SAM Plant / LELL Timeline
6/22/2026 (SUBJECT TO REVISIONS!)



1923 SAM Plant is established as a place which repaired typewriters, cash registers and mechanical adding machines. Later to become the manufacturer of the "Felix-M" machine calculator up to the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

1941-45 SAM Plant manufactures 1,000,000 PPSh-41 and 500,000 PPS-43 submachine guns for the Soviet Army during the Great Patriotic War.

1945-50 SAM Plant resumes manufacturing adding machines.

1953-57 SAM Plant manufactures the "Strela-1", a mainframe computer which used 6,200 vacuum tubes and 60,000 semi-conductor diodes. USSR is about 5 years behind the USA in the development of mainframe computers.

1973 The Moscow Electromechanical Plant (SAM) and the Lyubertsy Plant Of Electric Musical Instruments (LELL) collaborate to create the "Lell" electronic organ. This was a Research, Design and Technology Institute of the Music Industry (NIKTIMP) project which was produced by these two factories, after sorting out some things that didn't work. Roughly an analogue to the Hammond B3 (but with a single keyboard).

1976-77 The "EFFEKT" wah/tremolo/vibrato pedal was designed and developed by Anatoly Kuznetsov and Petr Kein approx. 1975-76 and released shortly thereafter. I suspect the tremolo and vibrato circuits were derived from the 1973 "Lel" organ project.

1982 Alexander Evgenievich Maistrovich begins work at the SAM Plant. He was kind of the director and "marketer".

1982 The LELL 0041 synthesizer appears. Designed by Sergey Malyshev and Petr Kein.

1983 The "EFFEKT-3" and "EFFEKT-4" are released. These were developed by Viktor Kuptsov. Production of the "EFFEKT" ceases.

1984 The LELL-22 synthesizer appears. Partially designed by Andrey Butmanov (the tone generator section). AKA the "Faemie".

1984-85? Oleg Troitsky begins working at the SAM Plant as a sometimes traveling electronics repairman. By law anything over a certain weight meant the repairman had to go the where the device was. I believe the threshold was 11 kg. Guitar pedals would be shipped to the factory for repair work. A few years later Oleg becomes a designer at LELL. It appears that Troitsky received training in electronics while serving in the military.

1985-86 Dimitri Modin begins working at the SAM Plant. He designs the "Drive Distortion", Compressor and EQ pedals which become the best sellers of the new LELL guitar pedal product line to be released around this time. The large enclosures of the "EFFEKT" series have now changed to something equivalent to the Boss pedal format. These used a sort of odd sized enclosure which measures 144 x 65 x 86 mm. This is larger than a Boss pedal, and also a bit larger than the plastic Arion pedals which measure 125 x 48 x 70 mm, but even so these are still a lot smaller than the "EFFEKT" released 12 years prior.

1986 In 1986 Dimitri graduated from "MIEM". While preparing for his diploma he was working at the SAM Plant, I guess you could say as an intern. He played guitar in different bands. Being a guitarist, it helped in the development of the Lell products he designed. In the late 1980s, he began to study music and sound engineering professionally.

1986 The LELL RC Digital Reverberator appears.

1986 A law is passed which allows for Cooperatives to be created. (Essentially allows for non-state manufacturing).

1987-88 The LELL UDS drum machine appears. Designed primarily by Sergey Malyshev.

1987-88 A cooperative called "MIDITON" (later ROSTEX) is established with its own trademark symbol. AKA "K Operative". Founded by Alexander Pavlushin.

1988 The LELL RT "Rototom" and LELL KL "Clapper" pedals appear. These have a distinctive slant face enclosure with three controls at the top which is different from the "Boss-style" envlosures used by the Drive Distortion, CZ, etc.

1988-89? Dimitri Modin leaves SAM Plant and opens a recording studio which does well for a time. Later it closes and he becomes distributor of various brands of musical equipment. Also starts a company called "MixArt". Not sure of the exact years. He also worked for "quite a while" in the Design Bureau of Radio-Electronic Devices as a design engineer, developing and implementing several products related to music.

1989 Oleg Troitsky goes to work for the MIDITON / ROSTEX cooperative.

1989 Oleg Troitsky develops and helps design the legendary LELL CZ digital delay / reverb pedal. First production units are labeled as "MIDITON". A "collosal number" were sold, which came along at the right time for a new solo company. Some of these units would end up in neighboring eastern block countries (Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria). Often citizens of these eastern block countries would travel to the USSR to personally acquire one as it was easier than LELL dealing with customs officials who didn't know how to declare such a device for export, and on top of that LELL would also have to pay export AND import duties from the receiving country. So the workaround became visitors who purchased one were responsible for making the customs declarations and dealing with customs.

1990 LELL trademark symbol registered by the SAM Plant (not the traditional cryptic factory symbol but rather the stylized text logo printed on the pedals).

1991 The Soviet Union formally dissolved and factories now have to fend for themselves to survive. Turbulent times for the musical instruments industry (and for everyone else).

1991 The LELL PSR programmable drum machine appears.

1991 MIDITON trademark registered. Early termination of trademark protection would follow within a couple of years.

1991 There is a parallel line of LELL pedals with text in English intended for export (models DD & CZ, maybe a few more). Some of these end up as far away as Vietnam, for use in karaoke bars.

1992 ROSTEX is incorporated. (Liquidated in 2009)

1992 The manufacture of LELL products at the SAM Plant ceases.

1992? Alexander Pavlushin of MIDITON / ROSTEX goes to work for LELL. It appears to technically be an LLP sort of arrangement as far as I can tell, as ROSTEX was officially its own entity until 2009. LELL products are now manufactured at the LELL factory starting in 1992, or at least manufacturing was under their direct control. How this actually worked is not real clear.

1992 The LELL-24 AKA "Unost-75" synthesizer appears.

1993-94 The LELL CZ digital delay / reverb pedal suddenly in demand by the Vietnamese for karaoke. 200-300 units were ordered.

1994 The LELL-28 AKA "Organola" AKA "Unost-70" appears.

1994-95 Oleg Troitsky goes to work for LELL (for about 10 years).

1994-95 The final version of LEL guitar pedals with the boxy quasi-Boss form factor appear in this time period. These now have the old time font for "LELL".

2003 LELL makes the MX-3M "Mini Mixer" for Electro-Harmonix and re-brands them as Electro-Harmonix. About 1,000 units were produced.

2004-05 A new more modern looking line of LELL guitar pedals such as the "Brutalizer" and "Hyper Distortion" are released. These used a two-piece stamped steel clamshell enclosure which looks similar to the Marshall Guv'nor GV-2 re-issue with the gold knobs. The PCBs have shifted to surface mounted components in lieu of traditional thru-hole components. Not 100% sure who designed these circuits. I think some are Troitsky's designs.

2005 LELL colloborates with Alesis to make a DSP product called the "Space Tube". It has a sharp looking gold enclosure with red & black graphics and red topped black knobs. Bottom is marked as "LELL LTD" and "Made In Russia". Apparently these are quite rare, at least here in the USA.

2005-10 The final years of LELL making guitar pedals and/or other musical products. As far as I can tell Oleg Troitsky worked for LELL from about 1995-2005 or so. As I understand it, what led to their demise was the huge flood of very cheap Chinese made pedals on the market. LELL appears to still be in business but is now making other kinds of electronics for commercial applications. Look up lell.ru if you're curious. Check out the same link on waybackmachine to see the website around 2005 for comparison.

2013-14 A few years after the SAM Plant officially closed the buildings are eventually demolished to make room for apartment buildings. The LELL factory building surely met the same fate. In 2014 LELL makes an announcement on their website that they will be discontinuing their guitar related product line and there is a flurry of activity in Russia to buy up the remaining inventory, factory samples, etc.

2015 Interview conducted by Andrey Styopin (SovietGuitars.com). CLICK HERE to see video (it's in Russian). The interviewees were Alexander Evgenievich Maistrovich (right) who supervised/promoted products at the SAM plant and Oleg Troitsky (middle), designer of some of the LEL pedals. This was the source of a great deal of the information presented here.