Home Recording Articles, Tips, Tricks and Advice

Marshall JH-1 ‘The jackhammer’ – Review and Test.

The Jackhammer is a funny pedal, the controls are fiddly and  the Distortion is hopeless but the overdrive is very usable indeed.

I picked mine up on ebay for a very good price. Therefore this review and test is based on the price I paid which was under £20.

Like I said the controls are fiddly, the contour and freq control are really hard to seperate so when you turn the Contour knob the Freq knob turns also.

The Distortion is terrible, I A/B’d it with a few other distortions I have and no matter how much fiddling I did it just didn’t come anywhere near to what I wanted.

That said the Overdrive is better than I expected especially when you take the dismal Distortion into account.

It’s got a very AC/DC vibe about it, it allows you to get some really crunchy sounds and sounds excellent on open chords with the right settings.

Getting the settings is the problem, too many knobs in a very small space and they’re stacked.

The Gain knob is onto of the Volume Knob, the Treble sits on the Bass Knob and the Freq sits above the the Contour.

After some messing I managed to get a sound that suited my Fender Champion and then just used the Gain to dial in more overdrive and it works very nicely.

I have a few different distortions and usually find a good setting and leave them using the guitars volume and tones to alter the sound.

If you’re looking for a distortion/overdrive you can dial different sounds in then it may be an idea to look elsewhere.

If you’re looking for a very usable Overdrive and are willing to fiddle with it then this maybe the pedal for you.

Check out the video below, it’s recorded using a Fender Champion, Fender Telecaster with the toggle switch on the bridge pickup and it’s been recorded using a T-Bone MB75 and not an sm57 as stated in the video.

Sound: 7/10 for the overdrive 2/10 for the distortion

Usability: Too twiddly and trying to do too much on a small box, 4/10