Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Deluxe

This pedal is pretty simple to use. Like most EH pedals, the big knobs mean you can usually tweak settings with your feet, if you're nimble.

I usually use a mexican tele with a deluxe reverb. Sounds aweseome- raw, powerful, unique, gritty.

It was pretty noisey, but I had a local music store mod it, and now it sounds fine.

This is great for Jimi Hendrix, Sonic Youth, Pj Harvey, anyone that rocks .

It hasn't failed me yet.

Love it.

Warning: The Big Muff Deluxe is NOT NOT NOT NOT a vintage Big Muff! Don't buy one thinking you've got a nice cool vintage Big Muff sound. It uses ICs, not transistors, and sounds worse. If you don't know what that means, then just take my word for it. I've got a vintage Big Muff (second version, after the famous "triangle knob" but before the one that looks like the reissues) that I've had for years and it sounds smooth and sweet. The Big Muff Deluxe is much weaker. Take the $100-$150 you'd be spending on this and just buy yourself an actual vintage Big Muff. You won't regret it!

Of course, if you try it out and like it, then buy it if you want. But before you do, try to test out a vintage one too. I think you'll find that the vintage one is a much better place for your money.

I bought this old relic of the Charlie's Angels era off of eBay as an attempt to go AC free from my battery powered Big Muffs. The AC cord is a welcome addition in my line up as I hate buying batteries.

The switching is bizarre as the compressor and fuzz are not arranged in a linear fashion but in a distasteful parallel situation. There is no way to set the compressor before the fuzz or visa versa.....but instead their idea was that they run side by side and blend into the output. The result is just plain nasty awful....

I do ponder the possibilities of opening this dinasaur up to reroute the wires if possible to have the output of the compressor drive the input of the fuzz section.....

Using a 2000 Fender American Series Stratocaster and a 2000 Fender Princeton 65 watt solid state 1x12 combo amplifier.

The fuzz tone is disappointing to me. I have several vintage Big Muffs and I say this pales in comparison to all of them. So sad....

The fuzz is very extreme and harsh. Very close to a fuzz tone in that the tone of the guitar is practically oblitorated to the occillating waveforms emitted from the overcharged op amp micro chips that lie beneath the rusty chrome face plate. While still big and full with booming bass and serious treble frequencies the dynamics are just a forgotten dream as different picking technics are totally ignored by the muffs powerful gyrations.

Now the compressor is a God send that is easily overlooked as who frikkin cares about compression? Such a pity as when I discover the compressor I found a sound never before experienced by my sound receptors. The compressor section is 100 miles above the the plastic tone vomited by a Boss CS-3 Compressor/Sustainer! The compressor addes a transparent sugar-water like tone that any guitarist or bassest would sell naked pictures of his sister to possess! I dared to put the compressor before my vintage Electro Harmonics Hot Tubes, of most modest overdrive, and was instantly brought to a new level of musical nirvana by the wildly vacillating raw tonal energies blasting from my solid state amplifier.

What is so unique about Electro Harmonix vintage overdrives and compressors is that they give any guitar/amplifier combination a vintage "exposed nerve" tonal quality. It's like 20 years worth of ear wax has just been removed from your ears. The strings on you guitar feel new again. They add a sensitivity that reflects an old tube amplifier where the voltages for the grid plates is off the charts. I can breath on my strings and hear it. Harmonics are brought to the surface that where unknown before. Dogs howl in the distance. Planes are knocked off auto pilot. Little girls scream. It's the frikkin livin' end!

More reliable than a rock.

who? what?

I've been playing guitar since 1969. I play two shows a week now in a Christian band [and no I'm not a Christian].

I'm a tone addict and have been for 3 decades.

I love the compressor and look away from the fuzz.

They should have made the dual efects linear instead of parallel.

Electro Harmonics stuff is just from another world. Wierd stuff that most often is just pure magic.

5 knobs (2 for compressor, 3 for fuzz), but only the two volume settings and the fuzz tone have significant range - plus the blend on/off switch. for my rig, all the useful settings i've found are between 11:30 and 12:30. except when adjusting volumes for room dynamics (some rooms eat fuzz), i could just weld or hardwire the knobs.

one compressor/fuzz blend output jack and a compressor (unfuzzed) only output - though i've never had a use for the latter - the compressor quality isn't strong enough to stand on its own. (i've been told its the same circuit as the e-h soul preacher).

compressor sound by itself is dull and crappy, fuzz sound by itself is rude, if not too brash - together they fill a decent spectrum - but the REAL MAGIC is when your fuzz frequencies begin blending with other pedals and other instruments' sounds.

i play vintage p-bass, a gibson ripper and other noise units into an ampeg svt. also in the chain is a reissue bass microsynth, mxr phase 90, crowther audio prunes & custard, various delays & other fx. guitar player uses old mustangs and teiscos and les pauls and strats through marshall plexi, vibrolux & twin.

because the compressor blend is somewhat of a lo-fi clean blend, many characteristics of incoming sounds are preserved and blended with the fuzzed out mania - which is not to say you can tell i'm still playing a '63 p-bass. by itself, my microsynth sounds huge, but tends to lose oomph when combined with guitars and drums - switch in the dlx big muff pi and the microsynth becomes FUCKING HUGE AND WOOLY - totally omnipresent but sonically blended with guitar sounds.

its a chaotic fuzz - not for the lawful or even the neutral. tune in and really listen to the harmonics that come out of this - a very in-your-face but subtly unpredictable wool that excites and ignites the air around you.

its an old pedal - early 80s i imagine. no problems yet, but all the empty air around these behemoth cases and the hardwired power cord generally keep me nervous. unlike my mxr, boss and crowther pedals, i tend to baby my eh boxes.

its a character thing - no one-size-fits all setup. your tone will not be preserved. but for those of us who agree that metal machine music is pure sonic heaven, you will find complexities and subtleties within its wall of noise.

until a pedal comes along that creates a similar wall-of-fuzz magic space that this creates _and_ widens the frequency range of the fundamental, this piece is the ultimate in chaotic good bass fuzz.

other chaotic good fuzzes in their own right - ampeg scrambler and roland bee-baa are unholy and very unique. for lawful good bass fuzz, try the z.vex wooly mammoth.

I've owned several E-H products over the years; they are mostly straight forward effect units. Logical, intuitive and for the most part, well-labelled. If one is inclined to experimentation, then manuals for these aren't necessary..This happens to be an original version with the BLEND switch; not the Series/Parallel switch. 2 knobs control the compression (Soul Preacher built-in!), and 3 knobs control the fuzziness! There is also the option to use the COMPression only output, or use the BLEND output in conjunction with the BLEND switch to utilize the COMPression, or not..Simple, efficient layout- E-H , as usual!

Being a RETRO/GEAR head, I've got a MESA/Boogie Simuclass 295 preamped by a Digitech GSP 2101. TUBES RULES! I am using various guitars (ES345, SG Custom, Strat-type, ES175). E-H pedals DO NOT have True Bypass Switches installed, therefore, they are noisy, suck some of your overall sound, and are noisy (you can hear it even when its off..). So, get a True Bypass Switch installed and there will be a noticeably dramatic change in overall performance/noise...I can cut the tone I get with a knife and I DON"T crank it up all the way!! I crank my tubes up and use the pedal for edge>> I can and do get the sound I'm envisioning and that's what it's all about, hmm?

I know how much abuse these E-H pedals can take...The paint will come off long before anything inside sizzles!
I don't have a backup and thats ok!

N/A This is pre- Sovtek, so I'm on my own...

I play Prog Rock Psychedelic Fusion Ambient Gypsy..When I need to cut through, this Muff does the job nicely..The only other fuzz I would consider using is the FOXX Tone Machine, which I'm still hunting for!! I dislike much of these new cheesy pedals (Boss, Danelectro, etc) and these modeling units (Pod, Roland, etc)..If you want that sound, don't expect to 'model' it..Go after those vintage electronics!!
Today's technology is too clean (sterile, soul-less, digital, 100101110 bits...) ANALOG WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL!!

The Big Muff fuzz sound is easily accessible and dials in to your taste without any difficulties. The only difficulty is in properly balancing the fuzz and compression in this unit which can actually require that you turn the fuzz level down (oh my good-grief, sacrilege indeed!) so that the overall level isn't too overbearing...

This pedal is just *so* lovely - so absolutely creamy and huge and just absolutely delightful... I have the russian-made huge green Big Muff but, although the sound from that is good, this original deluxe just has more 'oomph' somehow. I play a tele through this and the slight treble-edge of this kind of guitar is translated through the Big Muff into a very defined and huge sound - absolutely no problem pulling of a great rhythm and smooth hyper-fuzzed up lead sound without any setting changes. The compression on board can be quite a lovely subtle effect as well, just squeezing a little bit extra out of your fingers and into the ears of the audience. Easily justifies top marks.

I'd like to think that I could rely on this pedal. It is obviously built to last and looks like a truck could run over it without any particular problems, however, I would be nervous about touring with this pedal - it would be very difficult to replace...

n/a

I have used this pedal in conjunction with a variety of different sounding fuzz and distortion effects (MXR Distortion+, Fender Blender, Bixonic Expandora, Turbo Rat, Tube Screamer, Roger Mayer's Voodoo Axe) and it always provides a sound that is unique to itself that keeps me using it as my main fuzz/distortion effect. If ever you get the chance to pick up this pedal somewhere and you're not sure just demo it and it will sell itself to you.

The distortion part of it requires no rocket science Tone, Drive,& Volume. The sound is harsh so the right blend of drive/treble roll-off
depends on your pickups & your amp. The compressor part is a little more difficult. About one afternoon's worth of practice will suffice.

The sound is FUZZ (not distortion). Very harsh & raspy, but that was what the original Big Muff TT was designed for. The deluxe hadnt changed much except for the compressor section. The sound was still in vouge in the late 70s when I bought it, but by the 80s everyone was into clean or double-driven distorion & I just couldnt use it anymore. But by the 90s & whole retro-sound/grundge thing it's usefullness came back again. Make no mistake it's nasty sound is only
acceptable for certain musical eviroments, but thats where it fits right in perfectly.

The control pots became scratchy when it was only a couple years old.
On/off foot switch also a little finicky. Has it's own AC cord. That
could be good or bad. Strength wise it's a tank. You can drop it, stomp it, etc.

I never contacted the manufacturer. The guy at the counter when I bought it new in 1977 (Sam Goody, Paramus NJ when they still sold instruments) was a wealth of knowledge. He explained how the thing would give just a little oomph to the last microsecond of a note, to
get the notes to jump out above the fuzz. He was absolutley right.

Like I mentioned before, this item has a notch for itself but could be
unusable anywhere else. I use it when I purposely want a nasty sound.
Its a relic from my youth & id miss it, but modern/more recent vintage
distortion pedals are more practical.