History Of The Jackson Guitar by Johnny Stall

The Company by the name of Charvel Guitar Repair made the first Jackson guitar for Randy Rhoads of Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot fame. Grover Jackson and Wayne Charvel were partners of the company with Charvel having his name on the guitars. On November 10th 1978, Jackson bought out his partner and took control of the company.
A couple of years later in 1980, Grover Jackson and Randy Rhoads got together and began working on the first "Rhoads" guitar. Grover Jackson decided to put his own name on Randy's guitar because he thought it looked too shocking for regular Charvel customers. All the guitars that were made with the company up to this point had the Charvel name on the headstock of the guitar and their designs were almost identical to the Fender Strat.
Speaking of headstocks, the Jackson headstock is very similar to the Gibson Explorer's droopy designed headstock in shape except the Jackson is pointier at the end of it. Other models of the Jackson also had this same pointy style with the difference being that the tip of the headstock points up instead of down. The Jackson guitar is also known for the shark fin design of their fret inlays.
From 1979 all the way to 1986, their factory was located in San Dimas, California before moving to Ontario, California.
In the 80's and the first part of the 90's, Jackson guitars were very popular with the Heavy Metal and Thrash genres of music. The design of the Jackson guitar is sleek and stylish and fit the guitarists of that era perfectly. Artists such as Phil Collen and Rick Savage (Def Leppard), Vinnie Vincent (Kiss), Dave Mustaine (Megadeth), Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot) and Robbin Crosby (Ratt) to name a few.
In 2002, the Jackson and Charvel Guitar Company were bought by Fender Guitars and moved to a factory in Corona, California. This caused some bad feelings for quite a few of the loyal Jackson guitar players and a lot of the artists that promoted their guitars in the 80's and 90's jumped ship and went on to endorse other guitar manufacturers.
Today the Jackson guitar is still very popular, especially in the Heavy Metal genre. There are still a lot of talented guitarists who perform with Jackson guitars because of their great quality and cool design. Some of the more recent Jackson users are Matt Tuck (Bullet For My Valentine), Frank Aresti (Fates Warning and Dark Day Sunday), Metal Mike Chlasciak (Halford, Sebastian Bach and Painmuseum), Chris Beattie (Hatebreed), John Campbell and Mark Morton (Lamb Of God), Phil Demmel (Machine Head and Vio-lence), Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne and Black Label Society), Derrick Green (Sepultura), James Root (Slipknot and Stone Sour) and Serj Tankian (System of a Down).
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