MXR celebrate their 40th anniversary by launching a series of mini-documentary videos that showcase their history.
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These videos will tackle everything from their humble beginnings to appearing on the world’s biggest stages, featuring the artists, engineers, pedal designers, and original MXR personnel that tells the stories behind the brand and their sonic discoveries.
It has now been 40 years since MXR was incorporated in 1974 by engineer Keith Barr and his business partner Terry Sherwood, and there’s no denying that their pedals continue to be strong contenders in the market. Case in point is the MXR Phase 90, the first of many brightly colored effects pedals that would find their way to stages and recording studios worldwide.
MXR’s story began at an audio repair shop in Rochester, New York, which is owned by Barr and his partner Terry Sherwood. The story goes that they were “shocked by the poor quality of the guitar effects their customers brought in”. They then decided to create “better sounding, cooler looking, and more reliable stompbox”.
They started with a few dozen Phase 90 pedals that they built in a basement, which they quickly sold out at gigs. MXR added three more pedals to the core lineup: the Distortion +, the Dyna Comp Compressor, and the Blue Box Octave Fuzz. Soon the growing company was distributing a huge number of pedals all over the world.
MXR’s lowest point was when the company closed down in the ’80s. Thankfully, their core products were still in demand, which got the attention of Jim Dunlop. Dunlop then acquired and resurrected the MXR brand, re-releasing their most popular pedals and creating new pedal designs that carry the same MXR design philosophy.
To give us a more in depth look at the story behind their products, MXR is launching a Legacy series of mini documentaries covering the brand’s history. The video documentaries will be uploaded to their YouTube Channel and will feature interesting bits from the designers of the pedals and artists that use them.
To kick of the celebration, MXR released this trailer video:
You can read more about the history of MXR at Jim Dunlop.
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