David Cockerell is an electronics engineer and designer. He started his career in the synthesizer world when

Peter Zinovieff Peter Zinovieff (26 January 1933 – 23 June 2021) was a British engineer and composer. In the late 1960s, his company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS), made the VCS3, a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd ...

hired him to work for his EMS company in Putney in 1966, where he designed classic EMS synthesizers such as the Synthi

VCS3 The VCS 3 (or VCS3; an initialism for ''Voltage Controlled Studio, version #3'') is a portable analog synthesizer with a flexible modular voice architecture introduced by Electronic Music Studios (London) Limited (EMS) in 1969. EMS release ...

, Synthi AKS and Synthi 100. In 1974 he worked for

Electro-Harmonix Electro-Harmonix (also commonly referred to as EHX) is a New York City-based company that makes electronic audio processors and sells rebranded vacuum tubes. The company was founded by Mike Matthews in 1968. It is best known for a series of gu ...

in New York, where he first designed guitar pedals like the Small Stone phaser and Electric Mistress flanger. Still working for Electro-Harmonix, in 1980, Cockerell designed one of the first digital delay pedals with looping capabilities, the Instant Replay, followed by the 2 Second Digital Delay in 1981 and the 16 Second Digital Delay in 1982. This led him later to work at

Akai Akai ( ja, 赤井, ) is a Hong Kong manufacturer of consumer electronics. It was founded as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo, Japan, in 1946. Grande Holdings in Hong Kong purchased the Akai brand, and now distributes various electronic produ ...

, where he was involved in the design of samplers like the S612, S900, S1000, and the famous

MPC60 The Akai MPC (originally MIDI Production Center, now Music Production Center) is a series of music workstations produced by Akai from 1988 onwards. MPCs combine sampling and sequencing functions, allowing users to record portions of sound, modi ...

. He is currently working for

as a Chief Design Engineer.

Career

EMS

Cockerell was working as a medical technician when a coworker of his, Mark Dowson, introduced him to Peter Zinovieff who was looking for someone with the technical skill to make the sounds Peter wanted to create. The company's first commercial synthesizer, the VCS3, designed by David Cockerell, was produced in 1969, followed by the Synthi KB1 in 1970, also designed by Cockerell.

Electro-Harmonix

In 1974 Cockerell went to visit some friends in New York, where he met Electro-Harmonix's founder Mike Matthews, who made Cockerell an offer to work for him as a Chief Design Engineer.

Products designed

* Akai MPC60 (Electronic circuit design only) * Akai S612 * Akai S900 * Akai S1000 * Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay * Electro-Harmonix 2880 Super Multi-Track Looper * Electro-Harmonix Bass Balls - Twin Dynamic Filters for Bass Guitar * Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro Synthesizer * Electro-Harmonix Crying Tone * Electro-Harmonix DRM16 Digital Rhythm Matrix model 01 * Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress * Electro-Harmonix HOG Guitar Synthesizer * Electro-Harmonix Instant Replay * Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer * Electro-Harmonix POG Polyphonic Octave Generator * Electro-Harmonix Small Stone - Phase Shifter * Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai * Electro-Harmonix Vocoder * Electro-Harmonix XO Micro POG - Polyphonic Octave Generator * Electro-Harmonix XO Stereo Electric Mistress * EMS Synthi 100 * EMS Synthi A * EMS Synthi AKS * EMS Synthi Hi-Fli * EMS Synthi KB1 * EMS VCS3 * EMS VCS4

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American electronics engineers {{improve categories, date=February 2020