Rocker 83 – Electric guitar pedal – 80s Rockman X100-Style Overdrive, Distortion

Rocker 83 is a distortion pedal conceived and developed with the intention of offering to all guitarists the possibility of obtaining the guitar tone of the 80s in its excellence, reminiscent of Rockman X100 pocket-amp.

Unlike the original X100 unit, designed by Tom Scholtz in the early 1980s, Rocker 83 doesn’t require special power supplies and works with a normal guitar amplifier for its optimal operation. Built in a typical pedal chassis, it offers the typical controls of a common distortion box.

The guitar tone of the nostalgic era (1983-1989) inside a standard pedal.

History…
Rockman X100 was born in 1982, by its revolutionary creator, genius and brilliant guitarist Tom Scholz, leader of Boston. The history of rock guitar in that era was quite young, it was a fertile and perfect period about sound experimentation, in the case of Tom Scholz and Boston, they can easily be identified as the band that coined a musical genre called AOR (Adult Oriented Rock). As Boston gave birth to this genre, the Rockman X100 is the device that started a very important sonic revolution.

Why Rocker 83? Rockman X100 was born in 1982! Everybody knows. Unlike what happened in other similar circumstances (Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, etc.) the experimentation and birth of this new standard wasn’t initially exploited by its creator as Tom Scholz didn’t make use of his creation until 1986 with Third Stage album by Boston, while in the previous albums, dating back to 1976 and 1978, Mr. Scholz chose Marshall amps, therefore, contrary to what one might imagine, the first album recorded with a Rockman X100 is not released by Boston; Huey Lewis and the News is the band who released Sports album in 1983, playing with a Rockman X100 in the studio for the first time.

“1983 is also my year of birth” says Luca Colombo, “although we’re talking about my very first years of childhood, I remember perfectly how much that guitar tone has implanted in my brain and heart.”

Tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of records were played worldwide with these units, every recording studio in that era had at least one X100 unit, artists and session men of different musical genre from all over the world made a disproportionate use of them: Joe Satriani on the album “Surfing with the alien”, David Gilmour on the album “About faces”, Billy Gibbons on the ZZ Top album “Eliminator”, but also Maurizio Solieri on the album “C’è chi dice no” by Vasco Rossi, Michael Landau, Corrado Rustici, just to name a few…

Like every era, even this musical current, in which the Rockman X100 was the undisputed main character, comes to an end in 1989, the year in which, on the one hand, grunge emits its first stirrings with the album Bleach by Nirvana, returning into a sort of wilder and rougher sounds, on the other hand, the huge racks of dozens of units take over and the musical mainstream changes once again.

“Rockman X100 is for me a great reference, one of the most important ever. Never as in this period that I call ‘Nostalgic era of the Eighties’,  from 1983 to 1989, the whole guitar fashion has been unequivocally shared by everybody and also a good part of other guitarists who used different equipment, wanted to somehow emulate the sonic characteristics of the Rockman.” – Luca Colombo

Features and controls
Rocker 83 offers the same simple controls interface as a normal guitar distortion box which, unlike the original X100 unit which with no controls, you can obtain different shades for a more precise adjustment to your guitar tone.

• Volume: set the output volume of the distorted signal
• Treble: set the amount of treble frequencies, set it high if you’re playing with a dark amp, set it low if you’re playing a trebly amp;
• Gain: set the distortion level;
• Edge/Dist: 2 position switch offering two different distortion ranges, “Edge” produces a mellow crunch tone, perfect for rhythm works; “Dist” is more juicy, full of harmonics and sustain.

*Colombo Audio Electronics is in no way affiliated with SR&D and Rockman X100.