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I think Russian Muff look best when they appear to have gone through a war
If you repaint, sand the case down and put some primer on it before you paint. It does not appear the St. Petersburg factory primed at all. By V7 version 1, I assume you mean one of the early ones with the plastic door cover? If so, there are really no replacements available. You can get a sheet of stainless steel from hardware store and cut a new one with metal snips, and a bit of folding to get it to stay in place. There are pix on my Big Muff site of the original plastic doors for reference.
As said, the knobs are most likely replacements. I have seen a few V2 Muffs with them, but they were modern Davies Molding replacements.
The Muff itself may be somewhat unique. I have come across several blue V2 Muffs like this, with the flat bottom of the face circle graphic exactly like yours. Each had the exact “violet” spec circuit schematic. The violet schematic is rare because it is one of the brief times EHX seemed to follow an exact schematic for a time. Most V2s have wildly different components values, making them all sound different. The violets sound great, to me anyway, because they are not too bassy, are thick sounding for chords, but not overly grungy/muddy thick, and have a very nice articulate sound for solos. Not overly mids scooped either. They are not as high gain as some of the other Ram’s Heads, but are not overly noisy either.
Not all Muffs with blue ink have the violet circuit, but every one I have seen with that flat bottom circle did. It is one of the more desirable Ram’s Head Muffs.
If you look about halfway down this page, you will see a few with the exact same blue graphics, and pix of the circuit to compare, or shoot some pix and post them and I can tell you if that is what you have.
http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_history1.html#RamsHeadHere is one of mine.
Just an update to this thread. After seeing a few more of these odd tone bypass V3s, which all appeared to have identical circuit components and values. After getting to examine a few, I have concluded this is a legit V3. Most pots are dated ’79, though at least one person told me he bought his in late ’77 or ’78. Transistors are odd. NPN MPSA18, not 2N5087. I have never seen those in a Big Muff before, but they were used in other pedals. All but one had the hockey puck V5/V6 knobs. One had old V2/V3 Daka Ware knobs and 78 pots. All have the old V2/V3 board, but component values in these different than most of the V3s I own or have seen. Sounds really loud, hairy and gritty, much more than any early V3, but similar to a couple of later V6 Muffs I own. Very mean and dirty sound. I like it.
Base on this and a few other bits of info I have learned from owners and sellers in the past year, I have concluded that what Howard David thought was true – the V3 never actually went out of production during the short time the V4/V5 Muffs were made.
Pix are really big, so you may have to drag them to your desktop to view.
That’s exactly why I believe EHX won’t do it. But I think EHX is in their own pond, and has always been. And I think reissues are a different animal and serve a different customer than boutique pedals. I suspect the boutique pedal buyers are not the crowd buying all these reissues anyway. They will likely be the ones who bash them on TGP and HC for not being accurate replicas
It would just be nice to see EHX reap the benefits of their own past work, but as I said, I don’t think they are interested.
Which clone did you buy?
