Jackson Audio

Jackson Audio is an offshoot of Jackson Ampworks, the amplifier company⁴⁵. The pedal maker's name appears on its products as Jackson Audio, the company behind the Node and its other effects⁴.

The story of Jackson Audio

Jackson Audio began with the early 2016 conversation between Brad Jackson and Nigel Hendroff about building a company around purpose and values as much as products⁴. Since then the maker has released a steady run of pedals, often announced through the guitar press:

• The Golden Boy overdrive, whose circuit draws on the early 1990s Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal circuit, a design that has also inspired other boutique overdrives⁴
• The Asabi Overdrive/Distortion, a dual-drive pedal created with Mateus Asato; Guitar.com reported the collaboration and later noted the pedal's name was updated to the Asabi⁵
• The Prism, the pedal that introduced Joey Landreth to Jackson Audio, ahead of their later collaborations⁶
• The FUZZ pedal, built around swappable plug-in modules, each containing a complete analog fuzz circuit³
• The Twin Trem, a dual analog optical and harmonic tremolo⁷

Analog cores with digital control

The idea that runs through Jackson Audio's designs is an analog audio path supervised by a digital brain. The maker describes the New Wave chorus/vibrato as a 100% analog signal path with a digital microprocessor controlling it, with speed controllable by an expression pedal⁸. The same thinking shows up in the modular pedals: the FUZZ holds faithful recreations of historic fuzz circuits, each on its own complete analog circuit board³.

The modular approach is central to the FUZZ. Each interchangeable module contains a complete analog fuzz circuit, so swapping modules swaps the entire fuzz voice rather than just a voicing switch⁹. The company pairs this with its analog-with-digital-control philosophy elsewhere in the range: the New Wave, for example, runs a 100% analog signal path with digital microprocessor control⁸.

The Asabi applies the same concept to gain. Jackson Audio's manual calls it the Mateus Asato Signature Pedal and "the world's first pedal to feature analog distortion plug-ins"¹⁰.

Brad Jackson and Jackson Ampworks

Brad Jackson is the figure connecting Jackson Audio to two other names in gear. He is the founder behind Jackson Ampworks, the amplifier company, and the Fulltone USA licensing announcement describes him as "of Jackson Audio and Jackson Ampworks"⁵. No formal merger between the two Jackson companies has been announced, so treat them as closely linked through their shared founder rather than one business.

Fulltone USA under Brad Jackson

Signature pedals and collaborations

Jackson Audio's best-known pedals come from working with named players. The Asabi dual-drive with Mateus Asato was reported by Guitar.com in February 2021 as a brand new dual-drive pedal, with the name later updated to the Asabi¹¹. The Golden Boy Transparent Overdrive was designed in collaboration with Joey Landreth¹², and the Golden Boy Mini followed in July 2023: a transparent overdrive with two clipping responses, wide-ranging gain and a three-band active EQ in a pedalboard-friendly enclosure¹³¹⁴. The Twin Trem with Silvertone carries the collaboration model into tremolo, with parallel Optical and Harmonic tremolo circuits¹⁵.

The range (27)

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