Jan 27, 2009 08:20 PM
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Our buddy Joel from BBG took a field trip to Electro-Harmonix's main lab and test facilities, where they design their legendary music effects pedals and maintain the world's largest vacuum tube business.
Sure there isn't a whole lot of mainstream demand for vacuum tubes these days, what with those fancy solid state electronics everybody's been talking about, but in certain audiophile circles, nothing beats the clean boost of a tube amp. Electro-Harmonix manufacturers 2/3 of the world's new vacuum tubes, and stockpiles any rare tube stocks they can find in their Long Island City warehouse, where they extensively test and pair them before shipping them off.
And let's not forget those effects pedals. EH is responsible for legends like the Big Muff (my friend Greg still has his, the same one we used to distort the fuck out of our high school cover band, while at the same time receiving mild to mildly serious electric shocks from its well-worn wires—our fault for cracking it open, not EH's), the Small Stone phase shifter, Memory Man delay and cool new gear like the Voice Box auto harmonizer—chances are, at the next concert you go to, you'll spy an Electro-Harmonix pedal or two on the board. Very cool to see inside.
Just remember, if you ever need to play the bass part to Radiohead's National Anthem—a Big Muff is what you seek. [Electro-Harmonix, Boing Boing TV]
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