Pedal Pushers Change Rockers’ Tunes

Morley is the kind of company that’s heard but not seen. As one of the world’s leading makers of foot pedals used by electric guitarists and keyboard players to make “wah” sounds and control volume, the company’s equipment frequently occupies center stage at rock concerts. Morley itself, however, operates well out of the spotlight, making its equipment in an obscure North Hollywood industrial area.

Still, in the past 15 years, Morley has developed a reputation as one of the top suppliers of tune-changing equipment. Morley, for instance, is helping the Beach Boys make good vibrations sound better. Other prominent musicians, such as keyboardists Chick Corea and Stevie Wonder, also use its pedals.

“You go to any major rock show and you’ll see keyboardists or guitarists using their pedals to control volume,” said Brett Tuggle, a keyboard player now touring with rock singer David Lee Roth.

Although Morley enjoys a solid reputation among professional musicians, the past few years have been rough for the 22-employee company and its principal owners, Marvin and Raymond Lubow. The two Bronx-born brothers, whose company evolved from a television repair business in the 1960s, have suffered due to intense competition from the Japanese manufacturers now dominating the market.

$1 Million in Losses Since 1980

Marvin Lubow, 61, who serves as president and runs the financial end of the business while his 65-year-old brother oversees research and development, estimates that the privately held firm has lost more than $1 million since 1980. Annual sales, he said, have fallen to less than $1 million from a peak of about $2 million six years ago.

“If I was a better businessman and hadn’t been so emotionally involved in the music business, I would have gotten out. But I love the business, and I love the whole scene,” the younger Lubow said.

The Lubow brothers shifted their business from fixing televisions to making musical equipment in the mid-1960s when they developed an “echo reverb” that created an echo-like sound in guitars and other instruments.

The two later developed a device that electronically imitated the sound of the Leslie organ speaker, a popular product in the 1960s and early 1970s that created distinctive sounds by revolving its speakers. The name Morley was adopted in 1972 so the company could launch an advertising campaign that was to have said: “Why get less with Leslie when you can get more with Morley?”

That campaign was dropped, however, for fear of alienating executives at Fender Guitar, Morley’s largest customer at the time. CBS then owned both the Fender and Leslie lines. Instead, the Lubows hired political cartoonist Hank Hinton to draw the “Morley Man,” a wailing, long-haired rocker whose image still is used in the company’s advertising.

Morley makes 32 devices retailing from $50 to $300 that alter musical sounds. Its best-known products are its “wah” pedals, sometimes known as “wah-wahs.” Resembling the accelerator pedal of a car, they allow a guitarist to control volume, create the “wah” and produce a fuzzy, scratchy sound. Most of the other pedals are small boxes with buttons that provide other effects, such as making one electric guitar sound like two.

Guitar industry officials call durability Morley’s best selling point. “The stuff is bulletproof,” said Tom Mulhern, associate editor of Guitar Player magazine in Cupertino, Calif. “You can drop them and stomp on them. It’s hard to kill them.”

But foreign competition and other factors have taken their toll. About 10 years ago, Morley was one of a dozen or more U.S. companies making distortion devices. Now, the company has only one major U.S. competitor, DOD Electronics of Salt Lake City.

Morley’s competition in the estimated $20-million-a-year market comes mostly from large Japanese companies such as Ibanez and Yamaha International.

Hurt by Video Games

The aging of the baby boom generation also has hurt the business. Gone are the days when neighborhoods were filled with garage bands practicing songs like “House of the Rising Sun” and “Gloria” with hopes of playing a local dance. These days, a record-playing disk jockey is as likely to be the star of the dance as a live band.

Marvin Lubow also believes that the company was hurt by the growth in video games and home computers, which compete for the attention of youths who might have taken up music as a hobby.

The rock music business itself has been changed by the increased use of computerized electronic equipment. Lubow, whose own musical tastes lean toward the mellow music of a Linda Ronstadt or Neil Diamond, laments this change, calling heavily synthesized music “about as exciting as sucking on a plastic Popsicle.”

Electronic music, however, isn’t all bad news for Morley. Some keyboardists say they find the pedals increasingly important to control volume of their equipment, which has become so elaborate and sophisticated that their jobs at times seem as hectic as those of air traffic controllers.

Tuggle uses his pedals to control sounds that come from an elaborate set of electronic instruments that he uses on the Roth tour, including four keyboards and 10 modules, which are synthesizers controlled by a master keyboard. He also has two so-called Emulators that play dozens of recorded sounds, some as obscure as that of a seven-foot Young Chang grand piano.

Despite Morley’s problems, Marvin Lubow is confident that business will improve. With the weakening of the dollar lately, he said, sales have improved overseas and the company’s domestic prices have become more competitive. He said the fourth fiscal quarter ending Oct. 31 should be profitable, although the company probably will show a loss for the year.

Lubow and other music executives also say that based on discussions with dealers and customers, instrument buyers may be tiring of the sophisticated electronic instruments, shifting back to conventional guitars, keyboards and drums.

“They are really looking for the sounds of real instruments rather than synthesized sounds. There’s a swing back,” said Fred Walecki, owner of Westwood Music, a large Los Angeles musical instrument dealer.