News: Guitar effects guru ROGER MAYER chats about his 50 year career

Photo: Connie Mayer

Get Ready to ROCK! Radio
The Pete Feenstra Feature, Sunday 31 August 19:00

Roger Mayer made his first effects unit back in 1964 and his designs influenced a whole generation of guitar players including Jimi Hendrix with whom he worked in the late-1960s.

On Sunday 31 August at 19:00 on internet-based Get Ready to ROCK! Radio Roger chats to Pete Feenstra about his long career.

Roger Mayer first started making guitar effects in 1964 for his friend Jimmy Page who used the fuzz box on sessions for many artists in the sixties and of course in his own band The Yardbirds. The first UK records to feature fuzz box solos were both by P.J.Proby and featured Big Jim Sullivan on guitar.

Roger tells Pete Feenstra about a career that took him from a research job in the British Admiralty to the States where he toured in 1968 with Jimi Hendrix. He had met the flamboyant guitarist a year earlier in a London club and developed for him the Octavia effects unit.

Whilst in the States, Mayer formed his own studio equipment company and subsequently worked with Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley.

Returning to the UK in the late 1980s he responded to an increased demand for retro guitar effects and established a new company, reissuing the Octavia in his “Rocket” series and the “Axis Fuzz”.

In this hour radio special there are tracks by some of the artists who worked with Roger and who featured his creations.

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