The Angry Charlie Grew Up: How a Chance Gear Purchase Became the JHS AT+ Andy Timmons Signature Drive

It started with a $200 box and a light bulb moment. In 2013, Andy Timmons — one of the most technically immaculate lead guitarists of the last four decades — wandered into a JHS Pedals deal and walked away with an Angry Charlie. He wasn’t looking for a signature model. He wasn’t in a meeting with Josh Scott. He just bought a pedal and plugged it in. What happened next was the kind of thing that only works when the tone is genuinely, undeniably right: the Angry Charlie stopped being something he tried and started being something he needed. That’s how the JHS AT+ gets its name. Not from a marketing brief, but from a guitarist who heard something in a Kansas City-built gain stage that matched the voice in his head, and then spent three years working with Josh Scott to make it exactly his own.

The original AT — nicknamed “@” — arrived in 2016, a single-footswitch pedal built on the Angry Charlie’s British gain architecture but tuned to Timmons’ specific preferences: a presence-style Air control that no Angry Charlie ever had, and a three-position Headroom toggle that simulates the feel and compression of 25-, 50-, and 100-watt amplifiers. The AT+ arrived as version two, adding a second footswitch and a completely independent boost stage — turning a one-trick overdriven voice into a two-channel gain platform. Whether you’re using it as Andy Timmons uses it (as the centrepiece of a studio-quality touring rig) or as a fly-gig fix-all, the AT+ makes a compelling case for why some signature deals actually produce better pedals than their parent designs.

Origin Story: The Angry Charlie, the “@”, and the AT+

To understand what the AT+ does differently, you need to understand where it came from. The JHS PackRat began with Josh Scott’s obsession with a specific Pro Co circuit. The AT+ began with someone else’s obsession with one of Scott’s own designs.

The JHS Angry Charlie is a high-gain drive pedal built to capture the feel of a cranked British amplifier — the harmonic content, the mid-forward push, the controlled chaos of a Marshall on the edge of overdrive. When Timmons picked one up in 2013, he recognised the architecture immediately. He’d spent years chasing that exact flavour through tube amplifiers, and here was a pedal that got him in the ballpark at signal-chain level. He contacted Scott. A collaboration began.

The first modification was the Air control. The Angry Charlie has Volume, Drive, and Treble/Bass tone controls in a relatively standard British-gain configuration. What it doesn’t have is a presence-style high-frequency trim that acts independently of the main EQ. Timmons knew his live rig — a pair of Mesa/Boogie Lone Star heads into Rectifier 2×12 cabinets loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s — and he knew that the same pedal setting behaves differently through different amp voicings, different cabinets, different rooms. The Air control was his solution: a real-time high-frequency adjustment that lets you dial in just enough top-end presence for articulation and clarity without tipping into harshness. Think of it less like a treble knob and more like a presence knob on an amplifier’s back panel.

The second modification was the Headroom toggle. Rather than a simple clipping option or voicing switch, the Headroom toggle simulates the feel of different amplifier power stages. In the 25-watt position, the pedal behaves like a smaller amp running hard — more compression, more saturation, more sustain, less clean volume headroom. In the 100-watt position, you get open, unconstrained crunch with more dynamics and more volume on tap. The 50-watt position sits in between. This isn’t a gimmick. Different players, in different genres, with different amounts of amp gain behind the pedal, will find genuinely different relationships between these three positions. A single-coil player running a clean Fender platform will likely live in the 25-watt position. A humbucker player already pushing a medium-gain amp might find the 100-watt position gives them the control they need.

Version 1 of the AT (“@“) shipped with these controls and a diamond-shaped knob layout in a single-footswitch enclosure. The AT+ (V2) kept the drive channel identical — “no changes whatsoever,” per JHS’s own product page — and added an independent foot-switchable Boost stage and a second footswitch, shifting the layout to a U-shaped configuration. The Boost is not a clean boost. It’s a slightly dirty, overdriven pre-boost designed to hit the front end of the AT drive channel and push it into higher saturation and tighter definition. Crucially, the Boost is fully independent: it can run alone, as a standalone drive into your amp or into another pedal, without engaging the AT channel at all.

Specifications

The Controls in Detail

Volume

The Volume control has significant headroom. You can push it well above unity for use as a boost platform, or run it at unity when using the Drive channel as a straight distortion stage. When stacking the Boost into the Drive channel, you may want to back off Volume on the Drive side slightly to compensate for the added gain hitting the front end.

Drive

The Drive range spans from what JHS describes as “high-gain blues” at the low end to “thunderous distortion” at maximum. In practical terms: at low Drive settings with a clean amp, you get the kind of touch-sensitive crunch that cleans up with picking dynamics. At maximum Drive, you’re in sustained high-gain territory. The Drive knob interacts meaningfully with the Headroom toggle — at the 25-watt position, the same Drive setting will feel more saturated and compressed than at the 100-watt position.

EQ

The EQ control works as a standard bright/dark tone shaper. Counter-clockwise boosts low frequencies and tames highs — warmer, thicker, less cutting. Clockwise attenuates bass and pushes the upper midrange and treble forward — brighter, more present, more cutting in a mix. For most applications, running EQ at noon and trimming from there is the fastest path to dialling in the pedal for your specific amp.

Air

Air is the control that distinguishes the AT+ from its Angry Charlie ancestor. It rolls in top-end like a presence control on an amplifier’s rear panel, independently of the main EQ. This is particularly useful when running the AT+ through different amp rigs: a dark-voiced amp may need the Air control pushed toward maximum to achieve the same articulation and note separation that a brighter amp delivers at noon. A naturally bright amp or cabinet may need very little Air to avoid sounding harsh. Think of it as the “fit to amp” control.

3-Way Headroom Toggle

This is the AT+’s most distinctive and most misunderstood control. It doesn’t switch between different EQ voicings in the traditional sense. Instead, it simulates the compression characteristics and gain structure of amplifiers running at different power levels:

• 25W (up): Maximum compression and saturation, least dynamic range, least clean volume headroom. Feels like a small amp pushed hard — notes bloom and sustain, pick attack is compressed into the signal, everything feels slightly more “locked in.” Ideal for lead tones that need to sing without effort.
• 50W (down): Balanced position — good compression without excessive sag, open enough for dynamic playing without losing the warmth of the smaller settings. Often the most versatile position for rhythm-to-lead playing.
• 100W (middle): Maximum volume on tap, most open and dynamic response, less saturated feel. Crunch rather than sustain. Works best when the amp itself is contributing significant drive, or when you need the pedal to push hard into an already hot front end.

The Boost Channel

New with the AT+, the Boost is a foot-switchable pre-boost stage with no dedicated level knob — it’s a fixed-level, slightly overdriven gain hit. Engaged before the AT Drive channel, it pushes the front end for more saturation and tighter note definition. Engaged alone (Drive footswitch off), it functions as a stand-alone overdrive into your amp or into other drive pedals in your chain. This dual functionality turns the AT+ from a single-voiced drive into a practical two-channel gain system. Timmons himself uses this architecture live: the AT channel for rhythm and lead tones, the Boost for solos that need to cut further above the band.

Famous Players

Andy Timmons — The Signature Artist (CONFIRMED)

Andy Timmons (born July 26, 1963, Scottsdale, Arizona) is the pedal’s namesake and primary architect. His career spans studio session work in Dallas, four years as the lead guitarist for Danger Danger (an Epic Records pop-metal act that sold over a million records, opened for Kiss and Alice Cooper, and placed two videos at #1 on MTV), and the ongoing Andy Timmons Band, which has released a series of well-regarded guitar-forward albums including Resolution (2006) and Electric Truth.

Timmons studied jazz guitar at the University of Miami before relocating to Dallas, where he built a studio career working alongside drummers like Simon Phillips and artists including Kip Winger and Olivia Newton-John. His playing is characterised by a legato fluency, a wide-interval melodic sensibility, and a tone that combines articulate clean-channel clarity with liquid high-gain saturation — both of which the AT+ is specifically designed to deliver.

His 2016 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown, filmed ahead of the Ultimate Guitar Experience tour with Jennifer Batten and Uli Jon Roth, confirmed the original AT in his live signal chain: after a Dunlop Cry Baby Wah and GigRig G2 switching system, the AT sits alongside an Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer, MXR Vintage Phase 90, Wampler Velvet Fuzz, Strymon TimeLine, and an Electro-Harmonix Nano POG. His amplifiers are a matched pair of Mesa/Boogie Lone Star heads — one loaded with EL34 tubes, one with 6L6s — running into Mesa/Boogie Rectifier 2×12 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30s for a stereo spread. The AT is the pedal that provides his primary overdriven voice through this rig.

Albert Castiglia — Blues-Rock Confirmed (CONFIRMED)

Albert Castiglia is a Miami-based blues-rock guitarist who has recorded for Ruf Records and worked alongside Jimmy Thackery, Junior Wells, and Lil’ Ed Williams. In November 2025, Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger filmed a Rig Rundown for “Bill Murray & His Blood Brothers” — the blues-rock outfit featuring Bill Murray (of Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day fame) alongside guitarists Castiglia, Mike Zito, and Jimmy Vivino — ahead of their performance at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.

The Rig Rundown confirmed that Castiglia’s “simple pedalboard” for the Blood Brothers shows carries a G-Lab MIDI Wowee Wah MWW-1, JHS AT+, and a Catalinbread Topanga spring reverb emulator, plus a Walrus Canvas re-amp and a Radial JDI Passive DI Box. A UAFX Lion amplifier simulator runs direct to front-of-house. This is a deliberately stripped-down rig, and the AT+ is the centerpiece of it — the sole drive pedal for Castiglia’s live guitar tone on that tour. For a working blues-rock guitarist playing the Ryman, that’s a meaningful endorsement of the pedal’s versatility as a standalone solution.

Tone Recipes and Settings

The AT+ vs. JHS Angry Charlie: What Changed

Both pedals share British gain DNA — the Angry Charlie was built as a high-gain Marshall-in-a-box, and the AT preserves that foundation. But several controls present in the AT+ do not exist in the Angry Charlie: the Air knob (presence-style trim), the Headroom toggle (compression/saturation simulation), and the independent Boost channel. The Angry Charlie’s tone controls are a more standard treble/bass arrangement. The AT+’s EQ, combined with Air, gives you more precise frequency control with less interaction between the two adjustments.

If you already own and love the Angry Charlie, the AT+ won’t sound like a revelation — the gain character, the harmonic content, and the overall voicing are closely related. What the AT+ offers is more fine-tuning. The Headroom toggle alone is worth serious consideration: it effectively gives you three versions of the same drive at different compression depths, which matters enormously for matching the pedal to different amp platforms and playing situations.

The 18V Option — More Headroom, More Dynamics

JHS explicitly states the AT+ can be run safely on either 9V or 18V. At 18V, the pedal’s power supply has more room to breathe — clipping headroom increases, the dynamic range expands, and the feel shifts toward a more open, amp-like response at all Headroom toggle positions. This doesn’t change the gain character dramatically; it changes the feel. Players who find the 9V version slightly compressed at lower Drive settings may find 18V opens up the dynamics they’re looking for. Standard isolated 9V supplies will not deliver 18V automatically — you’ll need a supply with a dedicated 18V output (Strymon Zuma, Cioks DC10, Truetone CS12, etc.) or a voltage-doubling cable from a pair of 9V outputs.

At 9V, the 15mA current draw is among the lightest of any high-gain drive pedal in this class. A single isolated 9V output is more than sufficient. Daisy-chaining is technically possible at this draw level but, as with all analog drive pedals, an isolated output keeps the noise floor lower.

Signal Chain Placement

Andy Timmons runs the AT after his wah and volume pedal, within his GigRig G2 switching system, before modulation (MXR Phase 90), delay (Strymon TimeLine), and pitch effects (EHX Nano POG). His Tube Screamer (Ibanez TS-808) is also in the chain — the relationship between a Tube Screamer and a British drive pedal is worth understanding. A Tube Screamer before the AT+ tightens the low end and adds mid-emphasis before the gain stage; a Tube Screamer after the AT+ acts more as an EQ tool and gentle clean-up stage. Both are valid. Timmons appears to use both pedals as parallel or switchable voices rather than stacking them sequentially for all tones.

For most players, a practical chain looks like: tuner → wah → AT+ (with Boost available) → modulation → delay/reverb. If you use fuzz alongside the AT+, place any germanium fuzz before the AT+ and run the AT+ into the fuzz to avoid impedance issues that can kill the fuzz’s character. Silicon fuzz pedals are more tolerant of position.

Comparisons: AT+ vs. Related Gear

Against the JHS Bonsai 9-Way Screamer, the AT+ occupies a different part of the gain spectrum. The Bonsai is a Tube Screamer platform — mid-humped, smooth, blues-to-medium-gain oriented. The AT+ is British and high-gain by comparison. They aren’t substitutes; they’re different voices.

Against the JHS PackRat, the AT+ is warmer and more liquidy. The RAT family circuit — with its LM308 or equivalent op-amp and the distinctive Filter control — produces a grittier, more abrasive texture at high gain. The AT+ smooths that out and adds the Headroom toggle’s compression dimension. Both are single-pedal solutions for players who want a complete distortion voice in one box; the AT+ leans melodic lead, the PackRat leans aggressive rhythm and feedback territory.

Buying Guide

The AT+ retails at $219 USD from JHS and authorised dealers including Sweetwater. Street prices run $199–$219 new. Used prices in excellent condition have settled in the $130–$175 range based on recent listings, making the AT+ accessible on the secondary market without the wait times or price volatility that affect limited-production boutique pedals. Both V1 (AT, single footswitch, diamond knob layout) and V2 (AT+, two footswitches, U-shaped layout) appear on the used market. If the independent Boost is important to your rig, verify you’re buying V2. If you only want the drive channel, V1 will save you money and offers an identical drive circuit.

JHS pedals are hand-built in Kansas City, Missouri. Build quality is consistently high across the line. The AT+ doesn’t use exotic components that degrade quickly; it’s a touring-grade pedal built to professional spec. Buying used is lower risk than with some boutique brands precisely because JHS QC is reliable and the pedals hold up under regular use.

Ownership Notes

The Air control interacts differently with different cabinets and speaker types. With Vintage 30s (as in Timmons’ own rig), a moderate Air setting tends to sit well — V30s have a pronounced upper-mid presence that doesn’t need much help. With Greenbacks or Cannabis Rex speakers, which have a smoother, more rolled-off top end, you may want more Air to bring out articulation. With Alnico Blue speakers, dial carefully — they’re already very present and the Air control can push into harshness quickly.

The three-position Headroom toggle makes audible clicking between positions — this is normal and correct, not a fault. It’s a mechanical toggle, not a rotary potentiometer, so switching between positions mid-song will produce a click in the audio signal. Adjust Headroom toggle settings during sound check, not during a performance.

Both the Drive and Boost footswitches are standard mechanical switches — durable, not silent-switching relay systems. There’s a slight mechanical click when engaging them live, which is audible on stage but inaudible at any reasonable mix volume in the PA.

Running the AT+ at 18V requires a power supply with a dedicated 18V output or a doubling cable. The gain character shifts slightly — more open, more dynamic. If you have the option, try it. If not, 9V at 15mA is entirely sufficient and what the pedal is designed around.

FAQ