Now, the thing to remember is that up until MXR’s sturdy design, effects pedals were usually flimsy and would often break down during gigs, so having a die-cast metal box was new and very much needed for the avid musician.
Figure 3.1 MXR EVH Flanger—Eddie Van Halen signature sound “Unchained”!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
MXR also used op amps, such as the 74 Is, Raytheon 4558’s, and the Texas Instruments 4558. Their first creation was the orange beauty Phase 90, which came out in 1974 and instantly became a hit with guitarists like none other than the “Eruption” shredder himself, Eddie Van Halen.
Figure 3.2 MXR Phase 90: the first design created by Terry Sherman and Keith Barr in their basement!
Next, MXR cranked out one of the most famous overdrive boxes, the Distortion +, followed by the Dyna Comp, and then the Blue Box. By early 1974, MXR had moved from Keith and Terry’s basement to a large industrial facility in Rochester. By the late 1970s, MXR had gotten into studio effects, releasing the rack units of the Digital Delay, the Flanger/Doubler, and the Pitch Transposer.
By the early 1980s, the Distortion + was selling upwards of 20,000 units per year, and at the time they were the best overdrive pedals on the market! By then, MXR was quite wealthy and had quite a line of popular pedals, such as Analog Delay, Blue Box,
Distortion +, Dyna Comp, Flanger, Graphic EQ, Noise Gate Line Driver, Phase 45, Phase 90, Phase 100, and Stereo Chorus.
Figure 3.3 MXR Blue Box distortion octaves—awesome effect, and if it’s good enough for Jimmy Page, it’s good enough for you!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Interestingly, Keith Barr had different aspirations for MXR in the beginning. He designed a mixing console and thought there would be a market for it, but people didn’t seem to care—the big sensation was the phasers. It’s no surprise that Keith was an electrical genius, considering his father was a physicist and taught him from an early age. He also discovered phase shifting at a young age when reading The Radio Amateur’s Handbook.
Originally, the circuit was designed to prevent radio receiver interference, but he
discovered that when you chain these sections together, it causes phase shifting in music.
Much like Les Paul 20 years earlier, MXR discovered that synchronizing a pair of tape recorders, simultaneously playing the same music, creates the flanging sound.
Figure 3.4 MXR Bass Blow Torch. Put on your welding mask and set those controls to lethal!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Because of the demand of Keith’s guitarist clientele, he built the Phase 90, which produced two notches in frequency that could be adjusted up or down with the rate control. There is a second harmonic frequency that distorts when you push a guitar through, which gives it that fabulous sound.
In the beginning, Keith and Terry would hand-drill the circuit boards, paint, and do the silkscreen graphics on the boxes themselves. Terry mainly handled the business side of MXR, dealing with the banks and all of the company finances. Another important figure in MXR was Richard Neatrour, the main designer and engineer.
Figure 3.5 MXR Classic 108 Fuzz. Loaded with MXR’s BC108 Fuzz Face, delivers 1960s tone.
In 1972, Neatrour graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology and went straight to work for Keith and Terry as a repairman for their stereo shop, Audio Services. Richard moonlighted as an amp tech and started to work on Fender and Marshall amps. At the time, the shop would do sound support, such as live broadcast shows for bands, and had a mixer with a PA system. But that all changed when a client of Richard’s came in one day and needed the Maestro Phase Shifter repaired.
Through repairing it, they discovered the wonderful world of phasers, which led to
developing the MXR Phaser. Through this, Keith met a guy named Michael Laiacona who owned a Rochester electronic parts store called Masline Electronics. Now all the
characters were set for MXR’s future success.
Michael was a musician as well and was intrigued by the first MXR Phase 90, so he went out and started selling them. First he sold them one by one to musicians in clubs at night, and then to local music stores, eventually making his way across the state to Manny’s in New York City. Michael was a great salesman, and being a musician, he would perform the demo as well. Keith and Richard were building 50 to 100 Phase 90s at a time in the basement and then giving them to Michael. In turn, Michael would come back with the sales money and get more products to sell. Keith and Richard even had to hire some high school students to help build the pedals to keep up with demand.
Figure 3.6 MXR Auto Q. It adds that envelope filter, auto-wah sound to keep the funk alive.
By the later part of the 1970s, MXR was a full-fledged pedal manufacturer, reaching the largest guitar icons such as Jimmy Page and featured on such Led Zeppelin classics as
“Night Flight,” “Achilles Last Stand,” and “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.” Ever wonder how the Rolling Stones got that cool guitar tone in their classic song “Shattered”? Well, it was Keith Richards using the MXR Phase 100.
Around this same time, MXR abandoned the scripted MXR logo for the block-letter one.
By 1977, they had become so large and well known that Lynyrd Skynyrd is reported to have actually performed in their plant. But with success comes copycat designers that try to make a quick buck, which was the case for MXR. Imitation Phase 90 and Distortion + pedals came out of the woodwork, but as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Figure 3.7 MXR Carbon Copy analog delay. This features up to 600ms of delay, like slap-back echo.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
According to Keith Barr, their former marketing director, Ron Wilkerson, abandoned ship at the end of the 1970s and went over to Roland to help develop their pedal line, which undercut MXR. However, the early ’80s took a hard toll on the company, with the
economy slowing down and the outsourcing to Japan for manufacturing. The final blow was when foreign companies such as BOSS, Ibanez, and Roland started developing stomp boxes at more affordable prices for the consumer. As Keith Barr has stated in interviews, he started to lose interest in the business, and the large manufacturing space for the
company was too expense to keep up.
Figure 3.8 The MXR Six-Band EQ delivers +/–18 dB of cut or boost. Carve out that scooped metal tone!
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
What followed in 1984 was a liquidation of MXR’s assets and ultimately bankruptcy.
However, out of the ashes rose a phoenix when Terry Sherwood, Richard Neatrour, and a few other employees bought the rights to MXR. They named the new company Applied Research and Technology (ART) and continued to produce a few core pedals and
rackmount units. Years later, Jim Dunlop licensed the name MXR and began reissuing the classic pedals. As for Keith Barr, he went on to form Alesis in Los Angeles, which
revolutionized the home recording market in the 1990s.
Figure 3.9 MXR Fullbore Metal distortion. Full metal shred in a box!
Figure 3.10 The MXR Custom Comp has the legendary CA3080 “Metal Can” IC chip for smooth compression.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 3.11 The MXR Custom Badass Modified Overdrive, with 100 Hz cut and boost EQ control to dial in your tone.
Figure 3.12 The MXR Custom Badass ’78 Distortion. Think of the Distortion + on steroids for soaring saturation.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.
Figure 3.13 The MXR Boost/Line Driver solves a variety of mismatched line-level and signal-conditioning problems.
Figure 3.14 The MXR Boost/Overdrive combines simple dynamic overdrive and a clean boost circuit—the best of both worlds.
© 2015 Erik Christian Photography.