Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi USA Reissue

Volume,Tone and Sustain. What more does one need to get a pallatte of good sounds from a fuzz box that delivers. A no brainer.

Can get hissy if sustain is maxed but at ranges 7 thru 9 o'clock on the sustain (fuzz) dial all is quiet and swweeet. With a good O.D. before the Muff NYC there are'nt many tones you cant achieve. Stones (Satisfaction),Nirvana, Hendrix.........chord heaven and wailing leads, all sound right thru this pedal. Has the ellusive quality that many boxes don't attain. It makes you want to play.

In the reliability dept. I think that the peal is easy to troubleshoot
because the acsessability of all the parts. Nothing that I can tell other than the LED is glued in and the transistors, caps and resistors, are your run of the mill type. No plastic used for the pots and jacks where many problems do occur and replacements are a snap. I wold rather try to fix a U.S. made product than one made in England or Romania not to mention Taiwan or Russia. E.H.-U.S.A. has been maufacturing for 30+ years now and are the most sought after effect in the market today working or not. Mike Matthews....Save your kisses for Elliot Randall.

Never dealt w/ E.H. but I have a few pedals from past purchases.

I play blues, rock, jazz, country, swing,and all other types of music and this pedal works for all with settings slightly adjusted and in coordination w/ other pedals. A good Chorus, Wah, And O.D. should be included in the signal chain. I've been playing for 25 years and had many pedals and fuzz boxes. This pedal has that timeless quality to it but its not going to make you play better thats up to you but if you play longer (which it will make you do)you will play beter.

3 knobs -- volume, tone, and sustain. Pretty standard. And the USA version has an AC jack, unlike its green Russian counterpart.

I'm not a fan of giving "10's" for sound quality...but wow, if there ever was a fuzzbox that deserved a 10, it's this one. It sounds a lot better and is a good deal more versatile than the green Russian Big Muff (and I really liked that one too).

Oh, yeah, my setup is Fender Strat w/Texas Specials -> Crybaby -> BOSS OD-3 Overdrive -> USA Big Muff -> BOSS Chorus -> Fender Princeton.

This fuzz pedal also sounds AMAZINGLY good on single-coil pickups. Not thin at all. Wow.

Don't really know (as I haven't had it long), but it seems sturdy enough. I'm giving it a 9, just because I'm not sure, and they finally got an AC adapter on this thing so I don't have to keep feeding it batteries.

Never dealt with them, hope I never have to.

This thing is simply great. I don't think you could ask more from a fuzz box. It can be quiet and subtle, or it can sound like a fart. The sustain is amazing. I have yet to time it, but I think I can get chords to ring for 30 seconds or more.

For starters, I should tell you all that this is the American Made reissue of the original silver box Big Muff Pi. It, like all Big Muff models it has 3 knobs, Volume, Tone and Sustain, in and out jacks. The knobs on this seem alot more responsive compared to the Green reissue, which I used to own. I'd say this one is very easy to get good tones out of.

First things first... it's a Big Muff, it's supposed to be noisy. I've used all 3 of my guitars through it, my 1990 Rickenbacker 360, 2000 Fender Standard Stratocaster, and 1969 Gibson SG Special, and with all of them it sounds excellent, especially with the SG, but the older one sounded better with humbucking/Gibson guitars (this Special has P-90's), and the amp I've been using this with is a silverface Fender Champ from 1976. It hums a bit on all settings, but so do single-coil pickups, and it hums no more thant the Green Russian made model did, and comparing the two, this one blows the Green one away.. this one seems to have better control over shaping the tone, much more range in tone... you can achieve the deep booming heavy tones, and even a bright nasal fuzzy old Maestro FuzzTone type sound (think "Spirit In the Sky" and "Satisfaction"). I also think this one has a much smoother tone overall, it's still a heavy grind, just the green one was much bassier and jagged, kinda papery too, and the tone and sustain controls didn't do as much on the Green one. As for the getting the sound of my favorite artists, I can do a hell of a lot better with this one compared to the Green one, the Green one was good for some Hendrix and Black Sabbath, but this one can do alot more, you can even get a convincing overdriven tone. I also like this alot better than the ProCo RAT pedal.

As with all Electro-Harmonix pedals, the casings are made of sheet metal, and this is no different, the battery is acessed by a little door on the bottom, which needs a screwdriver to open, which is alot nicer than the cheap plastic one the green version used, and a whole lot more convenient compared to some of the current black versions.

I have never dealt with EH, but I ordered this pedal direct from New Sensor, the company that owns EH, which is owned by Mike Matthews, the founder of EH. I put in the order by credit card on Friday night from EH's website, and it arrived today, so I can't complain about anything.

I play alot of classic rock, alternative, punk, the occaisional bit of blues, and sometimes even some metal, and this can cover the bases I think. I own a few pedals other than this, a ProCo RAT, a MXR DynaComp, and this funky little Japanese "Overdrive" box with the Cortez brand name... which is more of a fuzz than anything, and I have a vintage BOSS OD-1 coming in the mail to me soon, too. Right now this is the best Fuzz pedal I've ever used. I'll just say that I might be kinda biased about this pedal, just because I liked the other one I had, and I sold it because I was getting out of messing with Distortion, and I had the ProCo Rat, which I thought was the end-all-be-all of Fuzz/Distortion... boy was I wrong. When I heard that these new American made reissues were available, I jumped all over it, I only heard they were out last Friday, about 3 minutes before I ordered it. Some might think the price is high, but I think as soon as these things become common in stores, people will see why. It's still cheaper than the Creamy Dreamer. I might try one of those, but I don't think it'll be a step up.