Jackson is a guitar manufacturer originally owned and operated by Grover Jackson, a partner of Wayne Charvel of Charvel Guitars. It is probably best-known for its "Rhoads" V model guitar, originally designed and used by guitarist Randy Rhoads. This model inspired Grover to start the Jackson guitar company.

Wayne Charvel sold his interest in the Charvel guitar company to Grover Jackson sometime in the late 70s. The shop was located in San Dimas, California and manufactured guitars in this location until 1986, when the Jackson name was sold to the Japanese company, FMIC.

Recently, rights to the Charvel name and permission to manufacture Charvel guitars was granted to the Fender Guitar Company. Fender is now manufacturing guitars that are almost exactly like the original San Dimas Charvels, save for a few details. In some cases the guitars are even being built from NOS (New Old Stock) Charvel parts.

Jackson Guitars has become most famous for its slender and elegant models, often with an aggressive look popular with harder rock and metal music. They were popular among metal bands in the 80s such as thrash metal band Megadeth, and even glam-rock band Def Leppard.

Almost all Jackson (and many Charvel) guitars share the typical pointed, roughly triangular headstock, which is simply a Gibson Explorer style headstock modified to avoid lawsuits. Charvel/Jackson was the target of many copyright lawsuits from Gibson and Fender which led to using the modified Explorer headstock. This also ended using Stratocaster styled headstocks for Charvel guitars. Various models, however (especially a good number of Dinkys) do have a reversed headstock with the tip pointing upwards.

Jackson's trademark guitar models include:

• The Randy Rhoads guitar, an asymmetric 'V' shaped body with pointy ends
• The Kelly, a more slender and elegant version of Gibson's popular Explorer
• The Soloist (less sophisticated and expensive models being called Dinky), a Super Strat design
• The DR, a stylish but aggressive reverse headstock model, made popular by Anand Bhatt
• The King V, a symmetric 'V' shape with long pointy ends, made popular, but not designed by Dave Mustaine of Megadeth
• The Warrior, a very aggressive looking body seemingly consisting of nothing but pointy ends
• The Kelly Star, a vaguely star shaped body, actually the front half of the Kelly with the pointy ends of the Rhoads model; this was only made for a short time around 2000/2001 and is very hard to find now