The History of JHS Pedals (Interview)
You know the pedals and you know the show, but who really is JHS? Is JHS a tall man with a weird hobby? Is JHS a ragtag team of misfits who banded together to make surprisingly good guitar pedals? Is JHS just three letters strung together to sound more official? We’re about to find out. Today, we answer that question, “Who is JHS Pedals?”
JOSH SCOTT
I grew up on a horse farm…[in the] absolute middle of nowhere, [with] a one mile gravel road in. We raised horses. There was a guy that tried to trade us a horse for some [guitar] gear.
NICK LOUX
How did you get into music?
JOSH SCOTT
I first got into music because of my older brother who played piano, but he listened to tons of music. I just grew up hearing stuff. And then one day I was at his apartment, heard a Pearl Jam cassette tape and then kind of just went bonkers, like got fully into it.
NICK LOUX
Did you start any high school bands?
JOSH SCOTT
There were three bands.
NICK LOUX
Where did you and your bands play in the beginning?
JOSH SCOTT
The town I'm from– it's not even really a town. It's called Belgreen. It's like a gas station and a stop sign, but our school was there, so we played talent shows. The first place I ever played live with a band was this auditorium across the road.
My best friend was the guitarist in the band, [and we used to come to] a tunnel that connects one side of the school's property to the other and we would play our guitars and bring a tape recorder. So it was reverb. We would sit right here on the steps and play. I have so many memories of early guitar, buying my first pedals, playing in a band (my bandmates were at school), doing stuff at night, like coming down here [to the tunnel] and thinking we were going to be rock stars.
NICK LOUX
That's amazing. And you told me this was one of the first times you kind of knew what reverb was?
JOSH SCOTT
Yeah. I had never heard a reverb pedal or anything. We would bring our guitars and play. And we were just like, “It sounds so good down there.” There was no [explanation] of why it sounded good. That was just where we [went] to play guitar. Who [else] had this in their high school? Nobody.
NICK LOUX
Let's go all the way back to Jackson, Mississippi, where it all started. What got you started tinkering with guitar pedals?
JOSH SCOTT
I was doing a lot of local session work and didn't have a lot of money. I mean, that was kind of [my] income stream, which as you can imagine is not fantastic. I also flipped a lot of gear. Before eBay existed, I would make a decent percentage of my money flipping gear out of pawn shops. [Then] I had a pedal break. “Am I going to buy another BOSS Blues Driver? Hmm. I don't have the money to buy the BOSS Blues Driver.” So I figured out that it was the broken switch, and then I fixed the switch, which is super easy. Anybody could do that.
I have a really obsessive one-track mind. As a kid, it was like, “Everything is horses.” I grew up on horses. Or like, “Everything's basketball”...It was guitar next [and] music. And then everything became circuits.
NICK LOUX
What [were] some of the first mods that you did?
JOSH SCOTT
The very first thing ever was: I had a stock BOSS Blues Driver and I had found a Robert Keeley [modded] BOSS Blues Driver. I used them together, and when I fixed the one that had the broken foot switch, it was the stock [version]. I had it open. Curiosity was like, “What did this Keeley guy do to this [other] one? Why does the un-modded Blues Driver not sound the same as my Keeley one? What did he do?” I open it up, [put a] notebook on the kitchen table. I don't know what stuff really is, but I notice that the capacitors (I didn't know what to call 'em that day) [looked] different and there's a different number on it. So I made little graph charts from there. Like, “Okay, I'm going to mod the [stock] Blues Driver to be like the other one.”
I did it. I went to Radio Shack up the street…I vividly remember having the notepad with the parts for the Keeley [mod that] I needed. Like, “Okay, yeah. I need to remove these,” which isn't easy when you don't know what you're doing. Once I figured out how [to mod the pedal], Robert Keeley's whole thing led me into modding. Then I realized, “Okay, this is what this part does. Well, let me adjust it to what I like most.” I didn't want as much bass as the Keeley one. I wanted less gain here. And so I called my version the Blue Drive, and then I started modding a lot of stuff: Tube Screamers, the Proco RAT, the DOD 250, the MXR Distortion+, kind of the run of the mill classics.
I was able to find some circuit analysis of the BOSS DS-1, ’cause it's been around for so long. I cocktailed my own mod. Just like if you're cooking, I took some things I liked from a lot of places and made what's now known as the Lexi Drive and the Synth Drive. I [modded] a DS-1 and I had labeled it “JHS Mods Lexi Drive.” We had a Greyhound named Lexi, and I was like, “Plexi [Drive], Lexi [Drive].” I thought it was funny. Very basic JHS stupidity. I walked out [to my porch], I showed [my wife] Alice. I was like, “Hey, I'm going to sell these. I started this thing.” She goes, “That's cool.”
NICK LOUX
You had a friend who owned a music store and that's where you got those DS-1s?
JOSH SCOTT
I got the original DS-1s from Guitar Center, which was down the street. But I became friends with a guy named Patrick Harkins and he had a much cooler shop [Fondren Guitars] that was more up my alley. It was all used gear. It was like a guitar pawn shop vibe, always looking for old stuff or weird stuff.
PATRICK HARKINS
It's probably 2007, 2008. I had two DS-1s. Josh was like, “I got a soldering iron. I've been modding a couple things. Let me take two of 'em. I'll mod one and maybe we'll sell it or I'll keep it. And then I'll mod the other one, [and] I'll give it to you.”
JOSH SCOTT
And then we would circulate. He'd sell 'em on consignment. The very first one of those mods, even before I sold some on eBay, [Patrick] actually still has it. He bought it from me. I marked it number 10 and signed it. It was the first thing I sold, and I'd hacked around enough that I'm standing there going, “10 sounds about right.”
PATRICK HARKINS
10 is better than one. It sounds more efficient. [You’re] a pro. “Oh, it's, it's a company. There's 10 of ’em.”
JOSH SCOTT
That's the first official JHS Pedals product under the label JHS Mods.
NICK LOUX
So did any JHS pedal designs as we know them begin in Jackson?
JOSH SCOTT
The Pulp N Peel started there. You'll see V1s that I actually have a JHS Mods sticker, which is funny. The Morning Glory idea was starting, ’cause I had modded my BOSS Blues Driver, but I also started building some scratch BOSS Blues Drivers and started modding them…The All American [started there]. I had been modding ProCo RATs, so I thought, “I'm going to build some RATs from scratch and put the mods in them. That way I don't have to buy RATs.” So there are some things like that. The Banana Boost and the Mini Bomb Boost [started in] Jackson.
The transition from modifying to building pedals from scratch was [motivated by] two things: me wanting to do it, and me wanting to make my own sounds. Also people [asking], “Can you make this [specific pedal]?” So I would just make stuff and if it turned out really cool, [if] I landed a fun name, I'd be like, “That's a product.” I guess a lot of things like the Pulp N Peel were an evolution of some mod [that] became a product. And now there's a V4 [Pulp N Peel]. That's insane. But it really just started from modifying a Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer. It wasn't that complicated.
NICK LOUX
You are modding in Jackson, MS, and then you leave Jackson?
JOSH SCOTT
We wanted out of Jackson. It’s just one of my least favorite places that I've lived. A lot of great people there, but get me out. My wife is from Tupelo. Her brother had a lawnmower shed at his house. Like those pre-manufactured sheds you buy at Lowe's and from Home Depot. So we moved up here and used his shed in the back. It was the beginning of the summer of 2009, 100+ degrees [with] humidity. My dad came down, ’cause I grew up about an hour and a half from there. We cut a hole, put a window unit in it, and put pink styrofoam insulation on it. When you walked in, it was pink…All my friends would come by, local musicians, and it was always called the Pink Palace. So I worked back here all the time. That's where momentum started to happen, making stuff for certain artists. I came up with a lot of pedals in that little shed.
NICK LOUX
What pedals were you building out of the Pink Palace at the time?
JOSH SCOTT
The original Morning Glory. The Double Barrel is from here. The Sweet Tea, Angry Charlie, Charlie Brown, Mr. Magic. It [also] would have been here that I discovered the stamps in the craft store.
NICK LOUX
One of the things that I think that people identify with JHS Pedals is the icons. How did the icons come about?
JOSH SCOTT
The icons came about through [this] OCD thing where I hated Sharpies and I did not like just a sticker. [That] really bothered me. I was with my wife at a craft store and we walked in not thinking about pedals. I saw the rubber stamps that teachers use to say “Good job!” or whatever. I had this freaking crazy moment. I was like, “Oh my God, that's it.” And I looked, [and] there was a half orange slice [stamp]. It was the right scale of size. The chances of this were crazy.
[With] the original craft store Pulp N Peel, you see [the stamp] first appear on the heel, ’cause I was unsure what to do. Then you see it later on the top.
NICK LOUX
So you're making JHS Pedal pedals.
JOSH SCOTT
Yeah. We called 'em custom made
NICK LOUX
Where were you selling those?
JOSH SCOTT
EBay and Reverb didn't exist. This was way before. There was a small shop in Tupelo called Main Street Music, and it was the first place in Tupelo where someone sold the pedals in a retail spot. It was a guitar shop. There were these two brothers, and they had insane vintage guitars in here. They were kind of an anomaly in the area. Like, how do they have the shop? A lot of people would come through on tour because Oxford, which is Ole Miss [University of Mississippi], is not far away. You get a lot of bands coming through for guitar and stuff. I would put pedals in here and just sell 'em on consignment. They weren't dealers.
A lot of people liked All Americans, [so] I sold a lot of All Americans there. It was in a blue enclosure or little black pointer knobs in that stamp that I found. It looked so good. I remember bringing Charlie Browns and Mr. Magics in here. I remember making those in batches of five or so, and dropping 'em off every week. It was like The Andy Griffith Show or something. We didn't really communicate. I would just show up with five and he had sold five.
NICK LOUX
So you're selling pedals. This whole thing has to work. You've bet your life on it. Basically. What comes after Tupelo?
JOSH SCOTT
After that there was an opportunity to have a slightly bigger shop. My wife's dad lived a few minutes outside of Tupelo. There's a little town called Ecru. Ecru is Mayberry, and he has a bigger shed. We actually moved out there onto the property as well. It's a big house. We're trying to decide where we're going to live for a long term and do this. So that was like the next shop. It was interesting. It had a garage bay next to it, which was kind of nice. I would back my Jeep Wrangler up and open the door. Alice would be boxing stuff on a table. It had a good feel. So I did the same thing there, but there is where it got nuts. This was what I always refer to as “the 18 hour days.”
I would do insane days of work. I can remember many, many days waking up before Alice and [my daughter] Emma. I would wake up in the house at sunrise or before, [then] I'd come out to the shed. My family would wake up and I would see them for lunch and they'd come in and say hey. My daughter, Emma, was really small. They would go to bed and I'd come in at like midnight. [We were] six to eight months behind [in orders]. I wasn't charging enough, barely making any money. I got so behind that I would actually drive out to Kansas City, [where my best friend lived], and we would build pedals in his basement. Just so I could see if I could train somebody, ’cause I didn't trust anyone. I didn't know anybody…Eventually that's where we met you [Nick Loux] and your dad [John Loux] and you guys drove down to Ecru. How old were you?
NICK LOUX
I was probably 15 or 16.
JOSH SCOTT
You have the only living memories in this shop of this time.
NICK LOUX
Yeah. I remember there was a card table in the corner of the shed. The floor was caved in and I think the first thing you handed me was a Klon clone. I burned my hand a bunch of times and you just said put some GermX on it…My dad destroyed a TS9 Tube Screamer.
JOSH SCOTT
Which was dumb of me [to give him]. That's a hard pedal to modify. It blew me away that your dad came and [helped]. It was so amazing. It was literally a glimmer of hope. I was feeling bad; I was so far behind. Everything started snowballing here and getting better, which was technically worse because I didn't know what I was doing and orders were backing up. That's why I was like, “I gotta move to Kansas City,” because you were there. Your dad was there, and my other friends. I was like, “I know I have enough people. We can start a crew.” So we moved, we loaded up a U-Haul and moved to Kansas City.
NICK LOUX
You guys move here to Kansas City and we start building out of this basement in this house.
JOSH SCOTT
Yeah. We rented a house sight unseen, saw it over Skype and built out a shop in our basement. I had people helping, so I was trying to dig out of the hole to save the business because it was imploding on itself. In December, [in the] freezing cold, we unload the U-Haul. We had packed the shop in a way where it was at the back, so I unpacked it first. We just knew we were going to throw our furniture in and have somewhere to sleep, but I had to set the shop up immediately because people were wanting Christmas orders and I have about five days to ship them. Everything was hinging on this, working to the point where we moved to a state 10 hours away, [we’d] never been to the city. Really, I'm absent from the moving process of the house to build pedals for other people we've never seen.
We were all on board and it was crazy, so [the shop] was in the house for a bit, long enough for Alice to be like, “Okay, there's too many people coming in the morning, the garage doors, kids waking up…You've gone for it this far. You gotta get a building.”
NICK LOUX
I remember moving out of your house into the new building. It's basically just like a giant garage storage section and it was four guys working under this rickety loft thing. I used to work at a little bench and the water from the air conditioning used to drip down behind my bench.
JOSH SCOTT
It was the first real shop. But it's like what you see in a movie, you know? You're making it work…But it felt great at the same time. It was so ganky, [and] when you combine that with rain pouring over the electrical box, this was a pretty hazardous environment, but it also felt like things were working. This is where JHS became a company.
NICK LOUX
There's two iterations of [the] 711 Main [location]. There was the back room [with] rain pouring in through the garage door on the electrical box. And then there was the short-lived JHS Music Store [in the front room].
JOSH SCOTT
It could have worked, but then JHS [Pedals] just kept growing and growing. And it was like, “This is insane. These are two startup businesses.” So I sacrificed the music store on the altar of the pedals, which were actually making money. Then we switched them. Yeah. We took that front [room] and made a nicer, cleaner shop where water was not pouring in the switch box.
NICK LOUX
We had two benches and we'd kind of face each other. That's where the assembly lines started. The way we kind of build now sort of evolved here. What other pedals were invented in the 711 space?
JOSH SCOTT
Moonshine for sure, [and the] Super Bolt. The Panther Cub. That's huge. Actually I can't discount how huge that is. [The Panther Cub] was the second ever tap tempo in delay. It's a big deal.
NICK LOUX
You brought Steve [Offutt] on to help you out. That was a huge lift off of you.
JOSH SCOTT
That era was a really big part of it for me was admitting what I really suck at. People's orders are getting lost. I was remembering to pay bills a few days late. I'm not great at those functions. I had to have somebody that could just think about the business not failing from that perspective. I needed to do what I knew I could do and I needed to find people to do everything else. I needed an operations manager. I need somebody that's good with numbers. Somebody that's black and white. I need somebody not like me. I need somebody to argue with me, too.
I had met Steve as a guitar player. He actually bought the first Morning Glory ever. I remember going to him (he had a job at the time) and I said, “Hey, can you come and be the manager?” He's like, “How much [can you pay me]?” It's like, “I don't know. I don't know what I can pay you because I need you to tell me how much I can pay you. I don't know how much money we have.” I literally had no accounting. It just kept working every week. I kept paying people's paychecks and it worked, [but] it was insane. And [Steve] quit and came and worked for me for years making a tenth of what he should have made [in salary]. [He] saw something there to attach to and own, and that's why it kept working, because it wasn't just me. You owned a thing, and Steve owned a thing, and that grew the big thing.
NICK LOUX
So now we're currently sitting in the building that we're in now, which came after 711, and we are currently bursting at the seams. What are some of your top memories of this building?
JOSH SCOTT
We moved in here, 5,000 square feet (2,500 per floor), and I remember going, “We will never need to be upstairs like this,” and I was going to sublet it to people. We kept it for storage. And right now we're just on top of each other. You know, 40 plus employees…didn't see any of that coming. My favorite memories here [are] mostly going to be how we started the The JHS Show, how we started rethinking having fun.
I remember admitting I hate guitar demos. That was great, just being like, “I don’t have to like them. I'm friends with Andy [Martin]. He loves them. He's great at it.” You coming to me and going, “Let's do a YouTube show.” That's a great memory. I think it's just been the growth that's wild. [At] 711 Main, I think we built 12,500 [pedals] there. Then last year we built 100,000 [pedals] here. That's such a crazy feeling to remember my wife saying, “Do you think this can work?” and now seeing 100,000 pedals and knowing that's a small dent in the guitar industry.
It’s like an alternate dimension of what it used to be. It's like creating another family sort of. I love it. This whole thing, as accidental as it feels, kept going and going. It made space for people to do really cool stuff. A lot of people think I do everything, [but] I don't build pedals anymore. I have much better builders. Since 2009, JHS has been an amazing team of people that took chances. It's my initials, but it's not me. You know? I'm an equal part of the craziness with other people that you might not know or see. We have such a good team.
NICK LOUX
What's exciting about the future for you?
JOSH SCOTT
I love the education side of things. I love what The JHS Show has become, what you and I have made over these three years of chugging away at that. What's next for that? What's the next thing there alongside the pedals? Who are the new people that will add [to that]? What will they do? Just seeing the team get bigger and bigger and having the resources to do even more out of the box, weird stuff. I think we've done a good job at not trying to do what anyone else does.
Thank you for watching this exclusive look into who JHS really is. I hope that you feel more part of our family after watching it. I can tell you for sure that we feel like more a part of your family, as long as that’s not too weird.