Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi USA Reissue

Very easy to use you know the score. Manual is useless as are all EH ones.

My set up is:

Les Paul > Wah > Big Muff > Wasabi Overdirve > MXR dist + > EH Small Stone > EH Small Clone > EH >Electric Mistress > Boss DD6 > Engl Screamer.

No noise and no tone sucking when off. It had some great sounds, but kind of killed the sound of my amp and guitar, all you heard was the effect, which I didn't like at all MXR dist and Wasabi blend beautifully with the set up where as the Muff was hardly subtle, but I guess thats what some people want. My biggest annoyance was that it didn't have enough power to be signifcantly louder than the clean setting which I was astonished by cus everyone bangs on about what a massive sound this thing gives, but I thought it was weedy compared to others and when the tone was trebly I found the sound unusable and didn't give enough output from the pedal. So overall pretty dissapointed.

Only had it a few weeks then sold it. But seemed OK, although as everyone says, the paint job was crap.

No dealings with them.

I play funk, rock stuff and have been playing for around 20 years. Iwouldn't buy it again I'd prefer a RAT but with my MXR dist and wasabi overdrive and amp distortion I can pretty much get the distortion and overdrive sounds I want. Engl amp distortion is gorgeous! I ccould't stand how weak the output was from the pedal and how all I heard was the Muff! If it was a little less dominant and had more output I'd probably hang on to it, but it simply wasn't me either.

This pedal is decently easy to use. Three knobs. Hitting the sweet spots can be a little tricky, especially when you're playing in a band with lots of instruments where you really need to cut through. One thing that I've noticed lately is the pedal reacts to the guitar different in different places in my pedal chain. The very best response seems to be as close to the front of the chain as possible. This is something you might want to experiment with when you buy one before you take it back, because some places in the chain it can sound lifeless, fizzy, and have a lack of volume.

I have been in love with the Big Muff sound ever since I heard Smashing Pumpkin's "Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness". Later, other recordings like everything by Dinosaur Jr. I used to use it for rhythm playing but now I tend to use it for lead. The singing sustain is really where it's at. I haven't found any other pedal that can give me that kind of sustain, although the Rat II comes close. I also love the coloring it give the sound. If you plug this in, expect it to sound like a Big Muff, because it's instant color for you tone. It can make your guitar sound like a behemoth! My setup is Fender custom-wired Fat Strat -> MXR Micro Amp -> Blackstone Appliances Overdrive -> ProCo Rat II -> Big Muff PI -> Boss RV-2 -> Line 6 Dely Modeler -> Fender Bassman Blackface Head. I think this will always be part of my signature sound, although I've always been curious to hear the Lovetone Big Cheese that Pavement uses. I would not use this as my only distortion, but it is necessary as part of a larger distortion pallate! My first distortion pedal was a Green Russian Big Muff. That one sounded a little different, but I stomped the heck out of it and it's retired for now.

I have been playing with it consistantly for 2 years with from 1-6 gigs a month and have never taken a replacement. I'm too poor. I have a Russian Green Big Muff, but that had a few shorts and is falling apart. Never had the same problems with the Big Muff USA Reissue so far, but I keep it on a pedal board in a padded case when not stomping on it. The casing seems solid, but I wish it was thicker metal like the Rat or MXR casings. Metal input jacks are are a relief after the Russian plastic ones.

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I've been playing about 8 years consistantly in bands. I am not a great guitar player, but I'm a big tone freak. I've spent way too much time buying and selling stuff I read great reviews of on the internet. My experiance is "great tone" is ususally defined as a cranked Marshall Plexi. Well, after going after that sound I realized have subjective "good tone" is (the plexi sound is kinda boring to me, and I prefer the colored and processed sounds of the Smashing Pumpkins and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). To me, the Big Muff is one of the greatest distortion tones invented. I wouldn't be without it. The sustain is unbelievable and I use it all the time to get controlled, smooth feedback. Sometimes I'll play a whole song by just letting the notes feedback, never really laying a pick on the strings. In combination with the MXR Micro Amp, theRat II and my new AnalogMan Modded Boss DS-1 I have a distortion setup that I am really happy with. Hint: try driving a Big Muff with a Rat!

Very easy to use, you got volume, tone and sustain (distortion). Sounds good on almost all settings, which is refreshing when compared to lots of other pedals. Big heavy-duty switch with true bypass. That's pretty much everything you need on a distortion pedal so I'm giving it a 10.

I play an Ibanez SZ with Duncan HBs through a Marshall JCM900 or '72 Ampeg VT-40. Never been a huge fan of effects so all I'm running besides the Big Muff is a Crybaby Classic and MXR Doubleshot mainly for different lead sounds. Lead sounds is where the Big Muff shines. The smoothness of distortion is comparable to tube heads, especially in higher registers. Then again I'm playing it through tube heads and I have not tried it through solid-state. The tone knob gives you a huge range of options, from sweet violin-like sounds to evil screams and growls that will make you grin. The sustain knob is very useable as well and the sound is still warm and lively even when you turn it down. When you play chords it sounds real thick and a bit muddy, but that's the way the Big Muff is. Think of Hendrix and Korn and you'll get the idea. Power chords sound real evil and heavy with the tone and sustain knobs cranked, unfortunately you can't get that palm-muted chug at all with this. Like I said, lead playing is where it shines. It's not noisy at all and the true bypass is completely transparent. The switching is smooth with no clicks, static or breaks in the sound.

I've had it for about six weeks and played the hell out of it. No problems so far and it's still on the same battery. The casing leaves a lot to be desired since the sides and bottom are plastic but unless you really abuse your gear that shouldn't be a problem. Still, it's far from being a tank like the Crybaby or the MXR.

Great tone from this pedal whether you wanna play Hendrix, Sabbath, Pumpkins or whatever. If you like (any label here) rock, it has something to offer. Not really for metalheads though, as it is too muddy for that and don't look for subtle blues overdrive here neither. But if you want a mean pedal with a dirty, soulful, balls-to-the-wall sound I highly recommend that you check this out.

I just got a USA Re-issue Big Muff Pi, and I must say, its freaking awesome! Its really easy to use, and can create some awesome distortion/fuzz. It doesn't take a long time to dial in what you want, which is real nice. Its really versatile, but I just keep the Sustain (distortion) knob cranked. It has really good sustain.

I play it with a late 70's Ibanez Artist, a Manitou Les Paul Custom copy, and a Univox Hi-Flyer. Its a great pedal. You can get the Nirvana "Lithium" sound with it easily. (Kurt used a Big Muff for Lithium due to it sounding Darker and Thumpier than his DS-1) Great overall pedal. I use this with a bunch of other pedals (Modified BOSS DS-1, BOSS Blues Driver, Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, MXR Distortion +, Danelectro Fish and Chips EQ, MXR SMart Gate) and I run them all through a Mesa/Boogie Studio Preamp that runs through a GEM Sound Power amp into a Behringer 4x12 cab. Its not noisy at all, but then again I am using the Noise Gate all the time. Its loud as hell and can do some great distortion sounds.

I would totally gig this without a backup, and it seems very reliable.

I havent had to deal with them at all, not even with the Small Clone. GOod stuff!

I play a mix of Hard rock, punk, alternative, etc. I have a very Nirvana-esque sound but am also very influenced by Silverchair and Tool. I've been playing for a good 6 years and this is one of the best distortions I've heard. Were this stolen I would be pissed, and then Id cut my losses and go buy another one.

you'll want to play around with the tone for a good half hour to find the sweet spot for your guitar and amp...but you'll be surprised that once you set that tone, just about any setting on the sustain is useable-- not at all like the russian jobs.

i had a russian black muff for years and i always liked it, but it finally gave out on me (just didn't like me anymore, i guess)and i decided to replace it wit the USA version. i haven't been more pleasantly surprised with anything in a long time. in my opinion, the russian muff really only sounded good with the sustain control completely cranked, but the USA muff has lots of character across the pot sweep...lower settings sound a little more "marshally" and the higher settings still give that screaming high gain smashing pumpkins tone. in between is where my favorites lie-- i can totally nail that john mclaughlin with miles davis "live evil" sound...wicked. i've also used it on bass and to process loops and samples, and the muff doesn't dissapoint. my musical tastes run from jazz to freeform experimental, and while the big muff won't permanently be turned on with my setup, i think i'll get a lot more play out of this one than i ever did before...oh the new ones are true bypass, and the check someone before me mentioned held true for mine...look for the 9 connections.

well, if you open it up you'll see there's a lot of empty space inside, so there's always the worry of something getting loose. that said, i baby my equipment, and most of the gigs i play are in art gallerys and bars with more of a goatee stroking than a budweiser hurling crowd, so i don't foresee any problems. the battery compartment door is held on by the world's smallest screw, so that's a little troubling. my backup will be my old RAT box from 8th grade...now there's reliability!

never had to deal with them, but i've rarely heard a nice story about ehx support.

wicked cool. makes me want to play the guitar more and let my laptop and synth get dusty. my old guitar teacher would be proud.

Ridiculously easy to use, standard volume knob for volume, tone knob from bassy and bluesy to crunchy and in your face, and distortion/sustain knob that deals with exactly that...distortion and sustain.

My setup is g&l asat> big muff> mxr phase 90> digitech digidelay> '87 Vox ac30. The tones that i get out of the muff with this setup are phenomenal. I'm using it in my band for the really heavy riffs or solo's because my vox is already set up kind of dirty, but it's also very capable of being the only distortion you need through a very clean amp (i.e. fender twin, etc.) With the tone at about 1 o'clock and the sustain at around 9 o'clock on the neck pickup of a tele, the muff gets a gorgeous creamy blues sound, or change to the bridge pickup for almost a santana sound, which really surprised me because it's a single coil guitar. Switch it around to tone at about 3 or 4 o'clock and the sustain a little over 1 o'clock on the bridge pickup and it screams. The gain availability and tone quality are tremendous. Overall, i will keep this pedal in front of my rig until the day i die.

It is an electro harmonix, so you have to give it a little slack. The build quality is decent, but not completely rock solid(i wouldn't throw it at a wall and expect it to play). But i will gig without a backup...it's a risky game but i think the pedal will hold up.

never dealt with ehx.

I play a mildly experimental form or rock n' roll, and the big muff gets all the sounds i expected and needed. I've been playing for somewhere around 7 years and have owned everything from peavey practice amps, to vintage marshall half-stacks, to the ac30 i play now, and the match of the muff and the vox sounds better than most things i have heard. If it was stolen, i'd definitely get another one (used of course, retail is ridiculous). I just love the tones that come out of this thing, it's necessary for any rock/ rock blues player to at least try one out.

Volume sets the volume (duh), tone sets the range between deep, bassy sound with no crunch to maximum fuzziness that will still have plenty of low-end response. Now I oftenly hear about people saying you can't get anything good from just a single tone knob. They don't have a Muff. It goes through a surprisingly wide tone range. However, it's true I wish to buy an equalizer pedal to boost the mids a little, like a BOSS GE-7 or something. But I can live with this little lack of mids. Sustain sets the amount of distortion and sustain, but sustain and distortion always go together on every pedal.

I use an Aria ZZ custom and an Ibanez Talman TC-420, both equipped with Seymour Duncan Invader humbuckers and D'Addario 10's strings, plus the big Muff, EH Small Clone, Amdek FLK-100 Flanger, EH Holy Grail, but I will soon put a BOSS GE-7 between the Muff and the Clone.
My amp is an all-tube 1975 Traynor Bass Mate. It sounds really evil, man, kids these days have distortion with no mids and it sucks.. I'm tired to hear Metallica wannabes dropping their mids to minimum on their Metal Zones. I get sound from Bush to Mudhoney, White Stripes and Nirvana, this thing rocks, it's the best fuzzbox i've ever heard or played with. Some guy said "the Muff isn't suitable for palm mutes" well this ain't true. You can't play speed metal with it, but it really kicks ass with palm mute, it's like your speaker will rip apart and jump on your face. But, like I said earlier, I could use more mids.. It's not rumpy enough yet. So I give it a 9, cos it's really capable to do great fuzz sounds by its own anyways.

Oh yeah.. This is an Electro Harmonix we're talking about.. Don't stomp on it like a madman, just click the switch, everything will be fine. I gig with it all the time, but I would never gig without backup, so this is why I have my BOSS HM-2.

I heard they were not very supportive, but I never had to deal with them so...

I play a lot of early 90's alternative like Hole, Nirvana, L7, Mudhoney kind of stuff, 70's punk like the Sex Pistols, the Exploited, plus some blues rock, or some 80's rock, like Cheap Trick and the Cars, plus my own music. I've been playing since 6 years now. If it was stolen, I'd kill the f*cker, but if it was impossible, I'd buy another one. I love everything about it, except this lil lack of midrange boost. I compared it with a DOD FX66 and Zoom Ultra Fuzz, the muff blew them away. This is the best fuzzbox ever made by man.

Really easy to use!! You just plug in , put all knobs middle position and there you go ,start your motor! I was amazed by the first note. Tweek the knobs and get more trebly metal sounding notes three dimensional i 'll say. However, the sustain/drive doesn't clear up nicely when you turn the knob down, you get a little darker clean sound. That's not much of a problem though since I usually do this with overdrive pedals,this is a fuzz baby!It came with true bypass.

Fender Mustang '73 --> BOSS SD1-->Big Muff-->Dunlop Wah-->Fender Blues Junior that s my setup. I was amazed by the very first note of this pedal , gave to my sound what I was looking for. I thought my little amp was transformed to something else ,it became more ballsy! yeah that s the word!I mostly play blues and rock'n'roll but at some parts I want to ROCK and GRUNGE and experiment with sounds, so this pedal gives me the girth I would sometimes miss from my rigg. I know it s too much to say but it almost makes my fender a gibson at some points i need to be more of a savage ,create a wall of thick sound etc. This pedal does three things well: it gives me sustain when soloing, makes power chords sound huge and pleasantly muddy (doesn t get too muddy and that s where its analog quality emerges) and makes soloing really pleasant with violin -like big tone. I could say that it helps me get santana sounds ,nirvana sounds and generally this thing rocks look cool too! Bad thing is that at some points it lacks middle range but i do this with other pedals, oh and it s loud!

The battery seems to go on forever and it came with the cool wooden box!! the case is sleek and i baby this effect very much ,but i cant say its construction amazes me ,i mean the metal cover isn t welded to tight to the rest of the case but the whole huge package and the stomp knob seem promising

haven t dealt with them yet hope i never have to. i got this pedal from germany and i live in greece ,got some good techs here

I play mostly anything and I like to collect effects pedals and this is really a jewel for my arsenal. I also got digital stuff and small danelectros but they are a little bit tone sucking, although cool for their prices.Been playing for ten years. Next I want to get the pro co rat for a more middle range approach. If it were stolen I would run and get a new one. These babies aren t available here i wonder why. yep i would go back to germany and get one and maybe grab a deluxe memory man too i am in analog madness right now. Great pedal you ll love it s an ear candy.

three knobs, awesome sound, very nice.
No manual

Epiphone Riviera, Marshall AVT 150, Vintage Vox Wah.
It does what it says on the tin. It screams like a scalded cat and never purrs!

These are utter shit when it comes to reliability. I have two. The first ran fine for about a year then all soundstoppingwhatthefuck'sgoingon hell broke loose. Wires came off the switch then the switch gave up, now the switch on the other one has just given up aswell. I have one 6 point switch and one 9 point (true bypass) switch. These things suck suck suck. If I could get the same sound from a different pedal I would fill both pedals with cat pooh and send them back to the crasse idiots at EH.

they're awesome for getting sweeeeeeeeeeeet sounds but for the fact that at age one the things have a shit fit and take 6 months of probing with a soldering iron to decide if they'll work for you when you need them most.

Take a while to do get the sounds you want but dead easy to use. 3 knobs, volume, tone, sustain.

My set up is:

Les Paul std > EH Small Clone > EH Big Muff > Jim Dunlop Cry baby > Boss DD6 > Engl Screamer 50 Combo.

No noise at all, and very little effect on tone, (its not a true bypass) Slightly weird thing is when you turn the tone to a treble sound you get a volume drop but you can just turn up the volume on the pedal although I'm close to maxing it out on the pedal so that the volume doesn't drop through my amp when I turn the pedal off and go back to a clean sound.

The fuzz sounds are so good though, on the neck humbucker you get a very warm rich and thick tube like distortion and SO MUCH sustain!!!! It can sound like an e-bow!! Trebly sounds have loads of crunch but the pedal sounds its best with my gear with the bassy tone settings and high sustain.

Only had it a few weeks, seems OK, but Electro Harmonix are not well known for their build quality so I'll be careful with it.

Never had to deal with them, but they do give a funky sticker when you buy one their pedals, nice!!

I play rock, funk and mellow stuff, and this pedal is simply great with all those, with loads of tone and low volume you can get such a thick fuzz sound you can do solos in very quiet songs, and it somehow works. I'd buy it again, just for that amazing tubular fuzz sound on a neck pick up. Better than other distortions, althougb I haven't tried loads I just loved this pedal when I tried it in a shop, as its analog has a very warm sound, just gets you excited about playing your guitat, I love it when pedals do that!! The sounds actually help me be creative and give me ideas like using it as an e-bow esque thingy.

If you want fuzz and sustain then this is for you.