In 1991 Lee got a call from Ampeg to come aboard and design them there new line of
guitar amplifiers , they had just completed a brand new R&D facility so when Lee went to check out the factory he was pleased with there facility , so Lee packed up his house and moved to St Louis , Can you say Culture Shock !. Ampeg had a history of producing high quality Bass amplifier but they had never been known for Guitar amplifiers , the closest endorser was Punky Meadows (Angel) if you noticed Lee did a spoof of this by dressing Paul Gilbert up as Punky in one of the adds. So they gave Lee free reign on designing a complete line of Guitar amps and Cabinets,They even let him redesign the Ampeg logo for the Guitar amps. Lee designed the VL-Series amplifiers which did very well for Ampeg landing them some very big names in the industry, again they had big names using there Bass stuff. Because of the growing Midi market Lee created a Midi Tube Preamp and Two rack space Tube Poweramp, These were later pulled because Ampeg didn't feel there was a large enough market , "I think they made a mistake with that". There was even catalogs printed and sent out with them in it. Then because Ampeg and Crate are owned by the same company (SLM) they asked Lee if he would design a line of amplifiers for Crate , he created there first Tube line for Crate called the Stealth series, The Stealth series got nominated best Amplifier of the year and most innovative amplifier of the year. Again Lee was feeling the pains of a company that didn't want to change with the music trends or market so in 1993 Horizon Music inc. approached Lee with the idea of putting a company around him and using his name as the Logo for the company.

So Lee started Lee Jackson Amplifiers in 1993 manufacturing amplifiers in beautiful
Cape Girardeau Missory , No I mean Missouri. Horizon was already there manufacturing Guitar and Snake cables, they never had operated a amplifier manufacturing facility before , Well Lee Had four months to get a whole manufacturing company up and producing and be ready for the winter NAMM show " Can you say No sleep" . It was exciting time because Lee had been working on a new design for a while so he had the chance to show it at the Winter NAMM the XLS-1000 ,It is the combined knowledge of all the years of his designing in one package. There is no question he loves all of his amplifiers , but the XLS-1000 is definitely his favorite. Because Lee was getting somuch mail from players that wanted him to still be modifying Amplifiers , Lee produced the XLA-1000 Series, it is the exact copy of theamplifiers that he hand built for Steve Vai (Eat m And Smile) , George Lynch (Under Lock N Key) , Zakk Wylde ( No Rest For The Wicked) to name a few. Lee then came up with the XLS combo , what was new about this amplifiers was that it has one closed back and one open back speaker in it , this gives it a sound that other combos of it's size can't compare. Well this brings us up to 1996 and in 1996 Horizon because of internal problems decides to put their amplifier division on hold while they worked it out.I`m sorry , I have received letters from Vendors and Stores relating there
displeasure with Horizon , there is one thing for sure , and that is the product that
went out the door has always been the finest quality , built by a crew that truly
loved what they did , There wasn't even one return in two years for repair and I have
been using the same equipment on the road for years with my band with no
problem , so I`m very pleased in the way my crew assembled and produced the amplifiers. I`m doing amplifiers mod`s right now to keep me busy so if you would like your amplifier worked on please contact me directly at Contact Info , if you have any questions about anything you can reach me there , thank you so much for playing my amps and keep checking back for updates on the next project......Lee