The year: 1966.  Enter Thomas Organ Company engineer Brad Plunkett, an engineer tasked with coming up with a tone circuit. While testing, he discovered that he had accidentally invented something way beyond a normal tone control. Plunkett put it into a volume pedal housing, and, although there was no way he could have known it at the time, he changed the world. That device, which would soon be dubbed the Cry Baby, found its way onto history-making tracks by Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and those sounds would profoundly influence subsequent generations of guitarists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Slash, and many, many others.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have the EP-3’s sonic mojo for yourself. We created the Echoplex line of pedals to give you that sound in a convenient, pedalboard-friendly form that you can take on the road. Last year, we came out with the Echoplex Preamp. This year, we’re releasing the second component of the EP-3’s signature sound in the form of the Echoplex Delay. Like the Echoplex Preamp, it’s the size of a Phase 90, and it delivers the EP-3’s legendary tones with a simple control interface and a hi-fi all-analog dry path.

If you’re not an advanced tonechaser, you may never have heard of the Echoplex EP-3. But you’ve definitely heard what it can do. Eddie Van Halen is known to have used them religiously in the early days, even taking his units on tour. Jimmy Page, who originally used the Echoplex EP-2 unit, switched over to the EP-3 as soon as it came out, and it remains an essential part of his rig. Brian May had his EP-3s modified to extend delay time. Eric Johnson has used them for years, even putting them directly on his pedalboard on occasion. And that’s just to name a few.

To get at what made the EP-3 so appealing to these and other guitar greats, we had to focus on the EP-3 in two separate elements: the preamp and the delay effect.

THE PREAMP

There’s nothing transparent about the EP-3. If your signal goes through it, your tone changes—even if you don’t use the delay effect. Turned out some guitar players loved that tonal seasoning. It’s all thanks to EP-3’s preamp.

The Echoplex EP-1 and EP-2 machines sounded rich and warm thanks to the tubes in their preamp sections, but their repeats tended toward muddiness. The EP-3, on the other had, uses a solid-state preamp—providing much needed clarity—with a Field Effect Transistor (FET) supplying depth and warmth in place of tubes.

The Echoplex Preamp sweetens up your sound in the same way. Its circuitry follows the exact same signal path as the EP-3, including the FET circuit, so when you kick it on, you’re adding the same secret ingredient to your tonal recipe that was favored by the aforementioned guitar greats. The Preamp’s single Gain control sets the pedal’s volume and can boost your signal up to +11dB. At higher settings, you’ll hear slight asymmetrical clipping for some very smooth and organic grit.

THE DELAY

The charm of the EP-3’s delay effect is that each repetition is unique. When you play a note, it’s recorded onto the tape and played back. The first repeat is clear, but because of the slight pitch changes inherent to tape machines that are imparted onto the signal, it’s not identical. That slightly imperfect first repeat is itself recorded for the second repeat, which now includes new imperfections in addition to the old ones.

We created the Echoplex Delay pedal to provide that same charming “copy of a copy” magic and more. Rather than just recreate the sound of a pristine EP-3, we wanted this pedal to give players the full range of tones available from an EP-3 machine throughout its lifetime.

To start, we gathered up seven different EP-3 units. These machines are 40 or so years old by now, so quality and condition are all over the place, and we wanted to be sure we had a good selection of units to evaluate. We chose five of them to be serviced and calibrated, and then we picked the best sounding one—the one with the least wow and flutter—to be the default sound.

We used the other machines to dial in the range of sounds for the Age control, which allows you to “age” the delay signal from clean and clear to dark and distorted. Tape echo machines have a lot of moving parts, and over the years, they lose functionality and break down. This can add gain, distortion, and wow and flutter while darkening up the tone—characteristics that many guitar players have come to love about their maturing EP-3s. We simulated those changes so you can use the Age control to make your repeats sound like a brand new EP-3 or one that’s been sitting in your garage for a few decades. Taking the Age control fully clockwise can take you into freakout territory, beyond the aging effects found in any of the units we worked with.

With the Delay control, you can set the time between repeats to anywhere from 40ms to 750ms, but the Echoplex Delay can be connected to an MXR Tap Tempo Switch to set delay time up to 4 seconds.

COMBINING THE ECHOPLEX PREAMP AND ECHOPLEX DELAY

Combining the Echoplex Preamp and the Echoplex Delay pedals allows you to condition your guitar tone as an “always on” effect with the preamp and kick on the delay effect as you need it.

All you need to do is put the Echoplex Preamp in front of the Echoplex Delay in your signal chain. While the Echoplex Delay’s effect signal is already conditioned with the tonality of the Preamp, putting the Preamp in front of the Delay ensures that the “dry” signal going through the Delay is also sweetened up by the Preamp.

It’s like having the full EP-3 on your pedalboard, but instead of having to dial the delay function up or down with a knob, you can step in and out of it with a footswitch.

But recording studios and audio engineers needed something more than a bright orange box. They required higher fidelity and a seriously high-tech look, and they weren’t as limited by pedalboard real estate as live musicians tended to be. Enter the MXR line of rack effects.

The line began with 2-space rack units such as the M-113 Digital Delay, M-124 Dual 15-Band Graphic EQ, M-126 Flanger/Doubler, and the M-129 Pitch Transposer. These were joined shortly by the more full-featured Delay System II and the M-180 Omni, the company’s first multi-effects processor. The effects boasted state-of-the-art sound in tour-approved enclosures and instantly attracted the attention of the world’s greatest musicians. The MXR Digital Delay and Delay System II in particular found favor with many top stars. David Gilmour stocked his touring racks with both MXR delays. Frank Zappa was also a fan of the “blue face” MXR Digital Delay. Brian May famously demoed his classic “Brighton Rock” echoes with two Delay System II units. The great Jaco Pastorius employed an MXR delay as an early looping device, using the sample and hold function to solo over.

Despite the fact that the MXR company fell on hard times in the mid-’80s, the rack effects endured, and found new life with each successive generation of players. The Flanger/Doubler became an integral part of one of the most transformative metal tones of the ’90s when Dimebag Darrell of Pantera made it a central component of his rig. Heavy players the world over flocked to the Flanger/Doubler for the massive tone thickening and widening that Dime made famous.

In addition to the 2U effects listed above, MXR also released single-space processors, including the Digital Time Delay. The only thing that tone freaks need to know about this unit is that Eric Johnson, arguably the biggest tone chaser of all time, keeps one on his pedalboard (yes, his pedalboard) to this day.

A huge part of the appeal of these MXR rack pieces is the fact that they were all very friendly to guitar signals. Where a lot of rack gear insisted on line-level, low-impedance signals, MXR effects were perfectly happy with the Hi-Z signals that guitars provided, resulting in a very plug-and-play experience. Rather than fuss and futz with other signal processors, guitarists could simply plug in, get great tone, and create with the MXR effects.

Whether players know it or not, MXR rack effects made a huge impact on tone in the ’80s, ’90s, and today. The sounds forged in those products live on in the MXR effects of today. Have you ever used an MXR rack effect?

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Starting with a few dozen Phase 90s constructed in a basement and sold out of a car 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 cranking out thousands and thousands of stompboxes and distributing them all over the planet. Guitarists everywhere were plugging into MXR pedals, and those chains of multi-colored boxes became synonymous with out-of-this-world sounds and limitless possibilities.

The long list of timeless recordings that feature MXR pedals includes classic tunes by such giants as Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Rolling Stones, and many, many others. The vicious distortion on Blizzard of Ozz? MXR Distortion +. Jimmy Page’s “Fool in the Rain” solo? MXR Blue Box. Virtually every song on Van Halen I? Phase 90. Keith Richards’ trippy tone on “Shattered”? Phase 100. The intuitive operation and bullet-proof reliability of MXR pedals ensured that those guitar heroes could reproduce the sounds of their hit records night after night on the road as well as in the recording studio.

The music business can be fickle, however, and MXR’s fortunes would shift in the ’80s as other manufacturers began to catch up. MXR closed its doors, but the core products never fell out of favor. Jim Dunlop recognized this, and acquired and resurrected the MXR brand. Fittingly, Dunlop’s first MXR releases were the Phase 90, the Distortion +, the Dyna Comp Compressor, and the Blue Box Octave Fuzz. Dunlop’s acquisition meant that guitarists could once again get their hands on the classic MXR effects, and it also represented a continuation of Keith Barr’s innovative legacy with the eventual release of many new designs.

Pedals such as the Carbon Copy® Analog Delay, Custom Badass ’78 Distortion, and Smart Gate® Noise Gate have become modern classics. The Bass Innovations line offers bass players pedals designed with their very specific needs in mind, and the MXR Custom Shop serves as a testing ground for the MXR team’s most ambitious and adventurous ideas.

What’s more, the MXR roster now includes classic non-MXR effects such as the Talk Box and the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato—recreated with dead-on accuracy and imbued with all the qualities that made MXR famous—in addition to several signature effects developed in conjunction with guitar players such as Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Zakk Wylde, and Dimebag Darrell.

The 40^th anniversary of MXR’s incorporation finds the company more vibrant and exciting than ever, offering dozens of models for guitar players and bass players, with the time-honored effects that got the company started sitting proudly alongside forward-thinking boxes never dreamed of by the founders.

The fact that we can’t remember a time when there weren’t hundreds of stompboxes to choose from is due in large part to MXR. The company’s first print ad, which appeared on the back cover of Rolling Stone and featured the then-unheard-of Phase 90, stated simply, “MXR: We Are Here.” Those words are far truer on the 40^th anniversary than they were when they were written. The next 40 years will only bring more incredible sounds in neat little boxes to innovative musicians everywhere as the company that created such a big part of the soundtrack of our past provides the tools to take music into the future. Prepare to be amazed all over again.

In 2014, we’re celebrating MXR’s 40 years of innovation with a series of mini documentary videos covering its history—from being sold out of a suitcase to appearing on the world’s biggest stages—along with numerous artists, engineers, pedal designers, and original MXR personnel telling stories of sonic inspiration and discovery. Start below with the trailer for just a small sample of what’s to come; then watch our inspiring interview with MXR founding employee Ron Wilkerson, who explains the creative, business and technical enthusiasm that drove MXR’s formative years; and then watch as guitar hero Paul Gilbert recounts his first experiences with MXR effects, and explains how the right effects can influence experimentation and inspiration.