![]() It is described by the company as "the finest harmonic distortion-sustain device developed to date". In 1969 Bob Myer and Mike Matthews designed the Big Muff Pi, a fuzzbox that added a bass-heavy sustain to any guitar sound. The Mike Matthews Freedom Amp, a portable guitar amp powered by 40 "D" batteries, was popular in many venues that lacked an A/C power source. Several similar devices, which sold well, followed, such as the Treble Booster and Bass Booster. The LPB-1 massively boosted a guitar signal & could be used to overdrive an amplifier, resulting in a raw distorted sound, full of sustain and harmonics. The Axis fuzz pedal, also sold under the name 'Foxey Lady' for the Guild guitar company, and LPB-1 Linear Power Booster were the first products in 1969. A simple line booster used by Myers in testing to preamplify the guitar's signal was also manufactured from 1969 as the Linear Power Booster ( LPB-1), and has continued production in present day. Together they designed a circuit to create a distortion-free sustain. In addition several low priced models of acoustic guitars were sold.įollowing the departure of his partner, Matthews was introduced to inventor and electric engineer Robert Myer through IBM colleagues. The latter connection resulted in the pedals being branded the 'Foxey Lady'. ![]() Fuzzboxes were in demand following a trail of hits involving their sound, including " (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones two years before (the pedal's stomp switch can be clearly heard at 0:35 before Richards plays the song's trademark riff), and recent popularization of Jimi Hendrix. He took a job as a salesman for IBM in 1967, but shortly afterwards, in partnership with Bill Berko, an audio repairman who claimed to have his own custom circuit for a fuzz pedal, he jobbed construction of the new pedal to a contracting house and began distributing the pedals under a deal with the Guild Guitar Company. In 1980, Electro-Harmonix also designed and marketed one of the first digital delay/looper pedals (16-Second Digital Delay) and a line of guitars in the 70s.Ĭompany history Founding years (1967–1968) Įlectro-Harmonix was founded by rhythm and blues keyboard player Mike Matthews in October 1968 in New York City with $1,000. ![]() It was the first company to manufacture, and market affordable state-of-the art "stomp-boxes" for guitarist and bassists, such as the first stomp-box flanger (Electric Mistress), the first analog echo/delay unit with no moving parts (Memory Man), the first guitar synthesizer in pedal form (Micro Synthesizer), and the first tube-amp distortion simulator (Hot Tubes). ĭuring the mid-1970s, Electro-Harmonix established itself as a manufacturer of guitar effects pedals. EHX also made a line of guitars in the 70s. It is best known for a series of guitar effects pedals introduced in the 1970s and 1990s. The company was founded by Mike Matthews in 1968. I've heard good things about the Digitech Drop, but never used one hands-on.A guitar pedal board, comprising several EHX pedals, including a Big Muff, POG (polyphonic octave generator), a Stereo Pulsar tremolo and a Tube EQ.Įlectro-Harmonix (also commonly referred to as EHX ) is a New York City-based company that makes electronic audio processors and sells rebranded vacuum tubes. I can't recall off the top of my head, but there are some key parameter settings that are "make or break" in terms of tracking and latency. Whether this coloration matters in context might be moot, but certainly, in live performance the latency of the Pitchfork for drop-tuned shifts was something I couldn't deal with, and it certainly was not better than the AxeFxII shifts in this respect.Ĭertainly it is worth forming your own opinion, AxeFxII vs Pitchfork, but I would also take a much closer look at your settings in the AxeFx's Pitch Block, especially for polyphonic content. The Pitchfork did noticeably color the tone, and of course since it is a basic stomp pedal, you have no opportunity to tweak this. What I saw reinforced what I was hearing: the AxeFxII had lower latency, that would fluctuate depending on the parameter settings, and it also did not add as much coloration to the shifted sound. As a control, I recorded a dry (L)/bypassed (R) of each to make sure that there was no inherent latency between the direct recording and that of the signal going through the bypassed Pitchfork or AxeFxII. Basically, I did a parallel split off my instrument and recorded each path on a DAW. Latency was one of the things I was most interested in, and I did some informal, non-scientific tests to compare latency between the AxeFxII pitch shifting and that of the Pitchfork.
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