The Mr. Multi is quite simply a triumph, and I am happy to share it with you if you’ve never heard of it. All the way back in 1973, before the Phase 90 was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, just six years after the first wah pedal was released, the Mr. Multi delivered both with an amazing twist.
Sometimes though, we have to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge an exemplary unit, one that sits atop the genre. Today, that pedal is the Maxon PH-350; the finest phaser ever created.
While the cabinet has many of what we consider to be the finest iteration of certain effects types, we also have a cache of things recognized for their canonical significance. One such device is the original Seamoon Funk Machine.
In other words, while the Pocket Series may have been marketed towards new parents with cranky babies, it was a low-cost rock machine; just add instrument. This whole series started with two units: the MA-1 Mascot Amplifier and its preamp, the FA-1 FET Preamp. It ended with the same two units.
There was a time in the early to mid ‘70s when germanium was banished to the outer realms. Much like the period in time when digital gear dethroned analog and exiled it from the gear kingdom, silicon discretes pushed germanium to the sidelines.
Boss created the “first” of a variety of effects, and was certainly the first to offer many types in compact boxes. However, one such pedal is a stone-cold all-time classic despite never being offered in Boss’s trademark compact enclosure. That pedal is the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble.
The period in question is the so-called “lawsuit era,” circa ‘77–’88, and it was fueled by a slice of Japan’s technology sector with a rugged determinism to enter the musical instrument market at a lower price point than its immediate competitors.
As musicians, we owe it to ourselves to reach past the guitar, the pedals, and the amp, into the toy chest. Anything that makes noise is and should be on the table.
Though the contents of the cabinet are filled with pedals of every sort, we have a surprising lack of vintage fuzz. There are a few, sure, and we’ll definitely get to those, but we need to talk about a fuzz pedal of a different kind first.
Only three effects that I personally know of are part of an actual museum exhibit, positioned for patrons to recognize their contributions to music as a whole.
With real synthesizer controls, the Micro Synthesizer lived up to its name and then some. Players were given full, expansive control over every parameter of the filter sweep and other synth fixings, including triggering parameters and some rudimentary ADSR functions.
