Interview: Roger Mayer

Roger Mayer

Roger Mayer is truly a legend. He has worked with such music icons as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Bob Marley, Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder and The Isley Brothers. His innovations in the field of guitar pedals and studio recording equipment have made a mark on music that cannot be denied nor disputed. From his first treble booster, to his innovative fuzz boxes, from the world-renowned Octavia pedal to his custom Wah’s, Mayer has continuously pushed the envelope in both innovation and quality. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Mayer about his life, his career, the people he’s work with, the products he’s invented and produced and his thoughts on creativity and the future of recording and guitar gear technology.

IA: When did you first discover your passion for working with electronics?

RM: Quite early in life really maybe fourteen or so, something like that. Back then we started obviously going to school and some people were into radios; ham radio I suppose it would be called, not necessarily twenty-seven megahertz stuff.

IA: You grew up around Epsom, England in the same neighborhoods with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and you knew both men, what were they like back then?

RM: Well, Jimmy Page and I have the same birthday, Jimmy is two years older than me though so when I was about fifteen, he’d be about seventeen. Basically, I met these guys because they used to play around locally in the local music venues around where I lived, of which there were quite a few; that’s how we met. I had an interest even then around fifteen in changing the sound of the guitar and so forth and that’s how we began. They used to play in local youth clubs, church halls…real grassroots type of stuff.

Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page while in The Yardbirds

IA: What was it like growing up in the time of the British Blues boom?

RM: All I can possibly say is back then, and you’re talking 1962, ’63, ’64, my sister used to go to art school you see, and I got to see the early performances and emergence of The Rolling Stones in early ’63 and ’64. I would go to the gigs with my sister. Back then was the beginning of the English love for American music, people used to borrow and get together and play records the records they had; they were very hard to come by. I used to go by Jimmy [Page’s] house, or he’d come round mine, and he’d be playing me American records. It really was this love of playing the American music that basically fueled the beginning of The Stones, The Yardbirds, and all kinds of people. We were very aware of the good emerging American guitar players who played on many of these hit records, people like Scotty Moore, James Burton, Chris Gallup from Gene Vincent, Johnny Burnett. The thing that kind of sticks in my mind was that we were always listening to the sound of them and would say, “Wow, that sounds great!”

IA: What was the first guitar pedal that you built?

RM: The first one I built was a treble booster, which I think Jeff Beck used it, and a few other people used it. I don’t know if it became the Rangemaster Treble Booster, but it looks very very similar to the one I built. I also built a foot pedal back then that went from side to side that did a tone control; not a Wah pedal. The only pedal that altered the tone back then when you were playing was the DeArmond pedal that was both a volume and a tone that went up and down and side to side. The first pedal I really built though was a fuzz pedal.

IA: Right, didn’t Jimmy Page come to you with a Gibson Maestro Fuzz Box and ask you to modify it?

RM: No, I never saw a Gibson Maestro first of all. I’ve never had one in my hands, in fact, to date; I’ve never had one in my hand [laughs]. We listened to the sound of it you see, on the early Ventures records. I think they had a record out called “The 2,000 Pound Bee” and it seemed like an interesting sound. The problem with the early Maestro fuzz tones were I guess quite percussive in nature; they didn’t have a lot of sustain. So I built, when I was working with the Admiralty, a version of a germanium fuzz box loosely based on the Maestro. It gave more sustain and it had a richer sound. That became quite popular amongst the session players around London.

IA: Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page…

RM: Big Jim Sullivan used it on a couple of Proby records. The Nashville Teens had one, Jimmy Page had one, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, I think Ritchie Blackmore. There wasn’t that many, I didn’t really make that many of they, only for the session guys and a few bands.

IA: Around this time you were making all these guitar pedals you were also working for the Admiralty, what was it like working there?

RM: [The Admiralty] was my main job. After school I went to work for The Royal Naval Scientific Service and started off as an Assistant Experimental Officer. Basically, you went to work at the laboratory then they sent you to university as well or special courses. It was the government’s way of taking people, not bypassing university, but putting them through their own special courses and having the practical experiences in the laboratory.

IA: How difficult was it to divide your time between working for the Admiralty and making guitar pedals?

RM: Not a problem at all, they encouraged you to have hobbies. If you were interested in electronics you could play around and do what you wanted to do and use the equipment. They were quite accommodating of people who were interested in electronics. Plus, you were encouraged and trained to think in a, not an abstract way but…put it this way, a problem wasn’t considered a problem.

CR: How did you first meet Jimi Hendrix and how did you become involved with him professionally?

RM: I saw Jimi on television, Ready, Steady Go or something like that, and I thought, “Wow, this is a really great guitar player.” Then I happened to find out that he played with a bunch of American artists obviously Wilson Pickett, Little Richard…all kinds of stuff and I said, “Wow, I gotta see this guy!” So I went down to the club where he was playing and got to see the performance and after the performance I just went up to him and said, “I really obviously like the way you play and I know Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and I’ve been helping them with their guitar sound and I’ve got some new interesting stuff that you might like to hear.” So Jimi says, “Yeah sounds great. Why don’t you come along to this gig and bring one of your latest devices along.”

A few weeks later we went to Chislehurst Caves with Jimi and I showed him one of the first ever evolutions of the Octavia, or the Ocatavio as we called it then. Anyway, that was the beginning and Jimi said, “Wow, that was a great sound.” So I said, “Well look, that’s not the final version Jimi, but there is never a final version, we can always make improvements.” He said, “Well I’m doing my second record in a couple of weeks, why don’t you come along to this gig in Hounslow, the Ricky-Tick Club in Hounslow, and after the gig we’re going to go back to Olympic Studios.” I said, “Great, sounds cool.”

So I went along to the gig, and during the gig the ceiling was very low and Jimi put the headstock of his guitar through the ceiling at the height of the performance in one of his moves when he wasn’t thinking. Anyway, it went through the ceiling tiles and it bent the bloody tuning machine heads, so that guitar was screwed! Then we all drove to Olympic Studios after the gig and Noel, Noel Redding, had to go back to his flat and pick up a Telecaster. Then Jimi did the solos for two records, one was “Fire” and the other one was “Purple Haze” and as they say after that the rest is history [laughs].

The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Mayer is on the Far Left)

IA: How much freedom did Jimi allow you in the studio to work your magic as it were?

RM: I worked for Jimi as a friend, in other words I would sit with a box while he played, adjust it with the amplifier until we thought the sound was right then I would go back into the control room, have a listen. Anyway, it sounded good in the control room because many times in the studio it might not necessarily translate in the control room or else we might have to make some adjustments to the amplifier. Then I might hang out with Jimi while he did the solo right next to him in the studio. There was always total freedom to explore the unknown. We used to describe the tone colors as tone colors, and knowing what the song was about, and really what the song was about or what Jimi was trying to say, that obviously helps you get the tone.

IA: After you worked in the studio on Axis: Bold as Love you went on a tour of America with Jimi in 1968. What was it like working on the road with Jimi versus in the studio?

RM: There’s no comparison to playing live and recording, Jimi and I discussed that. We knew that a live performance involved interacting with the audience, showmanship, this and that and it would be absolutely foolish to try and recreate the sound that was on the record while you’re playing live. We just concentrated the best we could to get the best possible sound each night from the varying circumstances we were playing in. From a technical aspect obviously when your playing live, you haven’t really got much control over your sound, you’re going to inherit the natural acoustics of the venue or the auditorium your playing in. Therefore, that in itself casts a tone parameter from which you can’t deviate because if the room has a particular resonance or a particular sound, you gotta live with it, ya know? To be successful, you actually have to change the song which makes it a challenge but at the same time it’s going to make it more interesting because it’s going to be more interesting everyday. That was the one thing about Jimi, he never played the same thing twice. Jimi’s attitude was, if you have to remember the solo, it wasn’t worth remembering.

IA: How harrowing was that tour for you personally?

RM: It’s not harrowing as insomuch, ya know, I think it’s been written by other people that particular tour, the way it was organized was one of the most grueling tours around. The amount of miles we covered and the distances between gigs and criss-crossing America was ludicrous. There are high points of it, but at the same time, it's always the travelling you see? Back then, we didn’t travel with many people, there was the road manager, the roadie, myself and the band so we’re only talking about five people. Every night if we got five or seven guitars for Jimi, depending upon how many he destroyed, Jimi and I had to take care of the guitars, change all the strings and take a handful of them up onstage. Back then, of course the equipment wasn’t very reliable, it was like a nightmare keeping it going.

IA: How much did the fact that Jimi Hendrix played left-handed and the strings he used were important component of his unique sound. How important were they?

RM: The point with a guitar is, you’ve got a piece of wood and you’ve got a string haven’t you? Now to me, the most important part of a guitar is the wood. Without the wood, the string isn’t going to vibrate. The next thing down the line is the strings; the pickups and the rest of it come way way down the list. The pickups, they’re not that important because say for instance, Jimi played a guitar that had laminated neck with rosewood or maple, that’s gonna sound a lot different than a solid maple neck; really different ya know? If the body is maple it will sound different, if it is ash it will sound different.

The point is, when it comes down to the strings, we used pure nickel strings that were rolled as well, which means as opposed to a string that’s completely round-wound and not rolled, it feels smoother to the touch. So, a 38 [gauge string] using pure nickel that’s been rolled is probably equivalent to a 40 or 42; there isn’t a direct comparison. For the style Jimi played he tended to not like a not to heavy bass string. So the actual range of strings was crafted – chosen by Jimi not me – to portray to tonality and suit his style of playing. Jimi, didn’t really, when you watched him play, he uses a kind of rolling wrist motion and hits the strings differently. Jimi couldn’t have played what he played using 46’s; it just couldn’t happen. So the 38 and 32 low strings, which were pure nickel, have a nice warm tone and they’re funky and you could also slap the strings and it also enables you to bend the low strings easily. You can put a tremolo on the low string, which you can’t do on a fat string very easily.

IA: Just to go back in time a bit, how did you think up the Octavia pedal, and how did you put it into practice?

RM: Well the idea for the Octavia pedal came about when I was working for the government. We were using all kinds of techniques in the vibration acoustical analysis of sounds obviously to identify them and process them.  Basically, sound, as it travels and gets reflected, has to obey the laws of nature. So the idea came from…when you look at a waveform and a waveform gets reflected and comes back to you and once it gets reflected it has a different series of harmonics; you’re not hearing a direct sound. You actually never hear a direct sound in the natural world; it’s all a combination of reflections. So that’s what I did, I introduced what was really an electronic mirror into the circuitry and that doubled the number of positive peaks you would normally get. That was the idea of frequency doubling, you’re hearing more positive peaks than you would normally. A lot of people who copy our stuff, they fail to realize that it’s not just simply say, full wave rectifying, we were using the non-linearities in the semi-conductor itself to further enhance the harmonics. It becomes a lot more complicated than you think to generate a series of harmonics that sound alien but natural [laughs].

IA: Now, how did you meet Bob Marley, and what was it like working with Bob?

RM: What happened was…I had just finished making a record with Junior Marvin and we finished it up in London. Junior had been playing with quite a few people in London at the time and when we just about finished the record in England, then they signed him up for The Wailers. So now the guy I had just finished the album with, and I was playing on the album and wrote some of the song, he got signed to Bob. At the time, around ’76, I was also doing all of the Isley Brothers stuff and had done three other albums with Stevie Wonder and all kinds of people and was involved in the New York record scene.

So when Junior joined Bob Marley and The Wailers, within about two or three weeks, Junior said Bob wants to meet you just before the One Love Concerts, so I said, “Oh, that sounds great.” So I flew down to Jamaica and met him and I was curious so I said to Bob, “What do you want me to make you, what interests you?” He said, “Well, I love Jimi Hendrix, I love the sound of Jimi Hendrix.” I said, “That’s cool. Well, you’ve got Junior playing for you he’s a good guitar player.” He said, “Well, I want to sound international.” So I said, “Ahhhh, good answer.” He realized that you could only go so far sounding a bit raggedity, ya know?

So I listened to the band and went round and rebuilt every bloody guitar they had because they were all over the place. So I said, first thing let’s re-build the guitars, make sure they’re all in tune, and all the fretboards are perfect because you can’t use an effect until the guitar is perfect. So that’s what I did, and after I did the work, everyone came back after the concert and all the guys said they had never hear Bob Marley sound that good. Then they went on to record Exodus and I helped with some of the solos and the overdubbing on that. So then what happened was after Exodus, the band suddenly sounded international [laughs].

IA: You did some modification work to Bob’s famous Gibson Les Paul Special, what did you do?

RM: Bob’s guitar first came to me after the One Love Concert and as it went on, nobody else touched the guitar except for me. If anything that had to be done they’d fly it to me, then fly it back again. Then Bob asked, “Can you design something for the guitar Roger without changing the guitar that makes it one of a kind, that makes it unique?” That’s when I came up with the different scratch plates which was done in brushed hardened alaminium and the switch plate just to give it a completely different look to anything else, because that’s what Bob wanted. Then of course Gibson went and copied it and never paid me anything! [Laughs]; Story of my life. That’s what I did to that guitar, and obviously completely re-wired it inside.

Bob Marley's Les Paul

 IA: What sort of re-wiring did you do?

RM: Nothing special, just to make sure with the guitar being in Jamaica you have to change the petentiometers quite regularly. You obviously have to use the best capacitors and make sure the thing isn’t getting salt corrosion in it or anything. I changed the machine heads at the top, the Gibson ones weren’t that brilliant, sort of a version of the Kluson, which is pretty crap, and so we put some German Schallers in it. I basically kept the next straight, filed the frets down and keep them profiled correctly.

IA: Why do you think there is such a huge amount of preference with guitarists for analog equipment versus digital?

RM: The fact of the matter is when it actually comes to processing the sound; my belief is that the signal comes out of the guitar in an analog form and an analog signal contains more information than any form of a digital signal because there is virtually an infinite sampling frequency if you want to look at it that way. You can’t take a guitar and then put it into digital, process it, put it back into analog, then put it into another amplifier; it sounds horrible. A multi-effect, it might sound okay in a pub, in your bedroom or something like that, okay that’s convenient, there’s a lot of features on them, but for real quality, no…it doesn’t stand out.

In digital, what happens in the digital domain is that the actual level of the signal, the loud parts of the signal get the most resolution, by definition, because that’s how the signal is analyzed. You get twenty-four bits for the loudest part, then you come down to the softest part and the bits drop off. Visually speaking, that would be like the person in a movie scene is perfectly in focus and the background is out of focus and that’s what you hear in digital. That’s the same thing with digital echo, digital echo sounds okay until the signal begins to decay and that’s when it falls apart.

IA: I’m just curious, you worked for Olympic Studios in 1969 and you made a lot of equipment for them. Their recording console is world-renowned for it’s quality, what made that desk so special?

RM: I think you got two things, you obviously got the room, and you’ve got a combination of a good input transformer, good microphones, and a Class-A signal chain. I use today a very similar configuration that was used at Olympic in a lot of my equipment. It wasn’t a configuration that wasn’t just unique to Olympic, it was just a configuration of an amplifier, but Class A…they don’t call it Class A for nothing [laughs]. It’s very natural sounding it sounds good.

IA: What products are you currently working on, or are out now that you are excited about?

RM: Well, we make limiters that were used by all the recording studios in New York called the RM-58. We put those out to some pretty good players around the world they’ve been pretty successful, and now we’re coming out with a special stereo studio version which will be out pretty soon. It’s going to have the old sound, all Class A once again, front to finish is Class A; should be out in the next six months or so. The other thing is we improved our Vision Wah and we have a new version out called the Bel Air Wah. I’m very happy with the curves and the adjustment we did on that. Ergonomically, it’s not like a Crybaby, it’s not gonna hurt your knee. It’s easy to use. We’re probably going more into the direction of professional recording equipment. There’s so much cheap Chinese gear out there right now, and I think the consumers are getting a bum deal.

IA: What do you envision in regards to professional recording gear?

RM: Well, we’re doing our limiters; we’ll probably do some our pattern of equalizers that I made. We might do a microphone pre-amplifier; I don't know how much demand there is for it. It might be kind of oversubscribed in other words, if you offer up too much technology, see the home recorder in many instances doesn’t have the ability of using the top gear because he doesn’t have the acoustics of the room or he hasn’t grown up in a recording studio. Years ago for people to actually attempt to record, they’d have to actually be around a recording studio and be given some guidance. There is so much misinformation out there it’s a bit ridiculous isn’t it?

IA: Do you think in many ways technology can be an enemy to creativity?

RM: Absolutely yes. It would be like this, if you had the same pencil and paper as Picasso and you tell me you can draw. Just because you have the same equipment doesn't mean you can draw. When we were recording with Jimi [Hendrix] we were more concerned in the recording process with how we feel. Jimi didn’t know what he was going to play, but we did know that we had to have all the bases covered to make it happen. Life isn’t computerized, and there are certain things you can program. You can’t program feel and you can’t program talent.

When multi-track came along, I mean, Axis: Bold as Love was recorded four-track/eight-track as were the other albums as that was state of the art, but once they started going to twenty-four, it just postponed that evil moment when you had to mix the record. People would sit around and say, “we don’t have to do that today”, so there’s no sense of excitement or urgency. That’s what you’ve got nowadays. A lot of artists today record and they can’t even sing the song all the way through.

IA: So what would you say to all those players that want to emulate Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley or Jimmy Page?

RM: I’d say to all those people, listen to their music, don’t try to copy it, but try to understand the spirit of the music. You have no idea of what they felt or how many years of their life it took to get to that point in time. You cannot put the feeling down. You can’t bottle the feeling.

IA: Do you think you’ll ever be satisfied? Do you think you’ll ever get to a place where with your work where you say to yourself, “This is it?”

RM: No, no, no and the reason for that is we’re dealing with human beings and human beings are a very curious race of people. They are always setting new standards.

IA: Mr. Mayer, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, it was a real pleasure.

RM: Thank you. Just enjoy the music mate, that’s what it’s all about.