A repair shop, a new owner and a P.O. box.

Jackson began inside another company. In November 1978 the luthier Grover Jackson bought Charvel’s Guitar Repair, a Southern California shop that hot-rodded electric guitars, from its founder Wayne Charvel; English Wikipedia gives the date as 10 November. Jackson’s own history page, archived in 2010, says Grover had worked there for 14 months and places the shop in Glendora. Charvel’s history instead calls it a small company in Azusa and says Jackson later moved production to neighbouring Glendora, while English Wikipedia’s article on Grover Jackson names a third town, Covina. We note all three.

The name most often attached to those early guitars, San Dimas, was not where they were built. Charvel’s history, archived in 2011, says the original American-made guitars are called San Dimas models “after the San Dimas, California P.O. box listed on their neck plates.” English Wikipedia dates that stamp to about 1982 to 1986.

Under Grover Jackson the shop first made Charvel-branded guitars, which Jackson’s history says made their debut at the summer 1979 NAMM show in Atlanta. The Jackson name came later. In late 1980 Randy Rhoads, who had just joined Ozzy Osbourne’s new band, asked for a distinctive guitar; Jackson’s history says the two met just before Christmas and sketched it on a paper napkin. The result, the Concorde, was a white offset V with a neck-through body. Wary of putting the Charvel name on so radical a design, Charvel’s history says, Grover put his own surname on the headstock instead. English Wikipedia also credits Tim Wilson and the builder Mike Shannon with the design.

Rhoads, Soloist, King V, Dinky.

Rhoads asked for changes, and a second version became the model sold as the Jackson Rhoads. He died in a plane crash in Florida in March 1982, before it went into production, English Wikipedia says. The Rhoads set the brand’s look: Wikipedia traces Jackson’s pointed headstock to that 1980 prototype and names “shark fin” fingerboard inlays as another hallmark.

Jackson’s history lists the models that followed in the early and mid-1980s — the Kelly, the King V, the Double Rhoads, the Soloist, the bolt-on-neck Dinky and the Concert Bass — and, later in the decade, the PC1, based on a signature guitar for Def Leppard’s Phil Collen, and the X-shaped Warrior. The Soloist, a neck-through guitar with 24 frets and a locking tremolo, went into regular production on 28 August 1984, according to copies of factory logs cited by English Wikipedia, which says many consider it the first “definitive” superstrat.

The guitars were tied to metal. Jackson’s history calls its instruments “the metal guitars” and names signature models for players including Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden, Mark Morton of Lamb of God and Matt Tuck of Bullet For My Valentine. Its 2026 range includes signature guitars for Chris Rörland and for the band Sleep Token, alongside Phil Collen’s PC1.

Production moved with ownership. Charvel’s history says both brands were made in Glendora until 1986, when production moved to Ontario, California, and that Grover Jackson sold Jackson and Charvel in 1989 to the company it calls AMIC — International Music Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas, according to English Wikipedia, which says Grover left in 1990. In the 1990s cheaper Jackson models were made in Asia, including Japan, Wikipedia says.

Design and documentation.

The seven makers in this guide build electric guitars for rock and metal players, but they are organised in very different ways.

Two belong to Fender. Jackson, founded by Grover Jackson in Glendora, California, in 1980, and Charvel, begun by Wayne Charvel as a repair shop in Azusa in 1974 and sold to Grover Jackson in 1978, have both been owned by Fender since 2002, English Wikipedia says, and it gives Scottsdale, Arizona, as the base of both.

Two are linked through one man. ESP grew from Electric Sound Products, a parts shop that Hisatake Shibuya opened in Tokyo in 1975. In 1987, English Wikipedia says — ESP’s own corporate history gives 1990 — Shibuya bought Schecter, which David Schecter had started as a repair and parts shop in Van Nuys, California, in 1976, and which now gives its custom shop’s home as Sun Valley, Los Angeles; the two have remained separate companies.

Kiesel, in Escondido, California, traces its heritage to the pickup company Lowell Kiesel founded in Southern California in 1946, which became Carvin, and took its present name when it split from Carvin in 2015. Mayones was founded in Gdańsk, Poland, in 1982 by Zenon Dziewulski, Polish Wikipedia says, and is run by the Dziewulski family.

Cort, based in Seoul, is the odd one out: a large share of its output, by its own account, carries other brands’ names, and it makes its guitars in factories it runs in Indonesia and China.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Owned by Fender since 2002.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation bought Jackson and Charvel in the fall of 2002, according to Charvel’s history; English Wikipedia says Fender bought them from IMC and moved American production to its factory in Corona, California. The brands are run through Jackson/Charvel Manufacturing, Inc., which the Charvel website says uses the trademarks under licence from Fender. Fender itself is privately held; English Wikipedia says Hawaii’s Servco Pacific became its majority owner in 2020.

Where the guitars are made depends on the series. Jackson’s website says its American Series is crafted “in our Corona California factory” and calls it “the first made-in-Corona flagship product line for the brand”; its Pro Origins 1985 San Dimas guitars are “built with pride in Ensenada,” the Mexican city where Fender has had a plant since 1987; and its MJ Series recalls the early 1990s, “when import Jackson guitars were manufactured exclusively in Japan.” English Wikipedia says Fender also uses FujiGen in Japan and that lower-priced models are made by subcontractors in Indonesia and China; we did not find that stated on the Jackson product pages we checked, so we give it as Wikipedia’s account.

Grover Jackson went on to work for other makers, including Washburn and Rickenbacker, and in 2011 co-founded GJ2 Guitars in Orange County, English Wikipedia says — a brand separate from Jackson Guitars.

For a design guide, Jackson shows how a single shape — a pointed headstock drawn for one guitarist — can become a brand’s signature. Compare Charvel, the shop it grew out of, and Fender, which owns both. For this guide we use black, a steel grey and a hot red with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Jackson’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.