By 1962, the Gibson-owned brand Maestro already had a pair of inarguable classics to its name, the FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone and the Echoplex tape delay. But after opening the door with those two iconic effects, the company’s creations became far deeper and weirder, bringing deep synth-style octaves, fuzz, and filtered squeals to adventurous guitarists and woodwind players.
Take a glance at the Sound Odyssey, Maestro’s foldout catalog from 1972, and you’ll see a downright modern pedal lineup comprising not only fuzz and multiple tape echoes, but also a Roomba-esque phaser/rotary speaker, three wah pedals, multiple single effects, and a pair of drum machines.
"Maestro is on the other side of infinity looking back at the rest," the catalog boasted in an odd second-person voice. "He can take a note and bend it, distort it, and even turn it inside out."
But the most out-there sounds of all came from Maestro’s far more obscure and sought-after multi-effects pedals: the Sound System For Woodwinds, and the Rhythm ’N Sound For Guitar.
Maestro Sound System For Woodwinds
The Sound System For Woodwinds is a bulky, brightly colored multi-effect that entered the market in 1967, shortly before Norlin became the new parent company for Gibson and Maestro. Ads for the pedal from this time are directed primarily toward jazz and classical musicians, as evidenced by input sensitivity settings that allow the player to choose only between saxophone and clarinet. The Sound System even came with neck pickups for alto and tenor saxophones and clarinet that connected to the unit with long coiling cords.
On the original W-1 System, a bank of four yellow rockers created filtered treble voices including Muted Horn and Oboe d’Amore, while six sky-blue buttons added bass voices including Bass Clarinet, Cello, and a Fuzz Tone. All these settings can also be combined or stacked, and both the treble and bass voices include their own volume and EQ knobs, along with a subtle (and notoriously unreliable) tremolo effect. The subsequent W-2 included an additional octave-down via an orange Contra button, and the W-3 added a footswitch to activate the three voices—Contra, Bass, and Treble—and a "Natural Amp."
Maestro’s demonstration record from 1971 for the third iteration of the System, the W-3, promised the ability to "turn the woodwind player into the ‘Great Impostor’" capable of mimicking "any one instrument or a combination of instruments" in stately, classical-sounding vignettes.
Don’t take those settings to mean that the System sounded traditional or orchestral, though. Especially once the "novelty" Fuzz Tone was added, the voices became deep, sputtering, and synth-like, either on their own or layered with an instrument’s natural tone. This dual-voiced approach quickly became a favorite of the saxophone section of The Mothers Of Invention, who used two W-2s in a hectic 1968 performance at the BBC and on the album Uncle Meat.
Maybe the best example of the extreme transformative capabilities of the Sound System For Woodwinds was provided by Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk, who ran an alto flute through a W-2 and wah-wah on the final track of the band’s 1970 debut record, as well as in a series of legendary TV and radio performances alongside future Neu! members Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger in 1971.
"Florian did some crazy sounds," Rother told me recently. "He had this octave divider which was very, very effective. When he played the flute rhythmically it was like a fantastic bass player, and then I went further in the middle with my guitar."
The Sound System For Woodwinds gained some traction within the jazz community as well, primarily in the work of tenor player Eddie Harris. He even holds a W-2 on the cover of his 1968 album Plug Me In, connected to his tenor via a neck pickup.
Harris explored the full range of the Maestro’s settings on his "electric saxophone" funk and jazz records of the ‘60s and ‘70s. On slower tracks, he adds subtle low octaves that ride along below his melodies. On faster solos, he would stack multi-voice harmonies reminiscent of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s hold-my-beer technique of playing three saxophones simultaneously. And sometimes, Harris would do both by changing settings mid-song, as in a wild medley of "Listen Here" and "Freedom Jazz Dance" from the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival.
Maestro Rhythm ’N Sound For Guitar
The other Maestro multi-effect pedal, also introduced around 1967, was the Rhythm ’N Sound For Guitar, which bore a heavy visual resemblance to the Sound System For Woodwinds. But it promised to bring "all of today’s wildest sounds and some from tomorrow" to guitar players. And when they said "all," they meant it.
In addition to a small selection of effects including tremolo-like Echo Repeat, Wow-Wow, and a filthy Fuzz Tone, the Rhythm ’N Sound encouraged players to transform into the other members of the band, with a blue rocker switch for String Bass, and four orange percussion modes: Bongo, Brush, Tambourine, and Clave. All four (or combinations of them) are activated by a player’s strumming or picking.
If you use it with a modern looper pedal, these effects can be stacked to create a minimalistic, Sly Stone-esque percussion track reminiscent of the Maestro Rhythm King drum machine. But in the ‘60s, when tape manipulation was still the realm of experimental musicians like Terry Riley, the Rhythm half of the Rhythm ’N Sound was more elusive. Jimi Hendrix owned a Rhythm ’N Sound around 1969 and may have used it at least on the studio version of "Star Spangled Banner."
Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz of the Beastie Boys wrote about the Rhythm ’N Sound in the 2018 retrospective Beastie Boys Book. "This crazy box has a bunch of weird percussion FX that play at odd intervals when you touch your guitar strings. They’re unwieldy and hard to control," he said.
But as with Florian Schneider 20 years earlier, the Beasties found the sweet spot with the Maestro when they combined its low and fuzzy tones. Horovitz added that the Rhythm ’N Sound "has a button on it that adds a deep, low sub-bass to whatever you’re playing. And when you have the fuzz button pushed down too, you’ve got ‘The Maestro,’"—a track on the group’s 1991 album Check Your Head.
According to Check Your Head’s co-producer Mario Caldato Jr. in Brian Coleman’s 2007 hip-hop gear-history book Check The Technique, the Rhythm ’N Sound was the perfect fit for a new era of Beastie Boys records, where the trio leaned heavily into both their instrumental and lyrical prowess. "The original concept of [‘The Maestro’] was about the Gibson Maestro effects box, but then we started applying it to people who acted like they were the shit," Caldato explained. "‘The Maestro’ is just about the attitude, like that kid on the phone message at the beginning of the song."
The group also namechecked their Maestro inspiration Eddie Harris on "So What’cha Want," their second single from Check Your Head. The first line goes: "Well, just plug me in like I was Eddie Harris." Horovitz wrote in Beastie Boys Book that he considered Harris his hero, both for his out-there electric sax funk tracks like 1967’s "Drunk Man" and for his foul-mouthed 1975 live album The Reason Why I’m Talking Shit.
But it was the cover of Plug Me In that made Horovitz realize he needed to give the Maestro a shot. "In the picture on the cover, he’s holding his saxophone in one hand, and in the other, he’s pushing a Maestro FX pedal towards the camera. I HAVE ONE OF THOSE," Horovitz wrote. "This pedal looked cool to me, but I never really gave it its due until my hero, Eddie Harris, told me to plug it in."
Not every member of the group shared his enthusiasm. In Check The Technique, the late Adam "MCA" Yauch gave it this more tepid endorsement: "Maestro pedals are crazy because they’re kind of shitty, but they’re also really unique and intense."
One Huge Pedal to Rule Them All
While the Maestro Rhythm ’N Sound For Guitar pedals are a rare and expensive find, the brand’s Sound System For Woodwinds is a fairly common sight here on Reverb. Fully functioning ones? Those are harder to track down—and given their reputation for being delicate, spotting them on stage is special indeed. If you do see one, there’s a decent chance you’re watching Beastie Boys collaborator "Money Mark" Nishita.
Nishita claimed in Check The Technique to be the first in the group’s circle to have owned a Rhythm ’N Sound, and he has also been known to use a Sound System For Woodwinds in his concerts since the ‘90s.
More specifically, Nishita would utilize the low fuzz settings while beatboxing "Smoke On The Water" and Edgar Winter’s "Frankenstein," all while accompanying himself on drums—a true realization of Maestro’s original one-man-band marketing. Nishita recreated this set-up for an "isolation jam" in 2020.
"This is how I started my show back in the daze," Nishita wrote. "I found a certain 75-ohm mic that would trigger it a la #eddieharris. Just having fun here and bringing back some memories, and it is one of my *favorite things.*"
About the Author: Nick Collias is a freelance journalist and editor by day, writing about music, fitness, nutrition, and too many other topics to list. By night, he tries to channel the spirit of Florian Schneider on an alto flute, tape echo, and Maestro W-3 under the name of Windkraft.