How MXR Changed Pedals

on today's episode i'm going to show you the very first mxr pedals ever made i'm going to teach you about their history and how they went on to influence every pedal company afterwards it's pretty awesome grab a glass of milk some grape juice strawberry juice i don't know do whatever you want to do i'm not your mom [Music] it's hard to find a pedal company more responsible for the success and calming boom of the pedal industry through the 80s 90s and 2000s as the brand mxr it all started in rochester new york in 7172 when two high school friends keith barr and terry sherwood met and decided let's start an audio repair business they called it audio services and they fixed mixers hi-fi systems and other brands of guitar pedals they were dissatisfied with the quality and sound of the pedals on the market at the time and that led keith who was an electronics wizard to inventing and developing the phase 90. the name mxr was given to them by a friend and he said since you fix mixers just call it mxr short for mixer well they're not really known for mixers they're known for pedals so they incorporate it as mxr innovations thinking they would do other things but they never did that was in 1974. their very first print ad was on the back of a rolling stone magazine and it showed the brand new phase 90 who no one knew anything about and it simply said we are here at their height they were a multi-million dollar company in the 70s and they had over 250 employees let's talk about the first pedal the first era of mxr from 7475 after they incorporated is called the script era now these are identified because they have script or cursive writing in comparison to the later 70s creations which are block writing now some interesting facts about this that are very nerdy are that the very first ones ever made are not made in the standard mxr stamped enclosure that's a little bit heavy they're made in a diy enclosure by a company called bud so they're referred to as bud box enclosures these are the absolute first mxr's ever made and if you're a collector or see these in the used market or you're at a pawn shop and see an mxr pedal with buds stamped on the back this is a gold mine and a very very awesome thing to own these are painted by terry and keith in their basement shop with a 40 dollar sears spray system and hand printed by keith i believe the circuit boards are etched in a fish tank by keith as well and they're very very cool as most of these were all sold out of their cars at local shows the phase 90 was keith's totally original phaser design and this is really impressive because there was really only one other commercially successful phaser on the market for musicians and it wasn't even really a guitar pedal it was the maestro phase shifter and it's huge it's the size of my head and i have a giant head it has push buttons and it kind of just simulates a rotary speaker now it sounds good it's been on some famous recordings and they sold quite a few but keith wasn't really impressed with the user interface and he wanted to do this thing at mxr where they took the circuits made them simple and accessible and small and that's why the phase 90 is really really genius the design comes from a radio textbook like a handbook of schematics and circuits and basically it was a phaser type schematic diagram that allowed people on radios to phase out interrupting signals he took that adapted it and added to it and i think he made the most classic phaser ever it's hard to argue with that let's play it this is actually a bud box meaning very very first units ever made it could be one of the first units i don't know we'll never know and it doesn't bother me that i don't know i don't think it does [Music] do [Music] the second mxr pedal ever created was the distortion plus this is arguably as famous as the phase 90 i don't know it's tough to say i don't have the box but i have the original like manual card trading i like to think they're trading cards i know they're not but people like me would trade them if you have any of these i'd probably trade because i have a couple of the other models i have some block logo stuff you know just hit me up later we'll go to a card shop play pokemon and deal with these but all that aside this is a fantastic circuit it is a classic hard clipping 1970s op distortion i did an episode on this there's a link in the description below but it's in the family of the dod 250 the ross distortion etc and it's awesome it's pure magic i don't know what else to say oh yeah they sold like 20 000 a year in the 80s early 80s yeah that's a big deal [Music] [Applause] [Music] the next mxr pedal is also possibly their most famous i think you see the pattern here they're all just really famous and really important it is the dynacomp uh i have the trading card as well again i i can be found at local trading places trying to trade these with kids they don't ever have them because kids don't know what to collect they do the stupid cards and stuff it's fine this is important it's the first compressor ever to use the rca vca chip the 3080. this has been copied so many times it's painfully beautiful i say that seriously because there's some great copies with tweaks but this is the classic really important before this there's a couple petal things but there's really just a bunch of big studio compressors that are really hard to stuff in a gig bag let's check it out [Music] if you've ever collected mxr pedals there's one thing that you know about it's the elephant in the room it's when you take the back of the pedal off of a classic 1970s mxr especially these first era scripts there's a nasty foam it's disgusting it falls out everywhere all over everything you own everyone around you hates you you can't even get the back on without it flying everywhere we're gonna talk about how great this line of pedals is if we're gonna talk about how amazing keith and terry were we gotta talk about the foam and we have to come together and agree this is hideous this foam is a horrible horrible travesty to guitar pedals and the fact that this line of pedals succeeded and influenced all of us including me is a sheer miracle its fault look at the foam it fell out everywhere look at this it's disgusting it's disgusting next up was the blue box this is probably my favorite mxr pedal but it actually didn't do fantastic it's not as legendary as some of the others but it's really collectible and hard to find an original script like this because they didn't make quite as many as they made the compressor or the phaser now this was inspired by the sound of an edgar winterband song called frankenstein where he uses this sub octave generator thing i actually don't know how that worked but keith heard it and wanted to make a box that sounds like this it's pretty awesome and i just want to say this if your kids are around just gather them more around if that's possible tell them to look at the screen this is for them this is a jam for the kids nick is this we're gonna do this for the kids this one's for the kids this is for the kids because the kids are the future sing along if you want to yeah you can [Music] sure [Music] next up is the phase 45 off of the success of the phase 90 they made a more simplified phaser meaning it's not more simple to use it's just a more simple circuit it has less stages than the phase 90 and that's hence the number thing 90 45. this is a less dramatic phasing sound it's more subtle i think it really nails the sounds that i like in a phaser and you can kind of leave it on and let it do its thing and it like the phase 90 lends itself a lot more to the sound of an original univibe in my opinion but my opinion doesn't really matter let's jam and you have your opinion because the show's all about you i'm just here i'm a vehicle of thought and you're the thinker and i'm going to put a distortion plus with it you might not like this but i'm sorry i'm doing the best i can do we need can we move on yes it's fine [Music] next up brings a mystery that is very hard to deal with i have not found an answer to this and i doubt that anyone knows it because i've searched to and fro and back again so two and fro and two and i cannot figure this out it is the noise gate line driver here's the problem supposedly this came out a year after other things here's the hang up and now it's time for meticulously obsessing over small details no one should care about it's in a bud box that means it's pre-mass production of the company incorporating i i don't know what to do with that because no one's saying that's a thing but it's a thing because the pedals supposedly released before it had the mxr stamp but this is in a diy box i don't know i have a couple different cards they're a little bit different i don't want to obsess but the back look they're printed differently and i know details don't matter to a lot of you but they matter to me the noise gate line driver the photo looks cropped a little different this is more blue this is more green we actually have slightly different writing in the copy i don't know the address is different mxr innovations po box 722 mxr innovations 247 goodman street i don't know what to do with this this is a mystery that i'm not a fan of i'm going to play this i'm having a meltdown there's a lot of things i need to know that i don't know if you know anything about this in the comments help me out because i just want to know this i'm going to play it i'm going to put a distortion plus in front of it and do like this weird boss slow gear thing i don't i don't know it's kind of cool slightly useless because i'm not using it how you should use it i'm gonna shut up it's fine it's i'm fine totally fine what do you do when two of your pedal company's most successful pedals are the phase 90 and the phase 45 and it's the 1970s you make a third phaser it's called the phase 100 it's absolutely fantastic it has more options a little more control i want to give a shout out to ds effects on reverb i've bought tons of stuff from them in this past year of collecting and this was really hard to find for me the particular age and style of this that i wanted they're usually beaten to death i have the card let's talk about the card the card folds down with a flap i'm not sure what this section was to be used for maybe you like set it like this and propped it up i don't know but i'm into these cards if you have cards hit me up let me know i'll do some trading i have extras i've said this but i'm driving the point home there's all kinds of stuff here there's addresses this is the p.o box i don't know there's a mystery but i love mystery even though it haunts me this one's awesome keith richards is a user of this historically i think it's why it sells so well it's on a ton of stones hits yeah i'm going to do a song that's kind of like incubus rolling stones we'll call it incubus stone let's do that [Music] [Applause] [Music] sometime about a year ago i got a package in the mail i can't remember who sent it it may have been unmarked because it may have come straight from an angel it is never used parts kit from the original rochester factory this is a dynacomp circuit board look at this with the original 3080 chip in here in foam protected circuit board never soldered on original foot switch pots knobs i just want to say i don't have a single box to any of these pedals it's unbelievable this is one of the hardest collections to put together the original script eras with bud boxes all this stuff i don't have a single box i got some of the cards i don't even have all the cards i need boxes and i need cards and i just you know i just i wake up every morning i pray dear god give me the grace to live a day without the boxes to the series as i mentioned earlier later in the 70s specifically around 1977 mxr goes over to the block logo enclosures and a lot of the circuits stay exactly the same and there is some crossover unfortunately by 1984 mxr completely implodes due to the rising fame and stardom of these new japanese companies like boss that took over the market completely now keith barr was already dabbling in digital creation because he just wasn't ever satisfied he was a true engineer a really brilliant guy and he launched off on his own and started alyssa's if you're familiar with their products they're really really brilliant he also during this time basically invented the fv1 spin chipset which is responsible for tons of pedal companies and designs that i use it's one of the only pedal design specific electronic parts that was really ever made it's pretty amazing and fantastic one of the other people along with some other managers went over and started art and uh yeah it's kind of over jen dunlop bought it in 1987 the trademark and he relaunched everything and they continued to make really faithful recreations of things so yeah maybe we'll do an episode on later mxr later but for now let's go to record time today's record time is brought to you by 1979's into the outdoor by led zeppelin a little inside info here this is the first led zeppelin album that i ever listened to i had probably heard some things on movie soundtracks or whatnot but my band in high school the drummer ended up with this record and there's a song called all of my love which is fantastic now this is not your typical orthodox leds up on record and it may cause some of you to really like it a lot more the tracks are phenomenal but it's strange it's at the end of the career the mixing is unique and it's just kind of eccentric i think that's a good word from the opening track in the evening the solo is incredible but there is a song where the mxr blue box is used and it's really really cool it's called fool in the rain which has this crazy drum change thing that happens i don't know i could talk about it all day you need to check it out let me know what you think in the comments and tell me in the comments your favorite record featuring mxr pedals i think there's enough history and enough knowledge about famous bands that you probably have some options there and some thoughts and some opinions and i like opinions sometimes i hope that you enjoyed this episode it was a blast and i hope that you see how important mxr is to the pedal industry and every company afterwards even boss has even said that when they went to do their color schemes and identifying a color to a sound they saw that first in mxr and that's a huge deal these simple circuits the genius of keith barr and his entire team it's an awesome story so hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments below what your favorite jam was what your favorite mxr pedals are and let me know what else you'd like to see broken down historically about this company because it's a lot to talk about it'd take months we could do it but if you liked this episode hit like subscribe to the channel click the bell icon to get notifications of future episodes there is a store the jhshow.com you can buy shirts you don't need like this if you obsess over things if you're crazy it's fine we can be crazy together there's also a jhs show patreon where you can contribute to the calls of archiving all of this information it takes a ton of work and we have a team here dedicated to all of this it's wild there's long-form talks that are exclusively yours if you're a member there's giveaways there's all kinds of fun stuff so do all that have a great day and play your mxr pedals and if you don't have one go buy one seriously i'm watching now

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 176,582

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, MXR Pedals

Id: ZTp9zfMUmAk

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020