Electro-Harmonix

Mike Matthews founded Electro-Harmonix in New York City in 1968, building cheap, rugged effects pedals at a moment when almost nobody else was doing it. The Big Muff fuzz and Small Stone phaser, both from the early 1970s, ended up on records by Jimi Hendrix and David Gilmour and are still in EHX's catalogue today, alongside newer designs and reissues. The company went bankrupt in 1984; Matthews rebuilt it through vacuum-tube manufacturing in Russia before bringing pedal production back to New York in 2000. EHX pedals turn up constantly in our fuzz and phaser roundups, and we've traced the Big Muff's own history in detail. Here's everything we've covered.