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Mu-Tron III exterior

The Musitronics Mu-Tron III was a auto-wah effects pedal produced by Musitronics. In 1972 Mike Biegel and Aaron Newman decided to extract some sections from a synthesizer and see if they could make a new product out of it. First they hooked up an opto-electronic-based envelope-controlled filter; tweaked it and turned it into a little product. Digital audio pioneer (and former AES president) Barry Blesser also participated in its design. It was first called the Auto Wah and then marketed as the Mu-Tron III. Synthesizer inventor Bob Moog's affidavit helped get the patent. The Mu-Tron III became quite popular thanks in part to Stevie Wonder; who helped immensely by giving free publicity and allowing the use of his name.

In 1978 Musitronics was sold to ARP (a synthesizer company that was in the process of imploding financially with a guitar synth called the Avatar) on a royalty basis, but they folded before the original owners of Musitronics could ever collect a cent. Musitronics became Gizmo Incorporated and continued to try to make it go, but then Aaron Newman had a heartattack and it came to an end.

Mike Beigel, the inventor of the original Mu-Tron III, and a founder of Musitronics Corp. which produced the original Mu-Tron products claims that to get the original sound and circuitry of the Mu-Tron III you should buy either a used vintage original Mu-Tron III (not the digital re-issue from HAZ Laboratories known as the Mu-Tron III+) or the recent Mini Q-Tron, Q-Tron, and Q-Tron+ from Electro-Harmonix. In early 1995 Mike Beigel was commissioned by Mike Mathews (owner of EHX) to reinvent the sound of Mu-Tron, today EHX still sells that sound as the Q-Tron.

• http://www.mu-tron.org/
• http://www.beitec.com/stomp.htm
• http://www.ehx.com/ehx2/Default.asp?q=f&f=%2FCatalog%2F19%5FFilters