. Amazing flexibility due to a great coverage EQ section.

Well, this is a Marshall project my friends!! My main ovedrive sound came from this awesome thing called JMP-1 Tube Pre-Amp (I fully recomend this fantastic gear!!, for clean, overdrive or even for violent distortion sound, JMP-1 is the best!!). Sometimes I cannot use my JMP-1 due to on stage set up for festival, as an example. I bought JH-1 to fullfil my needs at JMP-1 replacement... results? I found the best ones!! Pure Marshall Overdrive (JCM800 like) and Distortion (JCM2000 or JMP-1 like) sounds. SIMPLY AMAZING!!! This unit can emulate my JMP-1 sounds very close!! AWESOME!!!

Built like a tank!!

No need...

Simply perfect!!! The best Overdrive and Distortion unit comparing to SansAmp GT-2, Boss Mega-Distortion, MXR Double Shot, Boss Metal Zone. I spent a whole day at the shop testing and comparing. JH-1 won easy!!!

I actually had this pedal for a year before I took the time to figure out how to use it. It's pretty simple when you consider that all you have to do is turn the knobs to figure out how it works. I didn't have a manual and it was pretty intuitive. On the other hand, sometimes turing the top knob moves the bottom knob or vice versa and that can be a total pain.

I play all my guitars through my Vox Cambridge 30 Reverb. I have a Squire Tele, A mexican strat, and an Epi Les Paul classic. All guitars can sound sweet using this pedal but I find that I have favorite settings for each. The thing has pretty good range all around and I find I can get just about any distortion sound I'm looking for short of monstrous fuzz... but that's why I have a Muff Pi.

I find some people crap on the Distortion channel here and seem to stick with the OD. I did that for the first year I had it but I recently discovered that the Distortion channel can be really, really sweet if you fiddle with the contour and frequency settings. I had it sounding just like a Marshall Guv'nor 2 at one point and when you can get that sound AND sweet overdrive you know you've got something special.

It's just as noisy as other pedals I've used... I didn't notice much in that regard. It's super versatile... more than I could ever have hoped.

Seems sturdy enough. I don't beat the shit out of my gear and I don't stomp on my effects so this isn't saying much. I HAVE seen marshall pedals with totally bent knobs and such but I simply don't issue that sort of abuse. I would definately use this without a backup because if it crapped out I could just use the gain on my amp as a temporary solution. It certainly looks sturdy enough... and it's been heavily traveled.

I've never dealt with them.

I play all sorts of music. I love to rock the Weezer but I also love Cake, The Shins, and Alexisonfire. Like I said before I can get pretty much any sound out of this baby that I want. The only downside is that if I wanted to change styles quickly between songs I would have to get down and fiddle... you almost need two of them sometimes.

I've been playing for about 6 or 7 years. I've got my Vox, my 3 electrics and an Art and Lutherie Acoustic that I haul around. My effects are as simple as a Danelectro tuner, an old zoom 505 pedal (that sounds, for the most part, like ass) and my Big Muff Pi.

If this pedal were stolen or lost I would probably just buy another one. I might consider a Guv'nor instead but this one is far more versatile. I simply love the range of sounds I can get on this thing and with the varying sounds of my guitars I can swap certain parts of my setup to get, really, most the sounds I want. I've had other distortion pedals but this one really takes the cake for me. Do yourself a favor and take the time to fiddle with the contour and frequency knobs because the real treats are found in that combo. If there is anything I wish it had it would be seperate switches for OD and Dist... all the settings I like for OD sound like ass for Distortion.

That's it... it's awesome... if you want a great and versatile pedal for relatively cheap you could do a lot worse than picking up this puppy.

I like this pedal a lot. A good sound is very simple to get out of it, but I suggest you watch out for the FREQ/CONTOUR knob first because it can change your sound completely and make unwanted adjustments to your tone.

The manual is satisfactory -- the suggestions are interesting but not ground-breaking.

The concentric knobs may confuse the small-minded of us, but they are qutie simple. Also, they are a little small but it is quite compact and satisfying.

This is my very advanced and complicated setup:

Fender Stratocaster -> Marshall Jackhammer -> Marshall 15 watt MG with reverb

talk about confusing.

It is kinda noisy but I'm using a stat so what do you expect? Not noisy with two pickups selected, even with maximum gain. I'm going to shield my guitar hopefully which will stop the hum.

The effects sound great mostly -- I find myself neglecting the distortion and using overdrive however.

With this pedal you can get a grungey, metal, hard rock etc. sound.

I tried out the Boss DS-1 (i think it was DS-1) and I found that it sounded like custard and I didn't like it. I tried other Boss pedals and none of them were anywhere NEAR as good as the Jackhammer. I also tried out the Guv'nor - which is pretty good but as I said before, I'm more of an overdrive person.

Completely reliable. It is built like a reinforced cow on stilts. (very strong). I could hit it with a very heavy book and it wouldn't even get an ouchie. It is possible that it would run out of batteries - within 30 minutes of using it (it could be a demo model, mind you...) the battery went dead. Lucky I had a power adaptor lying around.

So yeah, I can depend on it and I don't think I need a backup.

These guys are the nicest guys ever. Actually I don't know ... I've never asked for any help. However it would be much better if Marshall included sound samples on their sites. It would have saved me from playing with those little wall-of-poo boxes in the music store.

This is great. I'd replace it any day. I play grunge, classic rock, metal, punk ... and the pedal is great for this.

As long as your not a 13 year old kid who stumbles through eruption and "Almost has" every popular song out there, then you should be fine. The fact that some knobs are on top of each other can be slightly annoying, but other than that after 5 or 10 minutes of fiddling you can get alot of good tones. I give it a 9 for the mere fact that unless its the "Holy Grail of tone" it won't get a 10 out of me.

Again, as long as you don't have the gain and volume cranked up you'll be fine. I know we all like our distortion but you have to know when enough is. I personally use this pedal in 2 appilcations: 1. As a boost for my harmonics on my Washburn amp
2. As a nice Bluesy distortion on my Gibson amp. (Vintage, no dist.)
On the washburn I play more Metal and Harder Rock (In the vein of Ozzy, Annihilator, Testament etc.) so I have my amps gain up a little under half, and the JH-1's Gain around 1/4 the way up. The result is what I would describe as "adding some sting or burn to the notes" its currently my favorite tone. With the gibson its Pre-war and has no gain so I use it as a slight overdrive for some lighter stuff (think chuck berry, george thorogood etc.) and it does its job quite well, although I have experimented with a whole "crap load" of gain on it and it can be quite the metal monster. So quite a versatile pedal. As for buzzing or clicking, no abnormal humming or buzzing but there is a light click when you engage it.

I have jammed around with this thing in garages and in my own room, it hasn't let me down any time I've used it (note: I use 9 volt batteries)you can stomp on the S.O.B or just tap it. Hasn't broke down or oxidized yet. A bit of scuffing/scratching but what do you expect? Good solid metal chassis, bulletproof.

N/A

I play everything from slide blues(I try...) to slayer and death metal and basically everything in between (big Alice Cooper fan). It is a sturdy pedal I see no reason why not to give it a try. After all 90% of your tone is in your fingers.

I got it used so I had to figure out what freq and contour did (though I have an MG30DFX as a practice amp so I knew about contour). There are a lot of knobs but the power is worth the learning curve.

Unreal. Can't be a clean boost, but it goes from subtle to singing to screaming to beyond. Just make sure OD is selected because the DIST mode is just bad. Actually, if you are looking for good fuzz, use the DIST on high gain. I use a different pedal for fuzz though. True bypass also, which is a plus.

I gig without a backup. The thing is TOUGH.

The manual isn't on the site. I bought mine used and wanted to check stuff out. I was disappointed.

It's definately one of the best pedals I've ever used. If it were stolen, it'd have a new one within hours, even if it meant selling a different pedal.

The "knob within a knob" function is kinda hard to deal with, seeing as when you turn one, another seems to turn with it. However, it's great that they crammed so many functions into such a small pedal. The manual is pretty good, and once you figure out what some of the stuff does (like the contour frequency, etc), you're laughing.

I use this with a Les Paul /SG/ Flying V setup, and this pedal is very good--if used as a more extreme distortion pedal. It has a very nice fuzz-ish quality to it when turned up full gain--it's right in between a metal pedal and a fuzz pedal. It's better than alot of fuzz pedals, which tend to be a bit "mushy", when used in the neck pickup position. This retains the picking character, good for muted, chugging chords, a la Sabbath. I do NOT recommend it as an overdrive.....it sounds decent for cleaner sounds, but still sounds a bit too harsh "transistor-y" when on even the lowest gain setting, but has a great tube-ish sound when overdriven (figger that one out). I bought mine used, and I don't know if there's a defect with the distortion function, but it seems to lose high end (though it has a nice fuzzy sound, even on the lowest distortion setting). I use it with an old 1980 Fender 140 watt head, and it's brilliant for recording--it's low noise with a battery (on full gain, even). Ironically, it has overdrive AND distortion (no footswitch to toggle in between the two, which sucks), yet the overdrive is the more high end, extreme sounding option, to my ears. The contour function is a nice addition, too, though I don't really use it. The metal case looks sturdy--it is--and looks great.

It's worked well so far, but i've only had it a month.

Haven't needed to get it repaired.

I've been playing for ten years, this is a very good high gain pedal. Again, it's best trait is not the cleaner, low gain sounds, but if it were lost or stolen, you bet that i'd buy this again. I wish that it had a footswitch in between the distortion/ od modes.

Being used to a distortion pedal with similar controls (Boss ME-2)initially I did not think that this pedal would be that difficult to tweak. The only knobs on this box that are easy to use are the OD/DIST knob(two position rotary switch), and the level knob. The stacked pots have a tendency to follow each other if you are not careful. So when you try to tweak the highs, the bass control may or may not follow the high knob. You shouldn't have to delicately turn each knob, just grab and go. The whole Mids/contour stacked pot is a piece of crap as far as tweaking goes.

I play through several guitars all loaded with Dimarzio Mega Drivers into the Jackhammer then onto my Marshall SL. I bought this pedal thinking it could be used as an inexpensive clean boost. PAH!!! Using this as a clean boost is non-existant. Using the pedal as a normal OD or dist is ok. Ok if you like hot digital sounding overdrive or on the distortion channel something like running a buzzsaw through a pillow. The Distortion channel sucks plain and simple. This might be something you might like if you play on a small practice amp in your bedroom but for pro level gear its non-compatible. I guess in my warped sense of logic using a Marshall on a Marshall amp would sound ok. Clarity? not even close. Running straight into my Marshall gets tons more clarity and grind.
Noise factor: yeah its noisy but what distortion pedal isn't? Don't even think about diming the gain and level into your amp.
Whoever designed this pedal and got Mr. Marshall to sign off on it should be flogged publicly.

Reliable? I guess so. Works after being repeatedly thrown against the wall in frustration. The contruction is top notch Ill give this pedal that.

Marshall support is always very helpful. I have not contacted them on this pedal, but on other issues they always get back to you via email within 48 hours unless its over the weekend.

Following the form questions:
What style of music do you play? (Black/Death) Is this a good match? (No freaking way)

How long have you been playing? (22 years) What other gear do you own? (Several BC Rich handmades, a few Ibanezes, Marshall 1959 head, 2-Marshall 1960 cabinets A+B, Furman PQ3, MXR 31 band Graphic, Modded ADA Mp-1, Alesis Quadraverb, Korg Rack tuner)

If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else? Nope definately buy something else.

what do you love about it? The case/aesthetics What do you hate? the circuit inside the case What is your favorite feature? The case/footswitch

Anything you wish it had? Good tone

Does it help you make music, or does it get in the way? It only helps in that it infuriates me that I bought it so I play my gear that much harder without it.

First things first. I LOVE this pedal. What I say will be critical, but don't think this pedal is crap because of what I say. ITS NOT. Its just a little challenging to master, cos this thing is BASSEY! you can't boost the midrange so it feels hollow. You need to find a good frequency position and it is extremely sensitive. Cut the bass to a very small amount. Its a lil tricky, but it only took me about half an hour of fiddling to get a sound I like - a very early-SOAD kinda sound. Mine came with a battery too. How sweet of the company.

I have only just gotten this and haven't used it with my proper setup, only on my practice amp. I have an Ashton AR282 and then this pedal and then a Roland Cube 15. Oh god the tone is awesome. Its thick and heavy sounding, its so easy to get in that sorta area with this pedal on the distortion setting. I don't touch the overdive, seeing as my Arion OD gets a blink kinda OD, so I don't need it. Its noisy kinda, but most are with that amount of gain. It gets as heavy as the Boss Metal Zone. A cooler sound though. Its also easy to get a really crappy sound to so be careful. I can get Daron's tone from the System of a Down self titled album. Pinch harmonics are a breeze. The intro to Suite-pee using extremely fast harmonics and sliding is very easy. Don't think this thing is lying when it says it has tremendous amounts of gain. I expected it to have the same distortion as my Marshall Valvestate VS265R but I was pleasantly suprised. At first i liked but didn't love it but now I have the tone I want. The low end gets SO distorted, you can hear it ring out when you palm mute. I love this and can't wait to hear what it's like through my Marshall amp. I originally bought this to use as a boost for the distortion on the amp but I really think I can get all the gain I need from this baby.

I've only had this a few hours, but I would depend on it, but I'd rather get a power supply cos I fear batteries dying. I don't have a backup to gig with but I don't care, I'd use this. If it dies I can always use the pre-amp distortion.

don't know. never dealt with them.

I play heavy goth/emo/hardcore/punk. This is great for that style. Heavy and powerful, very SOAD-ish, and kinda deftones-ish too. halfway between the two I guess, Crisp like the deftones sound but dirty and crunchy sounding like System's. Awesome pedal. I advise all who love system to use this or a boss Metal zone... but this is the cheaper of the two. An absolute steal, but don't give up if you can't instantly get the tone you want. Nothings perfect, right?

I found the controlls a litle fiddley on this. The fact that you have knobs on top of other knobs makes it hard to adjust one without the other changing. I still dont quite understand what the hell the contour control does, it acts somewhat like a mid controll but also isn't! The manual was alright, it sort of explained what the things did. They gave some preset settings which is always a good thing. Overall however it is fairly easy to get the sound I want.

I use this through an Ibanez rg170 - morley classic wah - JH1 - Carlsbro Stingray II (see the review for that thing, its shite!). I do find this pedal is pretty noisy when you have it at full gain setting. As soon as you roll down the volume knob on your guitar it reduces the noise a lot. I'm not too keen on the dist setting (JCM 2000 my ass) it seems far too muddy and bassy. Not my thang. The OD is the one I use and is fairly good. You have to add a lot of bass to get this thing into a usable solo sound because it is very thin and weak. If you turn your volume down and boost the mids you get a great chuck berry tone. It doesnt really do heavy stuff because it sounds a bit too thin but i dont care much for that neway.

I use a the DC input to power the thing and this seems a little ropey after a year. It sometomes cuts out if it isnt selotaped in! This thing is built like a tank although the switch is a little woosey copmpared to the rest of it. I often jump onto it during songs and it stands up to it pretty well. I often use it for gigs and copes well.

NEver delt with them. I know marshall are good for UK residents so i have full faith in them.

Great for the money, if you have about 60 quid more buy a keeley modified DS-1. Great pedal for beginners but if you require something a bit more sophisticated stay away from this.

It's not too easy to use, in the beginning... Make sure you read the manual first! The recommended settings that come with it sound very good. You can make yourself an idea of the sound range thanks to it.

But after you play with it a bit, you get used to the knobs (wich are certainly HARD TO SEE with low light! Try re-marking the marks on them with somehing...). Still, it could be easier to use.

If you read some reviews up to here, you already know this has two modes: O/D and DIST (claims to be JCM800 & JCM2000 respectively...).

1) The overdrive sound is very good indeed! Maybe a bit louder and too crunchy with gain more than half way up, but that can be sorted out. You can certainly go from a stuble boost to good old rock or hair metal. Just make sure you balance your amp's EQ with the pedal's.

2) The distortion channel is much more "creamy", but sounds lower... strange. Well, however, with this you can get from more hard rock to thrash metal easily, and then to nu-metalish sounds (not my deal). It sounds very bassy, but you can get rid of it with your amp.

In both settings there is some noise, but tell me about one good noiseless distortion/overdrive...

About getting decent sounds, one important thing: PLAY WITH BOTH THE PEDAL AND THE AMP!!! If you also use clean tones, search the good clean tone before using the pedal. That's VERY important! (Believe me... I ain't no expert... what the hell: I'M A GODDAMN ROOKIE! But even rookies can tell some things). Once you get a good amp EQ, look for different tonalies with the pedal. Trust me, you won't get disappointed if you give it a chance.

Anyway, it won't sound too good on single-coiled axes.

Just one doubt: is it only me or this pedal sounds HORRIBLE when combined with solid-state distortion? Or is it just with my amp? I own a Behringer Ultraroc GX110 amp... the FX are OK, but the distortion channel is not that good. That's why I bought the pedal.

Looks solid enough to me. But the switch feels kinda weak... just be careful.

No need to so far.

I play everything from Led Zeppelin from Megadeth, including U2 and Pink Floyd. But my favourite band of all is Guns N' Roses. I actually haven't been able to get a very similar sound, but I think that's my pickups' fault. Maybe I'll replace them with Alnico II Pros, someday.

Anyway, I think you can get a whole bunch of different sounds with it. That's what I bought it for... to get versatility. It hasn't disappointed me so far. Of course it can't sound as good as a real thing, but what the hell... it's still a good choice for pocket-conscious guitarists.

takes some tweaking. not used to using frequency and contour, but you'll get used to it. I give it an 8 because there are pedals that house no knobs at all, so i guess they would technically be at least two points higher.

Guitars I used it with: Gibson Les Paul, Fender Stratocaster, Gibson Explorer, Epiphone Sheraton

Amps: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Fender Blues Junior

This pedal is actually not mine. I borrowed it from a friend. I have a Marshall Guvnor (that i find to be mediocre) and thought i would check this out for a heavier distortion for when i play covers. I found this thing to be incredibley muddy, even when using the strat and with the bass down and the highs up. The overdrive mode is not what you would think would be your subtle overdrive, but its actually just a DISTORTION channel, with a little less distortion than the distortion mode. It is noisy, but its a distortion pedal so that is to be expected. That didnt bother me. This also suffers from the same problem as my Guvnor; too much mud, not enough bite. I own a Marshall JCM2000DSL and this didnt sound anything like. Of course i knew that i wouldnt hit the tone head on, i wasnt expecting it, but i didnt even get a caricature tone from this pedal. I'm sure if you played heavy heavy metal and used just your bridge humbucker with high output, this would sound okay, but i'd look elsewhere for heavy distortion. I'd try a Rat, Jekyll & Hyde, or even one of the Boss distortion pedals. This is not that bad, but not good.

built like a mini-tank

I play jazz, blues rock, and a lot of britrock. I cover a lot of 90s alternative as well. This has way too much mud for my tastes. If it were stolen, i'd buy my friend a Maxon SD-9 or something and I'm sure he wouldnt mind cos I know hes not a fan of this pedal either. I found a usable tone on OD mode, but it wasnt that great and i certainly wouldnt pay $80. In fact, I have my guvnor up for sale in the local shop under consignment. If you're interested in this pedal, definitely try it out before you buy it. It may be good for heavy metal, but it doesnt do me much good. Marshall makes it seem much more versitile than it really is.

While I love the wide range of solid tonal options available with this pedal(dist/overdrive,bass/treble, Gain/Volume,Contour/freq), I think the pedal and the stacked knobs are just too small. the controls are straight forward and intuitive. Thumbs up on the contour controls.

For amps, I use only hand-wired tube amps. I have a modified Blackface 67 bassman, a Vibroking, Budda Twinmaster, and a Simmons Amplification 18 watt class A amp.

*********The previous reviewer was probably having a hard time with this pedal because he was using a Boogie. This pedal is very mid-rangy, and great at darkening really bright Fenderish amps. I had a Boogie Mark 4 that I loved/hated for many years. The joke about Boogies is that they have 4 Channels, 4 power modes, 3 Eq's, 85 Knobs and no way to turn down the mid-range. Beware, the Jackhammer would probably sound like mud with a Boogie.

At the moment, I am playing fenders again because I love having a convincing clean sound for rhythm. I like the Jackhammer because it can discreetly darken the shrillness of a Fender amp.

The Jack Hammer is becoming my favorite distortion/overdrive pedal. Although it was marketed for the New Metal crowd, I have found it to be entirely versatile. Yes, it is great for a huge Punk/Metal rhythm or lead sound(like a Boss Metalzone minus the Razorblades), but with the gain turned way down it works for a slighty dirty bluesy clip(kind of like an alternative to a TS-808.)It is dirt cheap too. I bet if you renamed and hand painted these you could sell them for $200 as boutique pedals. I give it a "Ten". This is a must have.

it is all metal. Looks sturdy enough. Time will tell.

Haven't had problems.

I have been playing for 20 years. I play Rock, Punk, Blues, Fusion, Funk, some metal, etc. I have and have had metric but-loads of pedals and gear, I have a Maxon 350 Phaser, down to the crappiest gear you will ever hear. The Jackhammer reminds me about everything that i liked about my Marshall JMP 100 half stack, minus the ear damage and the back pain.

Essentially it has 6 variable rotary knobs and 2 modes to select between (O/D and Distortion). I guess it is harder to use that a phase 90 or Dr Q etc but c'mon! it's a stompbox!

This is where you HC-ers gave me major issues. First let me give you a run down; I do NOT own anything with "bandit" or "studio" written on it. I DO NOT have a SS 10W practice amp to run this through with my $100 stock guitar. I DO play in 3 bands; 1) original for the heavy sh!t, 2) Cover band for the $ and a bit of fun (cos cover bands aren't all that bad!), and 3) Alternative/Jazz fusion for the LOVE of it (original). What I do have is a Nomad 100 Head and 4x12 Mesa Recto Standard (ie "oversized") Cab retro fitted with 2 G12T100s in an X pattern with the existing V30s. This rig totally SLAYS for palm muted/heavy/nu/kill small animals styles etc etc. The gain on my Nomad runs around 11 o'clock to 1:30pm on the clock face. Any more and I'm no different to a rich kid with a Dual Recto dialing the gain to 3-5pm. I bought this pedal sight unseen in an attempt to augment my tonal possibilities. (ie include an "authentic" marshall crunch sound or hi gain sound). In this pedal I found neither. I have tried front of amp through clean channel, back of amp fx loop mixed between 30% and 90% and in combination with the Nomad's gain channels (2&3) either out front or back. I have tried with batteries and with power supply. I have run bassy eqs, flat eqs, trebly eqs, scooped eqs and everything in between on both settings. I have searched and searched for jcm 800 primal barks and smoother modern marshall tones. nothing. NOTHING but muffled, polite wanna-be distortion. This pedal is watered down crap dragged from the MG/AVT circuits (don't believe me - read the manual!!!). This pedal does not belong anywhere near the pedal board of anyone who knows tone. The guitar processor I used as a little kid beats this paperweight to the moon and back(zoom gfx 707). It has been used with both batteries and appropriate power supply. Ugh. Shame on you for soiling your already shoddy name Jim!

In it's new life as a $140 paperweight it will never fail

ha! ha! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

Look, I only gave it a rating of "3" so you'd read this review. Personally I tend to ignore the reviews that give ratings like "1" to sound quality because they are more to do with RELIABILITY than SOUND QUALITY. I rated this higher in an attempt to get YOU to read this. I would really give the sound quality a "1". Look I'm gonna be blunt. I love good tone and I don't care where I get it. Fender, Marshall, Mesa, Framus; don't own any Bogner or VHT though so can't comment. I am not a "brand snob". Yeah right now I am using a mesa rig live but I still know that there are some things Mesa gets shat on for that other brands excel at. If you are just starting with guitar and/or have pretty rudimentary gear then you might like this pedal. It may even improve your sound. And don't get me wrong - I'm not going to knock that or dis that or whatever because let's face it - we were all beginners once and back then you don't REALLY know good tone (case example - I used to own not only the zoom gfx 707 but also the 505 !!!ugh!!!). But if you have reached the stage where your awareness of music is broader or you are a semi pro/pro muso then I would steer WELL clear of this pedal. For my money there's nothin like a warm tube amplifier.

Be prepaired to sit down with it and adjust all of the knobs exactly how you like them. It can take up to five minutes.

I am using an Ibanez GRX-40 and a 30-watt Marshall solid-state amp.
The pedal has two settings: Overdrive and Distortion. Its a little buzzy on the overdrive channel but thats not too bad. However, the volume is greatly reduced on the distortion channel and that's not good. This footpedal is best suited for Nu-Metal (Slipknot, ect.). The best part of this footpedal is the overdrive channel.

The battery is drained as long as the footpedal is plugged in to anything (even when everything is turned off). Buy the adaptor for it and only use the battery when you absaloutely need to.

I pretty much play all styles of music and even though this footpedal is best suited for nu-metal, it sounds great for anything. But that is probably because it creates the exact sound that I seek. I don't much care for the distortion channel. The overdrive channel, however, is great: It can grind out monster sound that could sheer the Earth into pieces with its raw power. As I've said before, it is best suited for nu-metal but it is absaloutely great for everything else as well.

Bottom Line: Buy it. Great sound. Great price.

Out of the box it's not too bad. The manual has some helpful settings that can get you in the general ballpark of where you're trying to go. Most of the stuff is straight forward, but the contour and frequency took me a while to find a favorable sound. Classic Marshall overdrive and a switch for heavier distortion, which seems to add lots of low end make this fairly versatile.

Not bad for an inexpensive distortion pedal.

As I said above. For an inexpensive distortion pedal that gets you in the neighborhood of the "marshall sound", this pedal sounds pretty darn good. I've tried more expensive pedals proclaiming to give you the Marshall sound, but I took the recommendation of a buddy who said "if you want the Marshall sound, get a Marshall pedal". I initially dismissed this thinking there was no way a cheap pedal could sound good through a Fender Twin just because it said Marshall on it. Well, to my surprise, he was right. I don't think it's exactly spot on, but it compliments my Fulldrive2 and HAO Rumble Mod quite well. For AC/DC and other punchy rock and roll, the Jackhammer is convincing enough for me. At low volume levels on my amp, the pedal seems to have this weird, compressed sound that almost sounds like a flanger is hiding somewhere inside. It's not too pronounced, however, and once the amp volume is up, I don't notice that whooshy sound as much. Leaving it on Overdrive only, I notice this thing can get really gainy really fast. Perhaps I would have been better suited with the Guvnor, but by rolling back on the gain and the treble, I get some neat JCM 800 sounds. Like I said, not perfectly authentic, but for $60.00, it's a cheap Marshall sounding alternative to buying a seperate Marshall head and cabinet and then having to crank it for the classic Marshall tones. The frequency and contour knobs can get a bit irritating as the contour controls the amount of mid-range and the frequency provide either high or low-end. Both of these controls are extra sensitive and one turn too far in either direction, and it sounds bad. Subtle tweaking are required with both these controls. The gain goes from subtle to extra fizzy quickly too, so be careful with this one unless you are all for extra high gain. For those of you looking for the plexi or JCM 800 sound, you will want to back off the gain and ease the treble back and you're in business.

Overall, I'm happy with the way this pedal sounds. For not a lot of money, I can get a ballpark Marshall sound.

Don't know. I've had it a few months, but have only taken it out once. It stays fastened to my pedal board and I'm careful when tapping on the footswitch. Being made in China and looking at the cost/quality ratio, I'm sure these guys cut corners somewhere. I've read on prior reviews that the switch has failed. I'm careful anyway, but try and be extra careful with the jackhammer. I'd be confident I could take it to a gig and it would work fine. My others pedals probably have just as much vulnerability to the stresses of packing/unpacking and being stepped on, so that's just the way it is. I'll rate it an 8. It's worked for me thus far, but the China factor leaves me suspect.

Never had to deal with them and I'll leave this blank.

I like all types of music. In 20 years of playing, I've studied jazz, standard rock and roll, country picking and blues. I like all types and go through various phases. Eventually I do want the real sound and feel of an actual Marshall head and cabinet. But, with my current small availability of living space and a car that does not like having large object put into it, I'll settle for my Twin and pedals. Actually, the Twin is not a complete joy to carry around either, and trying to fit it into the backseat of a small two-door coupe can be tricky. But that's another story......

As far as this pedal goes.....If you're like me and want to toy around with some Marshallesque sounds, this pedal isn't all that bad. It's not great, but I've yet to see a pedal advertised to give you the Marshall in a pedal that is. I've found a useable tone that will most likely stay un-touched for AC/DC tones and other macho 80s rock sounds. My SG loves this pedal by the way, and my Guild Starfire sounds cool through it too. My single coil guitars don't find this pedal too amusing though. I don't consider this pedal all too versatile for my needs, but others might. I never use the distortion setting as I feel it offers too much fabricated low-end. The Jackhammer is kind of guilty of having the same sonic effect the tube screamer has on me, which is sounding like canned distortion. The Tubescreamer reminds me of Stevie Ray Vaughn in a can, and the Jackhammer is similar to canned Scorpions. But, as I said, when you consider the cost and the psuedo-Marshall-like tones you can achieve with a fairly cheap pedal, it's fair to say I've made room for it on my pedalboard.

Features : a switch to change between an overdrive and a distortion, treble control, bass control, gain control, dirt volume control, contour amount and contour frequency controls. Most of it is pretty simple, but those contour things took me a few minutes to figure it out. Once you get used to it, its easy enough for me. One thing though, Marshall stupidly put small black marks on silver knobs, hence it is impossible to see without decent light, my solution was to go over the black marks with tippex, problem solved :)

Oh and just so you know, contour adjusts how much the mid range is cut and the freq knob changes where it cuts it, so together you get a semi-parametric EQ. Take the freq knob down and you'll get a more kinda Fender-amp mid cut sound, turn it up and it becomes more like a Marshall-amp (the ones that don't have the contour knob) mid cut

This is part of my uberpedal board, which I cannot be bothered explaining. The pedalboard basically has a clean and a dirt channel, and I put the Jackhammer in the clean channel as I intended to use it as an overdrive, and seemed like the most logical place to put it for easy switching to the dirt channel and a clean sound.

If you keep the gain low, it isn't that noisy, take the gain up and it buzzes in that horrid Marshall way you get from any Marshall amp.

If you turn the contour down quite far, you get a pretty sweet and mellow overdrive, or old-style distortion at higher gain settings. Take the contour up and you get the more nu-metal super-gain-mid-cut sound that seems to be in fashion nowadays.

There doesn't seem to be much gain difference between the overdrive and the distortion settings, just seems to be a tonal difference. Distortion setting is very very bassy, may be your thing, wasn't really mine.

Lots of variation in sounds, but most of it I would never use.

Switching is very quiet, some dirt boxes have an annoying "pop" when they switch.

When I put a chorus or a flange on over this, sounds kinda naff, but I've not really experimented much with it.

Crybaby before this pedal sounds beautiful (if the gain is kept low, as always)

I've heard lots of bad things about the switch. From what I've seem, the switch works using a pin and a plastic toggle thinger, and when the switch breaks its the plastic wearing away. The switch looks kinda pants, but this pedal was a hell of a lot cheaper than the others in the shop, so I don't really care.

A friend of mine had one and the switch died, but he jumped on it to switch it, I gently push my switching buttons. If it does break though, I'm just gonna buy a proper DPDT switch and wire it up in the current switches place with a couple of wires. Changing the switch would still be cheaper than buying one of the other pedals I tried out.

Pots and jacks seem solid enough.

I would probably gig without a backup, but I always have something up my sleeve just incase, its good practise ;)

Its a 6 because the switch looks pants.

Never bothered with them, and frankly don't want to. The shop I got it from will handle the warranty.

I play old punk, rock, cheesy hair metal, funk, jazz, who knows what else. I was after a good overdrive and this gave me it. Been playing 4 years so far (which somewhat invalidates my opinions, because after 4 years what the hell could you possibly know?) If it was lost or stolen, I would cry because it would mean my whole pedalboard would have gone.

One minor niggle I have with this is the contour and the freq knobs kinda stick together when you take the contour up high, but I don't do that anyway so I don't care that much. Pedal does sound fantastic with the gain really really low, so you get that valve just overdriving sound thing (browning I think its called, did I imagine that?)

It enhances my sound, but wouldn't really say it helps me write :P Gives me a nice inbetween for buildups when I switch from clean and dirt.

If you wanna hear clips of it in songs and stuff, wait a while and go to my website (www.guff.tk) and listen to it, I'm gonna start recording with it on my pedalboard soon.

Not the easiest effect to use but that's because of the impressive range of different sounds.

I use a Westfield PRS-style guitar through the jackhammer, a bespeco volume pedal and a marshall dfx-100 amp. prodices far less noise than my bandmate's boss metal zone pedal, and is a lot more versatile. The "distortion" setting is a bit muffled for my liking so I use the overdrive setting, even though I have a very heavy sound (Poison the well, system of a down etc.). The gain sounds great when it's at full but crap at less than half, even for lighter playing styles. Sounds especially good with as much bass as possible and slightly less treble.

It's served me well for the past six months or so, and is built like the proverbial brick shithouse.

I've never had to deal with them, but I would assume such an experienced company would know how to treat their customers.

For the heavy style I play with, it is pretty damn good. It's a bit complicated to dial in new settings between songs, so I stick with the contour at full, frequency at mimimum, maximum gain, fairly low volume, full bass and treble at about 3/4. Very good for the low price i paid for it (it was one of the cheapest distortions available). One last thing- if you palm mute on an open chord with full crunchy gain and turn the frequency knob slowly with your left hand, you get a very atmospheric "swooshing" sound. cool.

Only gets a 7. It really takes some time to get the right feeling for all those knobs:
1: Select between OD/Distortion
2: Gain/Volume (it's some weird kinda knobs: one small knob on a bigger one...)
3: Treble/Bass
4: Frequency/Contour (that's the knob hardest to cope with).

There are some basic settings on the first page of the manual (Classic Crunch, Classic Overdrive, Ultra Crunch), which are recommended by Marshall and sound great! Y'should try them first.

When you finally know how to work with the thing, you'll love it! I first thought it would be some heavy metal overdrive (like those ibanez soundtank things), but in fact, ANY sound will benefit from that thing! i stuck it between my peavey guitar and my marshall valvestate amp, and it supports all the types of music i play. for van-halen-like tapping, you can turn the gain all up; for a jazz-like sound, switch to the clean channel of your amp and turn the jackhammer on slightly crunch. it gets noisy when you turn it all up, but thats a problem you have with all od/dist pedals.

It's heavy and it's built from metal. seems unbreakable to me.

Never dealt with them.

No matter what kind of music, guitar or amp you prefer, the jackhammer ain't that expensive but has the great Marshall sound. its better than the marshall shredmaster i have, which i now use as the second od in my fx board. you'll love it!

This thing is really easy to use. Once You've read the manual (which is written in the most important languages) what these knobs are for. But most of them are self-explaning anyway.

I use the pedal with my Yamaha Pacifica 112J (SSH strat-like but I can't afford a real one at the moment) and the sound this thing's creating is AMAZING. You you can get every kind of sound out of it from slight overdrive to dirty broken distortions to those high-gain-sounds all the metalfreaks are using (special thanks to the contour- and freq-knobs). I'm playing Ramones, RHCP's (mostly), Supertones (ska) and others and I don't think I've to tell you this pedal suits well everywhere.

It seems to be very robust. Get's a 9 because te knobs could be a bit more robust. You don't need a backup for a gig!

No probs until now.

I got it as a present so I couldn't compare it to any other pedal but now that I've had this thing for a year I'd say theres no better dist-od-pedal out there. If it was stolen I probably wouldn't buy it again because my Korg AX1500G multieffect has serveral distortion/OD-emulators which are all together as good as my JH and I would save the money in order to buy an american strat.

Takes an hour or so cos this aint ur average distortion/od pedal but once uve got it set you just jump on it and it works. beautiful. The contour is hard to use if your new at this though.

sounds good once youve got what ur looking for. Very little buzz and contour can make this pedal do any sound you want. Beats the DS 1 and the metal zone pedals at both their respective sounds. 6 paramiteres makes everything very customisable too. I wanted to get a Radiohead kind of tone out of it and although im still trying to get the perfect sound it comes close. If you really want the radiohead crunch look for the Marshall Shred master but for any other rock or metal this is perfect.

only had it a day but it looks solid. Nice metal all over. I'd gig it without a backup yeah. i cant afford backups but if i coould i still wouldn't.

i havent dealt with Marshall but 10 out of 10 for piedog (www.piedog) who got the pedal to me (even though its discontinued) for under the RRP and free delivery. It took 3 days to get here and got here the day i needed it (although they say 2-6 days)

Its amazing. Although i havent found the exact tone i want yet its amazingly versatile and ive found tens of useable tones already. Ass with other reviews the dist channel has far too much bass and even with the3 bass knob on nothign it was only average unlike the amazing od. If it was stolen id hunt down whoever stolen and beat them severly with it. If it was broken id cry myself to sleep then go out and buy another. If marshall power without sounding like all the bozos out their with there half stack and combos with les pauls (the unoriginal, er i mean classic, guitar tone) then go out and buy it NOW!

Basically, the same thing applies here as to any piece of equipment; experimentation is the key. The manual is helpful, but your own ear is the best judge of your results. My recommendation is to set your amp flat, then experiment with settings to accommodate your amp.

I've been playing professionally for 36 years, and have rode the wave of every musical style that's transpired in that time. Sound quality is excellent with enough flexibility to meet most needs. I personally use a JCM900, a MG100RCD, and a Peavey Classic 212 with 212 extension cab. I have no idea what this unit sounds like through a small amp, but what is does to large rigs is gratifying.

I haven't had it very long, but it seems to be as bulletproof as any of my other toys. Of course, I don't abuse my gear; it feeds me.

I have no idea; haven't needed any.

This pedal sits in my pedalboard along with a Boss Compressor-Sustainer, a Marshall Supervibe Chorus(also a strong product),a Rockson analog delay, and a Carvin Vintage Wah. It matches well with the other effects, but should be used with a power supply instead of batteries. I have always had good tone, but this unit gave me some flexibility thsat was missing.

bought it march2002. Very Easy to use. Takes a while to know what sound to get if you are a newbie, but if you know about EQs and stuff, you'll get your crunch in no time. Make sure you try it out at first with the manual settings, also, set your amp's EQ to match the EQ on the pedal and you'll get your tone, its important to get the clean tone too.

I run this through a fender strat, Jh-1,and right into a 15watt amp. Due to the sucky overdrive of my amp i decided to get it. When i brought it and got home, i plugged it in and it sounded as crappy as the amp's distorsion. After doing some research online about metal tones, i came up to my room and tried new settings FOR THE AMP and the pedal was a whole new deal, i actually was hearing crunch out of my amp! I bought a boss adapter to run it, the store-clerck recomended me that boss adapter, havent had any troubles with bateries since i never use them. Try it out with this tone if you are after crunchy rythm. : amp: Treb9, mid2, bass3, pres7. Marshall JH-1: Distortion mode (bassY!!!), gain about 2 or 3 oclock, bass on 9o'clock, treb 4oclock, freq 12oclock, contour 4oclock, and enjoy! thats a good trash metal sound, make sure you cut bass.

with the overdrive sound you can get gun-roses's tone by adding lots of mids and trebs, using overdrive mode, its great for leads. since its pure marshall classic. try the settings in the manual and experiment, dont give up. this pedal is versatile. I love the bypass, its for real.

its a little tank. though i think that some paint is comming off, not paint, but like the transparent cover over the paint, it comes off if i scratch it, but still its not noticeable. All potentiometes are still ok and tight, the switch is perfect, and the jacks are tight. I was running down the stairs once with my guitar on my back and the amp on one hand and the JH-1 on top of the amp, and like a bumped to something and moved my arm and the JH-1 flew to the ground (solid tile floor) and nothing happened to it, it was perfect, nothing loose. like a rock. i would gig without a backup, just the name "marshall" on the cover makes me feel warm inside.

no idea. i dont think i need to contact them for any reason.

its god for metal, rock, soft distorsion, cut-through lead. you can have two of them one for rythm in distorsion mode and one for leads in overdrive mode, or you can combine this with your other pedals and amp's drive for booting. If it was stolen id try to get it from ebay or something because its simply the best pedal around in my opinion. Ive heard the boss METAL ZONE, but thats only for metal, and the mids are too cut, say you CANT get a maiden tone with that, its too modern. instead this guy jh-1 can work for many distorsions. i think if you dont have money for a marshall head and want one, get this pedal and you'll get two marshall heads (JCM2000 and JC800) for the price of one. I wish i could play this pedal though a tube amp and a 4x12 cabinet to feel my balls shake when playing a low E, because i think it must sound great with a speaker that powerful. GET IT GOD DAMN IT! TOO BAD MARSHALL DISCONTINUED THESE GREAT PEDALS, you know something the most popular thing (coff coff boss coff ) doesnt really mean the best.

Es sencillo de usar si ya has tenido experiencia con otros pedales; nada complicado.

Lo use con una Ibanez RG370DX (con pastillas DiMarzio X2N en el puente y una Humbucker from hell en el mastil) y con una Gibson Explorer, un ampli Ibanez ToneBlaster 15 y nada mas; esperaba una distorsion mas "limpia" que la obtengo con el overdrive incorporado en el ampli, por mucho suena mejor el OD del ampli. Este pedal tiene dos modos de distorsion "Overdrive" y "Distortion", el primer modo suena bien sin necesidad de poner el Gain al 10, bien para rock; el modo "distortion" es demasiado saturado a mi parecer, aun sin poner el Gain al 10; intente tocar con el algo de Death metal pero suena pesimo para este estilo.

Compre el pedal porque no me convence del todo la distorsion del MT-2, ni el DOD DeathMetal, y ahora me doy cuenta que la distorsion OD del ToneBlaster no esta tan mal; el JackHammer tiene mucha potencia, pero sinceramente no lo recomiendo, creo que hay otros mejores.

Real easy to use, Overdrive/Distortion mode, Gain, Volume, Treble, Bass, Frequency/Contour. The manual gives you some good examples of the possibilities, but I don't use them. It has true bypass.

Here is my setup, G&L Legacy Special -> Morley Power Wah (old Chrome PWO)-> JackHammer -> Crate GXT100, and in the effect loop:Boss CE-3 chorus -> Boss RDD20 delay.
It is not noisy compare with a lot of other Overdrive and distortion I had (Boss OD-1, Boss SD-1, Boss DS-1, Rockman Distortion Generator, TS-9). Unlike the others it doesn't cut your bass (in fact it has a lot, especially on the distortion mode, you even need to remove some either cutting the bass or using the frequency towards the most left and countour towards the most rigth.
It was cheap and looked like new, so I tried it. Well it is a little wonder for me. With all the controls it has, it is the most versatile OD/Dist pedal I owned (not a one trick pony), it can do just a volume boost then from blues up to nu metal. The sounds that come out of it is very natural and controlable with your guitar volume, just like a good amp. I already had a good sound from clean to bleusy to classic rock with my Amp only, but I was lacking some compression, sustain (very long sustain) and that next edge to get more heavy. The Jackhammer just give all that without changing the colour of the sound of my giutar.
I use it mainly set like this: OD mode, vol and gain at 10 o'clock, treble and bass both at 13 o'clock freq and contour closed (7 o'clock). What it does set like this a a small boost and ligth So when I'm on my clean channel with the JH-1 on, volume on the guitar from 0 to 8 the sound stay clean, it is almost transparent, gives just a little increase in volume and compression, raise to guitar volume anywhere from 8 to 10 and I get that nice bleusy crunch. On my first distortion channel that I keep ligth, it can give that that litle boost and control the distortion from bleusy to classic rock sound just changing the guitar volume from 8 to 10. Then on my second distortion channel, I go from classic rock to Oh my God ! again changing the guitar volume from 8 to 10.
So without playing with my guitar volume I have already 6 different sound at the tip of my foot, and with a little change at my volume I can get anything. In that specific setup I forget I have this pedal I just think of it has an enhancement to my amp, like if I did a mod but without having to mess with the tubes.

Is that thing heavy ? It's like the weigth of two Boss pedals. It should be hard to break. I've been using it for almost 1 year. Yes I sold all my other ODs and distortions, I just kept this one.

Beware, I was using it with a batery, the second day I had it, the sound was shitty, at first I tought that it was a shitty piece of gear, that I was just impressed the first nigth and I was about to sell it (yes the red led was on the the batery seemed to be just fine, but I tried it with a transfo (PSA120) and then that beautiful sound was back.

...

I play almost any style (but I mainly enjoy playing Rush, Dream Theater, SRV) and it suites me for everything.I would not imagine my setup without it anymore...Please use a transfo for a good sound.

First off, this is an incredibly versitile distortion pedal, and as far as i'm concerned, can make any amp sound good. Having gotten it second hand, however, it did not come w/ an instruction manual, and I am a bit lost on exactly what part of the sound the contour knob adjusts, and what exactly the difference in sound is supposed to be between the od & distortion, as I can make one sound just like the other by adjusting the bass, mid, treble, and frequency, etc. PDF manuals for pedals on the marshall website would be a good addition.

I use an Ibanez artist w/ DiMarzio PAF Pro's, ibanez rg 6 string w/ a seymour duncan trembucker in the bridge, and an ibanez rg 7 string w/ DiMarzio's. I am playing it through a Marshall JCM 900 4100 series dual reverb head into a marshall 2x12 1936 cab. Admittedly, I use this pedal to play mostly nu metal, and it nails it perfectly. I'm using this pedal as a basis for comparison for what I want my head to sound like naturally (by changing pre-amp tubes out, etc. But seriously, this pedal is agressive, smooth & clear all at the same time. Shred master fans, I think you have a new friend. the only complaint i have, is that since i down tune my guitars (drop D, down 1 1/2 steps) this pedal almost sounds too bassy, even when you pull the bass adjustment back. but it's better than my trebly as hell jcm900 distortion right now, so it gets an 8 (also due to some hiss when not playing and pedal is on)

these things are bulletproof. I own this & the chorus, both are definately indestructable. but hey, anything can break.

never dealt w/ them, and probly never would.

i've been playing for about 6 years, and compared to various other od/distortion pedals (tubescreamer, ds7, boss pedals, tube king, rat) this is definately the most quality constructed, and quality sounding i've played through.if it were lost or stolen, i'd probly get it again, excellent value (65 bucks on ebay if this one dissappears!!) I love the pot-in-pot design, allowing mych more versatility w/ not as much clutter, and just as easy to adjust. plus it's Marshall, c'mon!

It's pretty easy to use, 7 knobs to twiddle in all including a scoop which is very handy. It can take a long time for you to find a setting that fits what you want to play due to the high number of features.

This pedal produces some very good tones. If you have the gain, treble and volume turned up to the max, naturally, it's a little noisy but why the hell would you want it like this anyway?! The distortion is very real, can be very extreme metal or punky, all in all, great sound and because of the amount of features on the pedal, it has many different tonal possibilities

THIS THING IS DAMN HEAVY!!!!! i would definatley depends on this, it's a very sturdy pedal, built like a bomb shelter

never dealt with them but they have contact detail on their websites and stuff

modern sounding distortion. 2 modes, OD and dist. Has gain and volume, bass and treble.
In addtion a bandpass filter with Q. This is what gives this pedal an edge over other pedal. sset the bass and treble, then tune the filter for ANY varity of
effect. No manual with mine- I am sure you could copy other tones, but this
pedal lets you find your own tone. spend time with it. It is NOT a set and forget, but a tweaker's pedal.

Made is USA predator strat copy into a 68 fender champ.
Can get any level of OD, dist, lead sound I want. The champ loves to be pushed by the pedal. Jackhammer plays well with other OD pedals too.

metal case, strong feeling. would gig without backup.

called support - which is korgUSA. they got me a replacement pot free and they had to salavge one form another pedal...super service.

Great pedal. I have try a dozen OD pedals this year and I am keeping this one. The other is a home built real tube pedal... The EQ and bandpass fitler make this a versital pedal. get one if you can.

Very easy to use, and one of the most versatile pedals I've seen. The filter knob allows you to reach a wide sort of tones. Nothing to complain about this item.

I use a Washburn Wi-64 with two Gibson 496R, or a Danelectro U-1 1964... Then into a Bheringer Ultratwin or an old one channel tube amp... And of course, my Vox v810 and Dunlop Wha.
The Marshall pedal so noisy that is unusable, Bassy, lacks of definition. The Distortion mode is muddy, the overdrive one has more character, but no as good as I exspected from Marshall.
I've sold mine to buy a Boss GP-20... much better.
Perhaps you can have a nice vintage tone... Deep Purple or something like that, but not in a good way.

As far as I can see, the unit seems to be very strude. The knobs are hard and very thigt.

Neve dealt whit the company.

I play almost everithig but metal. In this days I'm around radiohead and sonic youth... My main guitarists are Page and Gilmour... I've played for 15 years, and owned a lot of stuff... and now I'm very desapointed of the Jh-1... Don't buy this thing, there are better options, like Rocktron or the analog pedals by zoom... if you can find one.

Compared to most other floor pedals, the JH-1 is not "easy" to use. But it actually IS easy to use once you understand what everything does.
Always learn about the features. With familiarity comes ease of use. Simple.

I use an Ibanez GAX70, stock hummbuckers, Super Slinkies, ultra-thin picks, Marshall MG100DFX, Hughes & Kettner Tubeman (original).
Bottom line: the Jackhammer is an excellent distortion pedal. The amount of sound sculpting options is very very useful. It is a 2-channel pedal (OD and Distortion) with volume, gain, bass, treble options and also a frequency dial and a contour dial. This pdeal can dial in a vast amount of different types of sounds, once you get the hang of it. The contour and frequency dials give this pedal the edge over the rest of them, I think. Works best on my amps clean channel, and along with the Hughes & Kettner TUBEMAN (a piece of GENIUS and an awesome box in its own class that makes people go: "aah, ooh... wooow dude, wow awesome..." and the amps 3 band EQ and gain (and built-in effects), I have been able to find every guitarists sound that I've attempted to find and a whole lot that I didn't think were possible or legal.
My fave guitarists are Ulrich Roth, Robin Trower, Al Di Meola, Frank Zappa, Frank Marino (of Mahagony Rush fame), of course Eddie Van Halen, Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Mr. Vai. And that new kid from Sweden, Mathias "Ia" Ecklund... Pretty much all those who I'll never be able to play like... ahhaha.
The Jackhammer can pretty much do it all... with the right support pieces in place.

Built very well, but I my boxes aren't "stomp" boxes, they are "tap" boxes, so I doubt anything will ever break mechanically. Electronically, things are still good.
Would I gig without a backup? Never good not to have a backup, but if I had to, I would.

Never had the opportunity.

Currently I play bluesy-jazzy-metal. Great match due to the vast amount of different sounds I can find hidden in the dials. I've been playing on and off for 20 years, recently started going strong again. I would absolutely buy this one again. Together with the "pretty good" Ibanez GAX70 and humbucker dualies, the pure SS Marshall MG100DFX (a great solid state amp, but still not a tube amp, oh well) and the legendary TUBEMAN to soften the tone for the ss amp (the Tubeman has some brutal and very wicked distortion all on its own for those who love that stuff).
I've heard some very negative stuff about the Jackhammer... not that I'm the SOUND GOD, but these kids don't know what the heck they're talking about.
But, as usual: One persons poison is another persons medicine.

You see, it can really sound like 2 eggs in a mixer, because of the contour and frequence potis. But if you spend some houres in understanding how it works you won't understand why some people need a hundred different knobs&buttons for presence, special voicings etc.

For Distortion/overdrive I only use, a BOSS SD-1 (like a tubesreamer, imo it's more what i'm looking for than a ts), After the boss there's the jackhammer and this goes into a Marshall 9004, a Pearl Poweramp, and something like a boogie 4X12" (Victor Smolski (Rage) uses the same ones). Or into a Fender TubeChamp with a 1x12" Fender Speaker, which I primary use for Blues, Funk, or some kinds of alternative rock. First, I don't like the Overdrive Sound of the Jackhammer, it sounds like a electrice shaver but the Distortion mode is soooo fuckin' cute. You can stile your sound from evil nu-metal sounds to classic rock sounds like def leppard, without loosing the typical marshall sound that I love so f- much. What I like about the pedal too is that it sounds like a marshall no matter in what kind of amp you plug it in. (k, if you use a pig nose or a 15w SolidState noname with 6.5" Speaker, it may sound not as good as into a middle class amp ;-)) You can also boost the sound fuckin cute, eg with a tubescreamer or a SD-1, an get unbelievabel cute high-gain solo-sounds out of this pedal. You also can use it for grunged open chords, or Punk or stuff like that. Can't tell you'bout what's about soft blues sounds, never tried it ;). I promise, you'll get happy and youll never miss a knob for eq of the middles. The only reason it don't gets 10 points, is the Overdrive function which really sounds not as good as you'll expect by the name. But nbody forces you to use the overdrive sound. You'll never get anything else for that money.
PS: Don't use with 7-string guitars, it sounds too muddy an you can't define clear notes only one big roooaaaar. I suppose to use the ibanez 7 String distortion.

Built like a tank. It's on the road with me all the time and I have never only thought about buyin' a backup.

N.C. I've never needed the customer support.

To get an instantly good sound only takes a few seconds of tweaking (providing you have more intelligence than a housebrick) but to get a perfect sound may take longer, but the controls are very good and allow and awesome array of tones. Even if you dont understand what the freq and contour controls do im sure you using your ear you can create your perfect tone. If (like me) you understand the controls then it will be a doddle!

I use a Maverick X1 in to a 15w marshall valvestate at home and in rehersal it is Maverick x1 --> ed 1 compressor --> jh 1 jackhammer --> boss noise supressor --> marshall mg100hdfx.

Ive had the pedal for 24 horus and im nothing but impressed with it! I have been using a boss metal zone in rehersal with band, but this thing shits on it everywhere! The metal zone is fasle, tinny and metalliic and there is no real body to the sound whatsoever , but this Jackhammer is brilliant! I can achieve pretty much any sound I want fairly easily and it is a convincing siulation of real tube distortion. I play hard rock to metal and it satisfies all the way. It does things the Metal Zone couldnt dream of and more. When practising at hoem i can get some really good blues tones by having the gain on about 9 o'clock.

Alot of people are saying how they dislike the distortion channel. Like everyone has said it is very bassy if u switch from overdrive to distortion, but if you tweak the settigns you can get a very useable sound from it. Also, for any stoner rock fans, you can get a superb Kyuss like sound on the oevrdrive channel, especially if u use a down tuned guitar and a neck pickup.

Very solidly built

should be ok

Veyr good pedal. If you want a pedal that can pretty much get any kind of rock, hard rock blues tone u want then this is the one. Its much better than the false fizzy boss metal zone and has more balls to the sound

I got this lovely pedal for christmas, and have just about got the right sound for me, it has alot of god sounding settings you can find if you mess around on it for a while but because of the 7 dials it makes it very hard to find the exact tone you want, but isnt too hard to get close.

the manual that comes with it is useless, the pre-sets in it are not very good at all.

I use this pedal with a dunlop crybaby an Ibanez RG1570L and a behringer GX212.

i have to say the sound depends on your equipment entirely, i tried this pedal on my behringer and i got a nice warm vintage sound, then i treid my peavy practise amp with it on the exact same settings and got a heavy crunchy metaly sound.

its not the pedals fault if it sounds crap, its your setup!

You could depend on this with your life, its built like a tank, it will never EVER break, althought the only downside is if you leave your leads in it then it will kill your batteries.

N/A

I play variouse different styles of music, from idlewild style indie, to muse, to german industrial like rammstein, it is perfect for all of these.
I have been playing guitar for over a year and deffinately kicks my old Zoom 505's arse, this pedal rules.
If it was stolen or lost i would cry, then after wipeing the tears from my eyes, i would buy an electro harmonix big muff.
My favourite feature is the overdrive, it just...... sounds amazing, although the distortion is crap it has waaaaaay waaaaaaaay too much bass even with the treble on full and the bass on lowest.
the only thing i wish it had was a seperate setting witho nly one dial *your favourite sound* then it would be much easyer.

it is the best value for money distortion pedal too, ive tryed boss distortion pedals in shops that were double the price of this anbd this tops them by miles.

if you have any christmas money, go down to your local music shop and BUY IT, if they dont have it beat them with the nearest marshall product you can find and buy it online.

It takes a while to find your optimal sound with this pedal because it gives you so many possible, usable(!) settings.
You definately find your sound if you invest enough time.

My setup is very simple, just the jackhammer and a JD Crybaby into a JCM 800 Head. I play a les paul standard. At home its the same setup into a small Peavy blazer combo ( it sucks but it's cheap, ok for a beginner ). With the JCM 800 I just use it as a boost: Amp allmost fully overdriven, JH: little gain, OD Setting and I don't use the contour control. I can get a great, extremely crunchy, heavy, crunchy metal sound. But it never sounds unnatural or synthetic, but keep your fingers on those strings because you might get feedback. A problem is that I don't use this sound for all songs, I also need the pure marshall sound. That's why I was happy about the true bypass, but when i first used it, to make it short: definetely NO true bypass.
I also use the Jackhammer with my Peavy and here it shows its real talents. I can get allmost every sound and most important, the little shit combo sounds amazingly good. Plugged directly into the PC I can get a Sound that definately sounds very much like my marshall. The Settings suggested in the manual are a good basis. So try it!
9 Points for the fake true bypass

It will last forever, oh well at least for 6 months, thats how long I have it. No seriously, It's built very solid, very very very solid.

Dunno

I play Heavy Metal, Rock, Speedrock, Blues for some years and I really like thos pedal but I will try some with true bypass in future.
But check it out and buy it! It's worth the cash.

no problem, just tweak gently because its takes a bit of time to find
the sweet spot

i use it with more distortion units and sound is
good and warm and marshally (yes for a small unit, not so for real)
its a bit noisy like every unit but its not a problem.

dont buy it new its not worth 80-90$ but its good for 50$
and if you have saved 90$ than dont buy a dist unit for that price
from boss or marshall (and similars) - just save another 90$ and some tube units - because one tube unit is better than 2 boss style units - their is no escape about the issue of having good dist sound.

its true bypass -which is great so it doesnt mess up with your signel

it seems good except the bypass butten
that i know some units has a problems (if you have luck than no problems)...

for 50$ its the best thing you can buy so find a used one.
and dont sell it until you have a truely better sound from a better unit

There are more knobs to mess with than on some other pedals like the RAT or MXR, and they can be daunting at first. I found that after playing with it for a few hours I got a feel for what each control does and how to use them

I use mainly a slightly modified jackson soloist, and a fender princeton 112. i also have a zoom gfx 4. I thought at first it would be difficult to get good distortion with the fender (the amps distortion is crap for a start), but with a bit of fiddling it sounds great, and this is on distortion mode on the pedal:
I plug my guitar straight into the JH-1, use the onboard eq to get a straight distortion. Then i use the 3 band eq on the gfx4 to tweak the sound. This is really a useful feature, and I recommend that anyone using a distortion pedal uses some sort of Eq. It vastly increases the potential of the pedal. I found that by bringing the mids down slightly on the gfx4, I can get just that extra bit more distortion from the JH without the harshness I would usually expect.
the contour and frequency knobs are vital for the distortion mode. they can be used to eliminate that excessive bass that a lot of reviewers mentioned. Yes the distortion mode is verry, verrry bassy, but its better to have that bass in reserve, and be able to just mix it out with the contour and freq. there are loads of sounds in this, and a lot of good ones.

its pretty heavy, and has a solid metal case, so it seems very reliable. I would use it without a backup purely because I cant afford to have two of each pedal. It doesnt eat batteries too fast, as long as you TAKE OUT THE INPUT LEAD WHEN NOT PLAYING, this turns of the battery

This is a really, really useful pedal, there are lots of great sounds in it, and by getting just a cheap EQ pedal to go with it you can increase its potential so much. Its become vital to my sound, distortion/OD is my most commonly used effect, so I need a good one, and this is it. The contour and frequency knobs are great.

Easy to use, I like a lot of knobs and options to play with. Very difficult to see the knobs in dimm light.

By it self it is good for overdrive and such but for extream heavyness,I found it to be lacking. By placing an EQ pedal before it makes this scream. Any cheap EQ pedal will do. On the EQ I boost the the mids and reduce the the lows and highs. This moves this to Metal zone teterrtory but with more of an organic tone. Fast and tight. You can do this with many distorion pedals to achieve the same result. I wish it could sound like this with out the addition of the EQ.

It has not had a problem yet.

I bought it off of e-bay. No warranty.

I play metal in a heavy band for nothing and bass in a country band for money. Playing for about 25 years. I might buy it again if it was lost or stolen but i have a lot of other stuff I could use. The pedal by itself is ok but kicking in the EQ before it creates more musical options.

fairly easy to use, lots of dials to mess around with! Instructiuon manual a bit vague, but that's life.....

Great sound quality, brilliant for metallica or guns n' roses. I'm playing it through my marshall mg250DFX(kick ass amp), and it rocks. Very good at HIGH drive levels.

okay, the metal case shoule be reliable, and is. But the actual switch broke on mine, and i don't use it THAT much. I would have gigged without a backup, before it broke.

THEY ARE RUBBISH. I've sent them several e-mails asking what to do about the broken footswitch, and 3 weeks later i've had NO replies. They suck, they are good when you want to buy, but ignore you when something breaks......

it's a kick ass pedal, but with a dodgy footswitch, and poor customer service. i would reccomend it to anyone, but i'd warn them that if it breaks you're screwed.

It's very easy to get some sound out of it, but you have to be very carefull to mach the perfect sound. The manual couldn't help better. Simple operation, simple pedal, great sound.

Using an Epiphone SG G400 and having a great experience with it. But you must know that you can't use this baby without some gain. This thing was developed to be used with gain control at high levels. It's not for the blues, it's not for popmusic, it's not for country. This thing was built to hard rock and heavy metal.

This thing is a rock. Stepproof, kickproof, sandproof, sweatproof, gigproof, liveplayingproof.

No deal with the company. No damages. No problems.

I like to play rock and heavy rock music. benn playing for 10 years. lost or stolen buy another for sure. If you have not enough money to get a Marshall combo, you should try this unit.

It has many dials that range from a OD/distortion switch, a gain/volume knob, bass /treble knob, countour(used to add a treble presensence)/ frequency knob (Used to add a bassy presence). You have to play around with all these features to get a good setting but, what I found is that lessening the frequency and increasing the countour allows for a better sound.

I trying this pedal out with my two amps, the peavey rage (Cheap model) and the Roland Cube 30. The pedal produces clear glassy tones although the prevailing issue i had with thing was that it continously gave off to much bass. As I mentioned above I got rid of this problem by decreasing the frequency and increasing the contour which made the pedal sound better. Overall the pedal on its own lacks a warm character and sounds quite dry. As other reviewer mentioned the Overdrive setting gives off a best sound that is warm (lacking punch however) while the distortion setting has a to much of a bassy hash. At this point I figured this pedal was mediocre at best and I was planning on returning it until I mixed the overdrive setting with my amps distortion which as a result, brought a new life to the sound of my amp and this pedal. I was able to similute most any amp model and distortion effects I can think of such as the marshall the mesa boogie amp, a metal sound or a 60's hard rock sound. I was able to get different levels of distortion by tweaking the volume and amp dial on my amp along with the volume knob on the guitar and doing all that gave me great range to obtain a sound I liked. My conclusion is that this is a very good overdrive pedal that mixes well with an amps distortion and thats what it should be valued for.

Its built with a solid metal shell including the dials so I would think it would do well with heavy usage during a gig.

overall I like the wide range of distortions im able to achieve when I use this to overdrive my amps distortion so I'm rating this pedal on that basis alone. Otherwise the pedal on its own doesnt really sound that special although It would be usefull for blues or jazz on the amps clean setting. I however like playing hard rock (AC/DC, Hendrix) and especially metal(Metallica, Black Sabbath) which is why I got this thing and it definantly achieved those sounds to my liking once I got it mixed with my amps distortion.

It has a lot of knobs and is quite hard to get a good tone at the beginning, but after a while it will become very easy to use.

My setup is either a Washburn strat (with seymour duncan humbucker full shred and single coil) or Yamaha strat (with seymour duncan distortion humbucker) into a morley wah, into my jackhammer and into a peavey blazer 15w practise amp. If you put the gain too high, it will get a bit noisy. The lead distortion mode can be too bassy or mushy, so i cut of some of the mid/bass frequency with the contour knobs.I like to keep the gain to around 4 or 5. You can get sum 41, van halen and megadeth tones quite easily out of this pedal.

Quite dependable, but you have to check the battery often. Its a good idea to change the batteries before a gig though. I would use it on a gig without a backup!

never dealt with them.

It is a good match for playing blues, metal and most kinds of rock. I would try to get another one if it was lost or stolen. I usually like to use the distortion mode. It is warmer and hi gain than the overdrive mode. The overdrive mode is good for boosting the amps crunch (when used on low gain settings). This pedal has huge amounts of gain and is incredibly versitile.

I really spended a lot of time tweakin' those 6 knobs!
But once I really understood what they do, I can found my sound in seconds!

My setup is: Samick LSE (les Paul) with Duncan Custon and Stewmac pickups. >> Onerr(Tech 21 Killer Whail) Fat Boy Wah >>> Onerr Compressor (muuuuch better and less noise that boss) >>>Marshall Jackhammer >>> Meteoro Vulcano (clean with jackhammer for solos, Drive channel as a modern Metallica Style distortion) >>> BOSS BF2 (loop) >>> Some delay and chorus in the future, i don't buy it yet.
This unit is a really high-quality tube-like distortion, not noise if you consider that high level of gain and compression.
With a very good dynamic response, the 2 modes gives you lots of options of Marshall Style high gain distortion (JCM 800, JCM 900 and JCM 2000).
The overdrive mode has more treble, less bass and less mids and body.
I can find a good Malmsteen distortion only adding a compressor.
The distortion mode gives a more compressed, dark and singing distortion, with lots of depht (bass, a lot of bass to!). A lot of people dislike this mode, but I use the contour knob to cut off some mid-bass frequencies and put the bass down and the treable high and can find a very well defined, singing and full distortion.
Try another pedal if you are searching for a MESA/Boogie style distortion, maybe a sansamp or that new MD2. I use the drive channel od my amp to achieve a Metallica style of distortion.

The switch broked once. But the padal is very well built.

The Brazilian GTR (autorized tecnical assistence) was very helpful and quick!

I play Hard Rock, Progressive, Metal and Blues at home and Hard Rock, Metal and some Nu Metal (not that ones with that fuckin' bad taste rap vocals as linking park and limp biskit, witch I really Hate!!!) with my band. This pedal covers a lot of territory.