Rocking On

MXR revives Tom Scholz's fabled 80s guitar headphone-amp tone in its latest pedal

- Trevor Curwen

Long before the current plethora of 'rig-in-a-box' pedals there was the Rockman. Anyone who played guitar in the 1980s will be aware of it, and anyone who's listened to Def Leppard's Hysteria album will have heard it in action. In 1982, Tom Scholz of US rock band Boston designed and released the Rockman X100 headphone amp via his electronics company Scholz Research & Development, putting amp sound and effects for silent guitar practice into a portable unit that could also be connected to a recording console. The distinctive compressed sound, with its integral analogue chorus, soon found its way onto various recordings in the 1980s.

Now, over 40 years on, the range of Rockman units is apparently in demand, so MXR is catering to that with a new addition designed to revive the sonic character of the original headphone amp.