The fascinating story behind Electro-Harmonix, the New York City- (and Russia-) based guitar effects pedal company, somehow involves renewable energy, hypnotism, and the occult. Founded in 1968 by Mike Matthews, an electrical engineer, musician, and businessman originally from the Bronx, Electro-Harmonix's famous circuits—including the "Big Muff" fuzz pedal and the Polyphonic Octave Generator, or "POG"—have found a place on many a pedalboard, and etched a deep groove in the history of music. You've heard the Muff on Thurston Moore's guitar throughout his career playing with Sonic Youth (his bandmate Kim Gordon used the EHX Hot Tubes pedal), and in Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" guitar solo, to cite just a few examples.
This history, both technical and fantastical, is catalogued in the new book "Made on Earth for Rising Stars: The Electro-Harmonix Story," by Daniel Epstein and JHS Pedals founder Josh Scott, which was released by Third Man Books in June. "Made on Earth" chronicles the company's origins, its fall and rise, and the personalities behind it, including Matthews, an oddball stoner business overlord. As Matthews's daughter Migi says in the book, "I think he loves his business more than he loves anything else on Earth, including his own children, and wives or girlfriends that he's had."
Matthews told Hell Gate in an interview that initially, his goal with Electro-Harmonix was to start an empire that would allow him to defeat death in his lifetime. But business troubles—including spats with his union—meant that the absurd profits of the '70s effects-pedal market turned into bankruptcy in the '80s, ceasing production. Adding to the company's financial downfall, Matthews was pouring company money into an organization he called the Millennium Group—which researched parapsychology, extrasensory perception, voodoo, and Kirlian photography—in an effort to find a cure for death. (They did not find it.)
Still, Electro-Harmonix did rise again. It exists today as a thriving pedal company, despite the fact that having part of its supply chain in Russia has made the business increasingly complicated. For two years, the 85-year-old Matthews repeatedly told Hell Gate that he would only speak with us about the history of his history-making company "AFTER the Russia-Ukraine war." The trade tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump only instigated further delays. Still, with the book coming out, Matthews finally relented. "In the '70s, I sold hundreds of thousands of pedals. I was in a real hurry, because my wife at the time was telling me, 'Hey, you've got to have a goal,'" he told Hell Gate. "So I came up with this goal of defeating death in my own lifetime."
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Hell Gate: What was your youthful journey into music, and what made you start wanting to make gear?
Mike Matthews: I was always interested in business, so it was business first. I grew up in the Bronx and I was fishing Spalding balls out of the sewers with coat hangers. When I went to camp and all the kids were playing golf, I'd be in the woods looking for golf balls in the ponds to sell.
When I went to college, I was promoting rock and roll shows. I did that in the summer at these big clubs, which were packed in the winter, and they had a lot of people drinking. In the summer, they'd be empty because the kids would really go to the beaches. So what I did is I hooked up with [The Highway Inn on Long Island], and I brought in name acts. They took the bar, but I took the gate money. I promoted a whole bunch of different people. In those days, the name acts were not so expensive—Chuck Berry cost me $1000 a night, and the promoter would put together the backing band.
One night I went in, and the staff at The Highway Inn said "Look, unless you let us take some of the door money"—which was supposed to be mine—"we're not going to let anybody in." They locked me in the lunch room with a big dog. After that, I quit promoting with the clubs. But I was still hiring acts at Cornell when I went to college. I hired the Isley Brothers, and I used to be a great keyboard player. I had a narrow bag that I dug, playing a simple, hard-driving R&B groove on the organ. The Isley Brothers begged me to quit school and go on the road with them, but I didn't do it. Anyway, they were really friendly with Jimi Hendrix, and I became a really tight friend with him.
What made you decide to stay in school?
In those days, bands would make it big, but then in their early 20s, that would be the end of it. It was only when the Beatles and the Stones came in that everything changed. That's number one. The second thing is, my main girlfriend, who I eventually married and divorced, broke up with me. And that sent a shock to me, and so when I got back with her again, I was afraid of losing her. And so I ended up with Electro-Harmonix.
Did the company start as an effects-pedal company?
I graduated from Cornell with a degree in electrical engineering, although I was never interested in being an electrical engineer—I only did it because my father said, "Well, you got to have a profession." I also got a master's in business. I had three job offers, and I chose IBM because the job was in New York City. IBM at the time had these great schools—I learned more at IBM than I did in the MBA program. I went to one of the schools, and the number one song was "Satisfaction." Then I went to another school 12 weeks later, and the number one song was still "Satisfaction."
Everybody wanted to have a [Maestro] Fuzz-Tone [effects pedal]. In those days, 48th Street was the music street. There was an amp repair shop run by Bill Buckle. Bill was making these fuzz pedals one at a time. He said, "Mike, why don't you come in with me? We'll make them much faster." He didn't end up doing anything, but I found a contract house in Long Island City that would build them. Somehow, Al Drange, the founder of Guild Guitars, found out I was building them, and he wanted to buy all the ones I could make. He decided to call them "Foxey Ladies." IBM was very liberal with the time of the salesmen, so every two weeks I'd rent a car, pick up 300 of the Foxey Ladies, and bring them to Guild in Hoboken. They'd write me a check and I'd go back to work.
What was the first Electro-Harmonix pedal?
Everybody wanted a pedal that would make them sound like Hendrix, which was a long, fluid sustain, not like the Fuzz-Tone. A guy that was working with me at IBM told me the name of this designer at Bell Labs that was a member of his church, Bob Myer. Bob was going through a divorce, so I gave him 500 bucks, and said, "Hey, look, can you design this sustain pedal for me?"
One of the prototypes he was building had a box in front of it with a switch. He had built a little preamplifier to boost the signal. The sustainer he built, which would eventually become the Big Muff, wasn't working, but when I turned on the switch, everything got louder. With this box, you could overdrive the amp. That was the very first product that was Electro-Harmonix. The LPB, the "Little Power Booster."
How did that become the Big Muff?
That's how I got into it in 1968. The first product we came up with was the LPB-1. We had that small chassis, so I was looking for other things I could put into that chassis. [Ed. note: The chassis is the metal box in which the effects pedal is housed.] One was a treble booster, which we called the "Screaming Bird," which would make your guitar sound like a harpsichord, where the strings are whipped instead of plucked. We had another product called the "Mole," which was a bass booster. And then we had the distortion, which had a muffled sound. So I called it the "Muff Fuzz," because it was a muffled sound. And then later, when we came up with "Big Muff," I was just goofing. I was, in part, playing on the name muff fuzz, but also goofing on the phrase big muff, which was an underground name for a woman's vagina. I was just doing weird things.
How did the '70s go?
In the '70s, I sold hundreds of thousands of pedals. I was in a real hurry, because my wife at the time was telling me, "Hey, you've got to have a goal." So I came up with this goal of defeating death in my own lifetime. I was trying to increase my sales so I could build a scientific industrial empire, and defeat death. But I had too many problems at once, and then I collapsed and the company went bankrupt.
In the '80s, I started buying vacuum tubes from Russia. In those days, everything was centrally controlled. I went to visit the electronic center in Moscow, because I was interested in importing integrated circuits. I saw vacuum tubes hanging on the wall, and thought, "Oh shit, those are used by guitar players." Now I own the factory, but that's a long story in itself. Eventually, I saw that all the stuff I sold in the '70s were now selling for more than I sold them for, because a new "vintage" market developed. I started getting involved again with pedals. At first I started building them in Russia, and then I eventually started building them again in New York.
What's the story behind that?
When I started working on the vacuum tubes, I needed a name. So I came up with the name Sovtek. I gave that to my girlfriend at that time in Russia, for the name of her company. So she owns the company Sovtek, but I own that trademark. It's complicated, because you see, when I started bringing in stuff from Russia, it was much easier if it was a company owned by a Russian than if it was an American company. That's why I started out that way at the beginning, for several years, until eventually, Russia fell apart completely. There's all these stories, but it'd take me forever to tell them.
Anyway, that was then, and this is now. I'm still working. We still own the two factories in Russia, but because of the Russia-Ukraine war, most western countries have imposed a 35 percent tariff on anything coming out of Russia. We have a lot of customers in China and some other countries that don't have tariffs, but we have to deal with that. So, you've got to deal with problems. You got to solve them.