Electro Harmonix
| Private | |
| Industry | Consumer electronics |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Founder | Mike Matthews |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York |
| Products | Effects pedals, amplifiers |
| Parent | New Sensor Corporation |
| Website | http://www.ehx.com |
Electro-Harmonix is a New York-based company that makes high-end electronic audio processors and sells rebranded vacuum tubes. The company was founded by Mike Matthews in 1968. It is best known for a series of popular guitar effects pedals introduced in the 1970s and 1990s.
During the mid-1970s, Electro Harmonix had established itself as a pioneer and leading manufacturer of guitar effects pedals. Electro-Harmonix was the first company to introduce, 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). In 1980, Electro-Harmonix also designed and marketed one of the first digital delay/looper pedals (16-Second Digital Delay).
Electro-Harmonix was founded by rhythm and blues keyboard player Mike Matthews in October 1968 in New York City. 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. 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, and recent popularization of Jimi Hendrix. The latter connection resulted in the pedals being branded the 'Foxey Lady'.
Following the departure of his partner, Matthews was introduced to inventor and electric engineer Robert Myer through IBM colleagues. Together they designed a circuit to create a distortion-free sustain. 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.
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