Electro Harmonix News: DV now stock a fantastic selection of Electro Harmonix guitar pedals. Call DV, arrange a demo and experience guitar fx which won't constrain the colour of your sound; rather, they give you the freedom to express it!
Electro Harmonix Review
Back in the ‘60s, guitar amps were engineered intentionally to keep guitarists from experimenting with distorted sounds. Electro-Harmonix changed all that.
For 40 years they’ve contributed to many of the most famous recordings in music history. Their pedals won't ever constrain the colour of your sound; rather, they give you the freedom to express it.
The first Electro Harmonix product was the ‘Axis’ fuzz, which was also sold under the name ‘Foxey Lady’ for the Guild company. While working on the early Big Muff design, EH founder Mike Matthews used a booster circuit incorporated into the design and marketed it as the LPB-1 or Linear Power Booster. This boosted a guitar signal to provide massive gain by clipping the signal, radically increasing volume, distortion, sustain and harmonics. Similar devices followed such as the Treble Booster and Bass Booster, all extremely popular with guitarists.
In the early ‘70s, Mike Matthews designed the pedal that would make the company famous - The Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi. This was a fuzzbox that added a rich, creamy, bass-heavy sustain to any guitar sound. Legend has it that Matthews was trying to design a distortion free sustainer but thought that his ‘mistake’ sounded so good it would be popular. It also made smaller amps sound better and allowed distortion at any volume. The pedal was extremely popular and was used most notably by Carlos Santana, David Gilmore and Ernie Isley.
Electro Harmonix stopped making pedals in the mid-1980s, and in the early 1990s started selling valves. However due to demand, they reissued the more popular pedals in the mid-1990s, the Big Muff Pi and Small Clone included. In 2002 they started designing new pedals to add to their range but company policy is that all reissued effects remain as close as possible to the original vintage designs. However, casings, knobs and especially the old-fashioned mini-jack power input were not up to modern day standards. This all changed in 2006 with their smaller and more standardised ‘Micro’ and ‘Nano’ effects lines. Electro Harmonix remains a popular guitar effects and valve company and is available from DV: the UK's No.1 Guitar Effects Retailer.