Hi all,

First time posting here!
I recently bought a second hand English Muff’n pedal and it’s currently not working right at all!

I’ve had a good look around the forum here and it seems like people have problems with this pedal all the time but can’t quite find anyone having the same issues as me. What’s happening is this…

If I have the pedal off everything sounds fine. When I turn it on it sounds very weak. If I attack a note really hard it sounds OK but as soon as the note starts to decay it fizzles out with a weak static sound very quickly. There’s also a lot of buzz/hum even when not playing a note.

However if I keep my bare foot on the pedal and rest my palm on the bridge, the buzz is significantly reduced and the pedal comes back to life to some extent. Notes have much more sustain and the fizzly crackle is greatly reduced. It still doesn’t sound great, but much improved.

So I guess it’s a grounding issue but I’m not sure how I’d go about fixing that. I had a little look inside the pedal and couldn’t see any evidence of a ground wire being attached to the chassis. Also when I accidentally touched the 12v psu to the metal side of the pedal chassis it gave a little spark.

I’m not keen to go poking around inside too much as there are capacitors in there and I heard that the voltage for tube pre amp pedals can be stepped up to 220v inside.

My electronic/tech knowledge is very minimal so if anyone has any ideas, relaying them in layman’s terms would be much appreciated.

The pedal was a bargain so quite keen to fix it up rather than return.

Thanks all!