Scholz Research & Development
Scholz Research & Development
Also known as: SR&D, Scholz Research and Development, Scholz R&D, Rockman
UnclaimedScholz Research & Development (SR&D) was a Massachusetts-based audio electronics company founded in 1980 by Tom Scholz, the MIT-trained engineer and guitarist behind the band Boston. Drawing on his background designing audio equipment at Polaroid, Scholz built the company around compact, solid-state guitar processors that aimed to recreate large-amp tone in a practical form factor.
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Scholz Research & Development (SR&D) was a Massachusetts-based audio electronics company founded in 1980 by Tom Scholz, the MIT-trained engineer and guitarist behind the band Boston. Drawing on his background designing audio equipment at Polaroid, Scholz built the company around compact, solid-state guitar processors that aimed to recreate large-amp tone in a practical form factor.
The company is best known for the Rockman, a small belt-clip headphone amplifier introduced in 1982 that offered compressed, heavily processed guitar tones with built-in chorus and echo. SR&D followed with the Rockman X100 and a line of rack-mounted Rockmodules introduced in 1986, including the Sustainor, Distortion Generator, Stereo Chorus, Stereo Echo, Smart Gate, Instrument EQ and Guitar Compressor. The simpler Ace family — Guitar Ace (1990), Bass Ace and Metal Ace (1994) — stripped the design down to a 9-volt belt unit with clean, semi-distortion and heavy-distortion modes. The Power Soak, an attenuator for tube amplifiers, was another SR&D product adopted in studios and on stage.
The Rockman sound became strongly associated with 1980s rock production and can be heard on records such as Def Leppard's Hysteria, ZZ Top's Afterburner, David Gilmour's About Face, KISS's Animalize and Joe Satriani's Surfing with the Alien. In 1995 the Rockman product line was sold to Dunlop Manufacturing, which has continued to produce units from the Ace family under the Rockman name.
Scholz Research & Development has 15 products cataloged on Equipboard, including Effects Processors, Headphone Guitar Amplifiers, and Headphone Bass Amplifiers. Their gear is featured by 30 artists, with the strongest followings in Rock, Pop, and Electronic. Notable users include Tom Scholz, Dave Mustaine, and Dean DeLeo.
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