Realizing that one product would not be enough to sustain their quickly growing company, Barr and Sherwood decided to expand their offerings with three additional products-the Blue Box, the Distortion + and the Dyna Comp-which joined the lineup later in 1974. Guitarists who purchased these early units were impressed by the pedal’s studio-quality sound, rugged build and affordable price, and word of mouth about MXR quickly spread. Soon they hired Mike Laiacona to handle sales, and he played an important role in getting the pedals into the hands of pros and music stores across the entire United States before he left in 1975 to start Whirlwind, whose line today includes effect pedals, direct boxes, cables and more.Īfter MXR raised a decent amount of funds, it purchased ads in major national music magazines like Rolling Stone and Downbeat to promote the Phase 90. Initially Barr, Sherwood and some teenagers who worked for minimum wage made the first Phase 90 pedals in a small factory in Rochester. He also designed the script MXR logo that was silkscreened on each pedal’s top panel. Inspired by the paint job he saw on a new Ford Econoline van, Barr selected Ditzler PPG Bold Orange automotive paint for the Phase 90’s finish. Sherwood and Barr invested most of the cash reserves from their repair business in a spray-painting kit and parts, including heavy-duty die-cast aluminum boxes made by a company called Bud. “I built one, and people said they liked it.”īarr designed his first phase shifter-named the Phase 90 because it provided 90 degrees of phase shifting-in 1972, but the pedal didn’t go into serious production until late 1973, a few months before MXR Innovations was incorporated in 1974. “Guitarists would come into our shop and tell us that the phase-shifting thing was really happening,” Barr told Thompson. The first pedal effect circuit that Barr designed on his own was a four-stage phase shifter. Barr lengthened the name to MXR Innovations to make it sound more business-like and official.īarr made one mixer and found the process rather tedious and boring, so he turned his attention to the effect pedals that his guitar friends raved about instead. A friend suggested that they call the company MXR, which was short for mixer. However, the first product that the duo produced was not a stomp box but rather an audio mixer, which also inspired their new company’s name. The response was so positive and encouraging that Barr and Sherwood decided to switch from repairing gear to manufacturing electronic devices for musicians. “Eager to start designing some things, I made up a few little boxes for my guitar-playing friends.
“When I saw the poor quality of the effects devices that were coming in for repair, I was really amazed,” Barr said in an interview published in Art Thompson’s 1997 book Stompbox.
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