Electro-Harmonix Big Muff USA Reissue

This product is fool proof. Nothing complicated here folks. I'm sure others have gone into detail, so I'll give you a basic rundown. 3 knobs. One volume, One tone, and one sustain. Since I bought it on ebay, it came in its original box, but no manual, which I didn't end up needing anyways. The volume knob controls, well the volume. The tone makes it more bassier if you turn anti-clockwise, and more sharp/treblely when you turn it clock wise. Lastly, the sustain knob controls just that - sustain/distortion.

This pedal has a very unique sound, I'd say the distortion sounds that became famous in the 70's. Although Jimmy page didn'y always use pedals for distortion you can defenitely get some led zep tones with this pedal. Keep in mind that this pedal has cut back mids no matter what, so you might like that or you might not, but it sure sets it apart. Many famous guitarists have used this pedal such as John Frusciante of the Red hot chili's and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, which kind of tells you something. If you want to hear what the pedal sounds like for solos, listen to the solo in the RHCP song "I could have lied". The band Bush (sorry I dont know the guitarist's name) uses this a lot, and a perfect example of how it sounds when you turn the sustain knob down and use it as a fuzz can be heard on their song "Swallowed". At the beginning of the song he is playing chords softly so it provides a light distortion/fuzz. Then when the chorus comes around he strums harder so it provides more distortion. To me it sounds great (it didn't always fit my style though, but read on). Also the song Glycerine is a great example.

Well I bought one that had been used for a few years since It was 1/2 the store price if I were to buy it new. I dont regret it at all, this thing is a trooper. Although I haven't gigged with it, I sure as hell have had quite a few intense jam sessions in which ive practically jumped on it and it still works. I've had it for about 7 months now.

I haven't had to deal with the company, which is a good thing since I've had no problems what so ever with the product.

I didn't always like this pedal, I'll admit. When I first got it I was actually estatic and thanked god that I finally didn't have to press the damn channel button on my combo amp to play a solo. After a while though I wanted to get some metallica tones, which is what I was covering at the time, and this pedal wasn't the best for that master of puppets saturated distortion. Eventually the pedal died and I didn't bother to replace it. I ended up lending to my friend and kind of forgot about it. A few days ago however, I finally bought a tube amp (Epiphone valve junior head+speaker), and I decided to give it another try. WOW! huge difference between tube amp and solid state amp. The sound is fuller (which I know is because of the amp) and it is a lot more touch responsive. I realize that I was dumb to ever stop using the pedal. If you mix this pedal with an overdrive pedal such as the Boss BD-2 (blues driver) you can get some ridiculously rich tones.
At the moment my gear is just a Highway one strat w/ MIM pickups (hope to uograde soon), then Big Muff->Vox Wah->Epi valve junior, and it sounds sweet.

Very easy. Only three knobs.

I would say this is down to what you expect.

It's not a do it all sound. It's great at what a fuzz pedal does. Filthy, big sound etc... No subtle type thing works with this.
The sustain is huge. I set mine to vol full/tone 3/4 up and sustain 1/4 up. It is a quite pedal i found, the vol has to be on full for me. I have an Aramat Fuzz and the two are worlds apart. The Ararmat is the best ever. The muff is good but not amazing.


I personally think it works best with single coils. Otherwise it is a little too dark. A great rock n roll tone. But as i say not for everyone.

Very good.

The pedal is a little cheap in feel.

Good pedal. Great for the right band/music.
no for evryone. Make sure you can find a use for it. I don't really use mine much. Great for trashy rock n roll.

It??s very easy to use, I never read the manuals unless it??s necessary. Not the case with this one. Three knobs, that??s it.

Very Good pedal. I have been looking for a sound like this one for ages. I have been playing for almost 15 years as an amateur, befor I had the MT-2 metal zone, and the tube works distorsion. My setting: Fender Strat Deluxe, cry baby wah, Big Muff, Boss Chorus, Digitech reverb and Fender Pro Junior tube amp. I was looking for a distortion pedal since long time, and I resisted to buy the big muff until now because I didn?? want to go for a cheap, solid state option. I bought it together with the EH Hot Tubes, and I compared this one with it and with the MT-2 and Tube Works. Well, finally I have to admit I was wrong, sometimes the most expensive option is not the best one. Those pedals would be great for 70??s classic rock, and if you are willing to twaek a lot, but the tube ones lack range of frquencies and get muddy on the low end. The MT-2 is simply not as well thought as the EH big Muff. Now it is my main pedal, and I think it will stay like that.

Sure, metallic case, big and light. I have impression I could throw it against the wall and spit hard alcohol on it, and would still work fine.

Never dealt with them.

I play all kinds of music, but I have to admit I play a lot alternative rock. This pedal has the tone of Nirvana, Muse, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and stuff like those. Despite of this kind of tone, it is also appropiate to play just classic rock, but I guess if you are going to play only that, there can be even better options. I sounds really good with my strat: no noise at all (noiseless pickups), big sustain, sweet but powerful sound, really good for rithm and even better for solos. I think I will use it together the tube works on mid gain, so I can have a very gainy drive and also a simple classic rock sound with the Tube works. In case of stolen: If anybody dares to get near my big muff, I kick his ass.

Ease of use? Its a piece of cake. Volume, Tone, Sustain.

Actually i don't know why i ever bought this pedal. I have no idea what my ideals have been, since i bought it. But anyways: Almost every amp, and guitar i tried this with it had the same sound. And thats both good and bad. Good because the sound, when i tweaked it, was evil, heavy, doom-like fuzz, with lots of sustain and incredible amounts of depth. Bad, because this was basicly what it could do.
You could always turn the "Tone"-knob a bit, but either there would be too much treble or too much bass.

The reliability of this pedal is outstanding. Built like a tank!

3 knobs....if you can't figure out what to do with these, then you're an idiot.

I'm writing this review due to what I've read in here so far. First of all, to the people who are giving this pedal bad reviews....KNOW WHAT YOU'RE BUYING!!!! Holy crap, this thing is a vintage fuzz box for Pumpkins/Floyd/Santana/etc tones, not some kind of all purpose distortion or overdrive. This pedal is supposed to do a few things and that's all. It gives you a very smooth violin-like sound for leads, gives you a huge booming FUZZY NOT DISTORTED wall of sound for riffs and rhythm playing, and finally it gives you a very nice bluesy type of lower gain lead sound. Seriously, if you bought this thing because you wanted a versatile DISTORTION or OVERDRIVE for intricate chording and clarity, then you obviously didn't do your research. The muff was designed for one sound....and if you like that one sound, the muff is the only pedal that can produce that thick and crazy madness. Seriously, buy this for alternative riffing or general lead work. Don't give this thing a bad review because you don't like the Big Muff sound in general and didn't know what you were getting into. As far as muffs go, the USA reissue is pretty solid. There's better out there for more cash, but you can't go wrong with this in terms of acquiring a legit muff.

Tb'd, but the enclosure is way too big and the whole thing could be redesigned to be much more practical....in fact EHX did just that, see the new Little Big Muff.

Never dealt with them.

......It's a fuzz, not a distortion or overdrive. If you want a very saturated and thick FUZZ, then this is the place to look. EHX has done a nice job of creating a decent modern take on the old muffs, you can't beat it for the price.

took it out of the box and plugged it in...tone was fucking awesome outta the box so never tweaked it

i play through a sunn model t, 69hiwatt cab and a guild s100, this thing is awesome... noisy when volume is dialed high, but i reduce that with a boss noise suppressor, which also cures some of the palm muting problems mentioned earlier. i pretty much set my preamp so it is on the verge of breaking up so when i stomp on the big muff it sends the amp into a sorta overdrive...cool effect

built like a tank, the russian ones were actually made from tank parts i think

n/a

play post hardcore to droney progressive style shit, this thing works for the heavy parts, plus the clean of the sunn is unbeatable....its not a fancy setup, but its easy and it sounds great, warmth throughout the tone, and i get compliments after we play gigs all the time, wouldnt sell it, would like to coompare it to other models, and am currently searching ebay for a vintage lil' big muff fuzzbox... also, for this setup i have payed less than 1500.00 US, including guitar...

it is very easy to use as it has 3 knobs to tweak your sound.
but very hard to find more than one useable sound out of it!

bypass is ok, not much noise

if you want a santana type sound its also alright but for anything else In my opinion it is useless.
When used for a rhythm fuzz sound it is much too fuzzy and over the top no matter how you tweak it and the chord doesnt really come through the fuzz. (yes i do know what a fuzz box is meant to sound like but this one is horrible)

with the tone control all the way up it sounds truly awful much to trebly and scratchy.
sounds awful before most solid state amps and slightly better through a tube amp.

the battery lasts quite long and never had any major trouble with it.
However it is too big and could be smaller and the sides made out of metal like the top.

a few months back it was playing up a bit, not switcihng on etc but it sorted itself out after a while

i would not use it at a gig without a backup. well actually i wouldnt use this pedal at a gig if i could help it

DO NOT BUY THIS PEDAL

when i first got it, it was my first pedal ((about 5 years ago) and i had no idea what a good sound was then. Now i can see what a mistake and waste of money this pedal was. I have used it at least 20 odd times at gigs and pubs etc but soon stopped using it. At loud volumes i couldnt be heard as it sounded like a carpet had been put over the amp.(and this is with the sustain turned quite low).

i now use either a nobels od 1 or my guitar teachers tubescreamer (original 70s) at the pub and am hoping to get a monte allums Blues driver mod soon, please dont buy this pedal. save your money do not buy this pedal.

Easy to use...There is only one sound

This pedal is not that great...I recommend trying one before you purchase...There is only one sound...You cannot control the distortion level...And it is extremely noisy....I play through a mxr dynacomp which is a little noisy but the sound that it produces is worth the noise...However, the big muff just isn't worth it...I play a variety of musical genres..Therefore, I prefer a distortion pedal with various capabilities...

I bought it..Tried it one day and sold it....So I don't know much about reliability

NA

2

quiet simple actually,
if you scroll up to some one elses, they are writing what im thinkin, so do that, so i dont need to type a lot,.
its very simple

BOy oh BOY do i love this pedal. my goal one christmas was to get a band going playing all nirvana songs, i needed a pedal like curt cobains sound. so i told my parents that i wanted a big muff and a tube screamer and a boss ds 1 distortion. i never heard any of these, but i found out when i got them that the big muff makes me feel like i cobain. man its great, just screw around with it and youll find what your probably not looking for to day, but its there, and you are in it adventually, muffed. thats the position it puts you in.

i use this pedal wiht a fender jagmaster and a crate amp.
its not that noisy unless you really want it to be. its very smooth.
this petal kicks george bushes ass and muffs it into hell!

I depend on this pedal greatly. has it dissapointed me? No. i jammed at my friends gig at his house wiht it with some friends, and i didnt feel the need for a back up.
it would probably be a good idea for a back up jsut because electro harmonix tend to break.
but theri pedals are amazing dont get me wrong.

no need yet

when i play the big muff, i truly feel muffed. it muffs me into music itself. i just wanna play it always. for those of you who say its big which you dotn like.UMMMM no shi*, thats why its called the big muff, if they were talking about the muff sound theyd call it the insane muff. but i love this pedal, and my band found that sound that cobain hides inside his heart.

i dont hate anything about this pedal, my brother is in karate, and when i first got the pedal i wanted to test out the strength, so i told him to do a front flip onto it. it was crazy it didnt even break, thats probably because i couldnt talk him into actually doing it, but im sure if he did, it wouldnt break. hes a green belt, so yes he can do flips. my favorite feature on the big muff is the muff. its so generic, so independent, so verstile, so amazing that i just know that the muff is the favorite feature of the big muff of mine.
i write muffy sounding songs wiht it and i havent written a bad song yet.

Very simple:

VOLUME - how loud do you want your crap?
TONE - how muffled or how trebly do you want your crap?
SUSTAIN - how much crap do you want?

I have used it with a Gibson Les Paul and a Fender USA Tele, through a Laney VC30 (class A tubeamp).
It's incredibly noisy - whatever settings you dial in, there's always an annoying buzz. When you mute your strings (for short pauzes between riffs or whatever) there's a hollow, very middy noise... like if you play with an acoustic guitar through your overdrive channel.

As for the effect: it's not very good. To say the least. I HATE it.
It effectuates my playing style for the worse. It kills ALL dynamics. Its distortion clips in a very unpleasant way.
My RAT is much much better - sounds much more tubelike and open, has nicer upper harmonics, doesn't sound muffled and doesn't suck tone when not engaged.
I can't believe I bought this crappy Big Muff... Yeah, I wanted that Smashing Pumpkins sound. Indeed, it resembles that sound, but than that's the only thing this pedal's good for.

I'm sorry. I really love Electro-Harmonix, but I think their flagship pedal is utter CRAP.

I've been playing for 15 years. Our music is influenced by indie rock (Pixies, Breeders, Hole) and 80s new wave (The Cure, The Chameleons).