IDEAS, CIRCUITS, DEATH, AND GRIEF

The Real Story Behind the Colourbox

It has been 1,337 days since Cliff Smith died.

For almost four years, I have struggled to talk about his passing in a way that seems worthy of the feelings that I have. It’s as if every time I think about making an episode to celebrate his work and our relationship, I steer away so I don’t have to think too much about it. Instead, I talk about other creators and other stories because they are too far away to actually touch. If you know me, you know I don’t avoid hard things, and I don’t run away from complicated work, but this topic has been a challenge.

This is an attempt at breaking my silence.

A Sudden Passing

His obituary says he “passed away suddenly and unexpectedly,” and though that is accurate, it falls miserably short of describing the ripples and waves of grief, disappointment, and sadness I have felt since the day of his death. I remember standing in my driveway and hearing they found him dead in his home. I can still see the sky that hung heavy over my head as I paced back and forth, not sure what to do or what to say. I listened and did my best to comfort his sister and tell her how much Cliff meant to us all at JHS. Both of us stumbled through our words.

It was as if I was breaking apart inside while trying to repair someone else in the same condition.

I don’t feel much different than I did that day, but I think I finally have some thoughts I can share. My hope for this post is to show a side of JHS and the humanity that existed between myself and someone I considered an ally and even a mentor. I know Cliff would gawk at that last statement, but whether he knew it or not, he changed me, and I am grateful.

Here we go…

How We Met

I can’t remember exactly who introduced us, but how we met was simple. I had a problem, and he showed up to fix it. What a recurring theme this would be.

It was 2013, and I had a pile of vintage guitar amps that were in need of constant attention and repair. I couldn’t find the time to get around to servicing them myself, so I searched for someone I could trust. I assume I found his contact through a customer recommendation, but all I can remember is that one day he walked in, browsed around the shop for a bit, then said, “I hear you need some amps repaired.” A few moments later, I had shown him the inner workings of the JHS production line – he couldn’t believe what we were doing in our workshop so close to his home – then we carried a few tube amps outside to his truck.

From that day forward, he was part of the universe that swirled around this thing called JHS.

I was doing a lot of recording, engineering, and producing at the time, and an idea entered my mind that wouldn’t leave me alone. What if I could get the direct-into-the-mixer-desk guitar tone from my favorite Beatles, Spoon, and Wilco records into a pedal-sized contraption?

Sure, I could make a fuzz circuit and mess with carving out the EQ to simulate how a channel on the mixer sounds when pushed into distortion, but I wanted something more. I had to reproduce the actual circuits and techniques those artists used to make that sound in the studio. It was an idea born as much from wanting to replicate history as it was about replicating sound.

After studying and attempting to build a NEVE channel device in the way I imagined, I realized I was over my head. I have this annoying thing called self-awareness, and in these types of moments, it sounds an alarm that says something like - “Hey man… I know you could figure this out eventually… You’re really good at making things work, but you’re probably in over your head… You could be doing other things you’re actually good at…”

What have I always done when I’m over my head? I find someone smarter to pull me and my ideas out of the ditch.

The next time Cliff walked into JHS to drop off and pick up amps, I shared my idea that had turned into a dilemma. I will never forget the pause he took and the sort of mischievous smile that spread across his face. I didn’t know it then, but that smile was a trademark of his personality. Over the coming years, I learned it was his tell. He would try not to show his hand, but he couldn’t help it. When an idea brought him excitement, there was that smile. Every time.

The next four words out of his mouth started something the way a small stone starts a landslide. They appeared between us innocently and traveled down the hillside of our conversation to an unexpected end. These words weren’t just communication; they were a truth and a way of thinking I had always felt inside myself. I guess if I had to describe them more simply, I would say they were the start of an eight-year agreement we entered into without contract or handshake.

He said, “I can make that.”

The Colourbox

I didn’t know it, but Cliff was a studio nerd who built pro audio gear as a hobby so he could record his own music at home. Standing there, he explained that this type of work was his passion. It was what he did when he wasn’t doing what he referred to as “The mundane work of repairing guitar amps.”

I wasted no time and immediately described my idea in complete, excruciating detail. Expecting a glazed-over observer of my madness, he was the exact opposite. He never lost focus, and I could see he was getting excited about my crazy idea. He made some notes and asked a few questions, and a few days later, we carried on over a phone call to resolve a few of his questions.

Within thirty days, the Colourbox was a real working circuit sitting in front of me. It was built on a two-foot-long wooden board and laid out like a puzzle of circuitry. It was all there–the input, the power section, the transformer, the distortion section, the EQ, the outputs – and it was real. I had such a small chance of achieving this idea on my own, but Cliff fast-tracked it to reality.

If forced to decide, this would be my favorite JHS memory across my almost nineteen years. I was elated.

It took lots of work to get that prototype into the small enclosure it eventually called home, but we did it. Within one year, I managed to gather the other people I needed around the idea to make it a living, breathing product. There was also a lot of convincing my team that a $399 studio preamp pedal would sell. That’s $510 today. Let that sink in. This was long before the days of expensive, multifaceted digital pedals, before people could accept that more could be done in the boutique pedal market than overdrive, delay, and fuzz.

The idea had morphed into something so beautiful I had to take it as far as possible. I called Abbey Road Studio in London and booked Studio 2 where the Beatles first created this iconic sound the Colourbox replicated. When I told Cliff, he thought I was joking. He had not been around me enough to know that my life motto was, “Just Try Stuff.” When he realized I really was taking his design and our product to the most famous recording studio on earth to film its release video, he was speechless. Cliff was never speechless.

He told me later he had never dreamed that his ideas and work would be seen by so many people and used by so many of his favorite artists. He was humble and far too timid to admit how good he was at his work, though I tried my best over those eight years to tell him. I wish I had tried harder and said more than I did, but I believe he eventually understood.

The Colourbox changed the face of JHS. Though I had designed so many circuits I was proud of, ranging from clones and alterations of vintage pedals to improved modifications of existing circuits, as well as the occasional and much harder “original” design, the Colourbox made a statement. We had made something that had never been made and to this day has never been matched in its category. We had passed from a small company with some popularity and opportunity to another league of respect and notoriety.

The Colorbox is now past the ten-year mark and has sold over 25,000 units. At the time of writing (October 2025), we celebrated this anniversary with a commemorative edition colorway launched last winter. Cliff would be proud that the pedal sells better than it did when we released it. That is no small accomplishment in this “latest and greatest industry.”

Not only did the Colourbox change JHS, it changed Cliff’s life. Shortly after the release, I asked him to join me full-time as the first-ever R&D employee at JHS. He jumped at the idea and got comfortable in his new full-time job. Cliff was consistently the first one in and the last one out. There was never a day when he didn’t love his job. Even when frustrated, trying to troubleshoot troublesome work, through challenging problems that would derail us, he was getting to design circuitry. He never wanted anything else.

In 2019, I had to force him to take a vacation. He begrudgingly did so by driving out west to the New Mexican desert so he could think and be alone. He came back, a force of nature full of ideas and a fresh passion for our work.

After all these years of JHS, I am still amazed at how these little metal boxes can provide a livelihood, purpose, and happiness for myself and my employees. Cliff was a shining example of it. Thank you for that.

My Collaborator

Years passed, and more things were completed between us than I can remember. More people were added to the R&D team, but until the end, Cliff was at the front and center of my design work. I needed his help, and he needed my ideas. He was my collaborator, and I believe it is fitting to list my favorite examples of our work together. These are my favorites not only because of the end result, but because each one carries a memory that makes me smile.

This list is in no particular order, and each one represents a conversation that started with “Hey Cliff”:

• The Twin Twelve - Can we turn my Silvertone head into a pedal?
• The Cheeseball - No one is cloning this thing properly. The online schematic is wrong.
• The JHS 500 Series Studio Modules - Wanna make some studio gear?
• The Red Remote Switching System - Can we take that BOSS idea from the ‘90s and improve on it?
• The Pulp N Peel V4 - What if my compressor had a mic pre, parallel RAT distortion, XLR out, and a tilt EQ control?
• The Clover - See this crappy BOSS preamp? It’s amazing!
• The PackRat - Let’s analyze 50 RAT pedals like mad scientists.
• The Solo Boost - What if the two best boosts in the world were in a small pedal?
• The Hard Drive - We need a ‘90s-style heavy distortion.
• The newest Angry Charlie and Charlie Brown - Here are my breadboards. Tidy them up and find any problems.

I’m leaving out a novel’s worth of memories and work, but I hope you see the pattern.

Josh has an idea - Cliff helps make it a reality.

An idea is only as good as your ability to execute it, and with Cliff, I executed more of my dreams than I ever had. In my research of other companies and creators that I love, this is the most central theme. Successful creativity rarely involves one mind and one set of hands. It is a collaboration between people of different abilities.

By the time I met him, I knew firmly who I was not and what I was not good at. His arrival into my life was providential. He could do what I could not, and vice versa.

Once, he pulled me aside and told me how much he respected my ability to think about a product backwards. He said he could only think forwards from the circuit idea and had no idea how to make a product that would be appealing to anyone but himself. He complimented me and explained he had never seen anyone think of a product and how to build something people want, and then work backwards to invent it. I remember looking back at him and saying that people like me are worthless without people like him. He smiled, and I’m pretty sure I avoided eye contact and walked out of the room. This was us.

How I Found It

The day of his funeral, I stood over his casket, hugged a host of current and former JHS family who came to pay respects, and we told Cliff stories. The next day, I went to his home to lend a hand with cleaning up. His family had no idea what to do with his overwhelming collection of gadgets, tools, and guitar things, so they asked if I could help them organize and identify his belongings.

His home reflected who he was - every space purposefully used for the work he loved. He had a recording studio in the living room and a full electronics workshop in the garage where he could work when I told him to go home and rest. I roamed around for several minutes and eventually stood over his workbench. That’s where I found it.

One of our ideas was sitting there. The circuit was laid out and centered on the operating table, wires connected to his scope and to his amplifier. His soldering iron was on, and his notebook was open. I knew Cliff as well as anyone I’ve ever known, and tears slowly filled my eyes. He had died in the middle of doing what he loved. That gave me a joy that momentarily eased my pain. We will never know the timeline, but moments before the heart attack that took his life, he had been sitting at his bench working on our idea.

In a way, I had been with him in his last moments. I didn’t know until that moment.

The End

Eight years of my life collided with one of the most brilliant and passionate men I will ever know. I can never go back to that time, but I can look back at it through the things we made and the sounds those devices still make today.

Though he’s gone, Cliff’s fingerprints remain all over our work. His circuit fragments live on in new designs - switching circuits, tone control topologies, evolved versions of our creations that still carry his engineering DNA. Whenever we reference one of his solutions or build upon his foundation, he still collaborates with us.

Without hesitation, I will always hold Cliff up to the great minds of my industry. He was a dreamer, a curious soul, and most of all, he was a friend. We argued, we laughed, and we learned together. He explored constantly and challenged me to do the same. He taught me to breadboard, to use a scope, and he gave me my first proper electronics textbook with markers and notes included. He believed in me immensely and also in my ideas, even when they were bad.

This blog isn’t about regrets, but I do carry a few.

I wish I had spent more time with him.

We lived in a world that revolved around the guitar, and I think that was a wonderful experience for each of us, but I can’t help but wonder what else he had deep inside that reserved personality.

I wish I had told him how much he meant to me.

Regret is a punisher, and I try not to give it much space, but I hope he knew how thankful I was for him. My life was good before we met, but it became something else after. It moved at a different pace. Creativity bloomed much faster, and I found more of who I really was in that short amount of time. Those eight years were a sort of incubator, I believe, that sped me up.

To close, I will quote Cliff with a response he would always give me. It became an inside joke, and I even gave him a trophy one year with it inscribed on the front.

I would ask him if something was possible. Could he finish an idea quicker so I could get it out into the market? Developing products was and will always be a battle of deciding when you are done, and we fought that fight with every idea we took on. He would look at me with the most calm and sarcastic expression and gently say,

“Josh, anything is possible if we had more time.”

Cliff, I wish we had had more time.