70's Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 Linear Power Booster in perfect working conditions.

In the late 60s a dude from NYC named Mike Mathews started a company called Electro-Harmonix. The new company went to work on developing a “distortion-free” sustain device designed by Mathews and electric engineer Robert Meyer. As part of the sustain circuit development process Meyer created a simple line booster to pre-amplify the guitar signal for testing. Mathews immediately saw the potential for a gadget that could provide a massive boost to a guitar signal and overdrive the amplifier in the process so Electro-Harmonix released the device as the LPB-1 Linear Power Booster. It was a smashing success.

The first LPB-1s were crude affairs housed in a folded sheet metal enclosure with a 1/4 jack on one end and a male 1/4 plug on the other. All the electronic bits were wired up point-to-point hanging off the jacks, pot and switch. You plugged your guitar in one end and then plugged the booster into the amplifier via the plug on the other end.

I snagged my first LPB-1 around 1978 or so, used from a friend for 15.00. I don’t think I got much of a discount. I believe 15.00-ish was about what they sold for new. By that time I had made my way up to a bulky, solid state Standel 2 x 12 bass amp that was ALMOST loud enough for my needs. Upon plugging my LPB-1 in I was most delighted to find that my amp was now loud enough to do some serious damage. It took the wimpy signal from my Japanese single coils, pumped it up and hit the amp’s input with more juice than it probably knew what to do with. Being a sold state amp it didn’t actually sound all that great with the added sauce – it didn’t give up the sweet compression and harmonic content that a tube amp would have – but then, I wasn’t Eric Johnson or anything and at the time LOUD = GOOD. Sometime later I witnessed what the LPB-1 could do when used to smack the frontend of a tube amp. A friend had acquired an early 70s Fender Bandmaster and he plugged his Stratocaster into an LPB-1 and then into the amp. The result was one of those sounds that will haunt me ’til the end of my days. HUGE, muscular and highly musical is how I would describe