I saw the Muff drum!. I’m a big fan of your Effectology series. Some of the stuff you do just blows me away. I loved the Welcome to the Machine vid…well, all the others too. Some interesting signal chains I would have never thought of, but I’m starting to get a grasp on it now after seeing so many of your vids. Nice work!

100euro is not bad at all for an op-amp Muff. The prices have gone up and down in the US recently. They were a lot higher than that here, but Ron is right – this is around what they should be selling for. Sounds like a good deal.

Here is a page all about those op-amp Muffs.
http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_op_amp_history.html#Version4

And you are keeping where you got them to yourself Come on – give it up. Where did you score these?

Cograts. The old greeny Mistress is the best. I have the Deluxe as well, but I really like the old 18v Mistress. I use a Barge VB jr. mixer with mine so I can mix it in with my clean or distorted signal from my Muffs. I usually keep it about 50% in the mix.

I’m curious about the transistors as well, but since this is not a Fuzz Face I am not expecting those same issues to apply. A fuzz face is a pretty simple, but unforgiving circuit, and the tranys are the most key component to what we expect a good one to sound like, at least if you are comparing it to an old one. But even old ones don’t all sound the same. I’m sure EHX is going for the most cost effective and best sounding 275s they can find to keep the overall unit cost as low as possible. If the G4BM incorporates the standard Big Muff circuit path however, it’s a totally different animal than a fuzz. It seems the stacking of the two sections and adjustment knobs to allow a wide variety of tones is where this one is going to stand out.

Bob Myer mentioned to me in February that he was working on a “Germanium transistor amplifier with parameter controls”. This was part of a discussion on Big Muffs, so I am assuming the G4 is a Muff circuit. That and the fact that it is called a Big Muff. Mike usually reserves those two words for Big Muff circuits. Germanium tranys in a Big Muff sound nothing like a traditional Muff, or a Fuzz Face for that matter, so this should be interesting to hear. I can’t wait.

The Muff can go pretty much anywhere in the signal chain, but typically put them after compressors and before delays and modulation. Overdrives can go before or after, but if you like to boost the Muff with an overdive, just experiment with the drive pedal before or after and use your ears.

Putting most drivers before the Muff seems to be a bit smoother, and after the Muff usually has more crunch and attack. Also which one is “driving” which has an effect on the tone – the booster drive or the Muff sustain? The Muff sustain can be set high and the drive pedal low, or vise versa. Each has a slightly different affect on the tone.

Muffs are high gain pedals. They will be noisy when you max the sustain, and even more so if you run them with boosters and compressors. I have yet to find one that I would call quiet. Lower gain Muffs like some of the Sovteks have less noise. Most of the clones I have played are no better – Skreddy, Musket, Hoof, Trifecta, Cornish, BYOC, SUF, et cetera. That’s just the nature of the beast. Skreddys are among the noisiest and SUF among the quietest, but they all have the Muff circuit hiss and hum. The noise never bothered me when playing in a band mix because it is not noticeable to me.

As far as getting lost in the mix, Muffs have a “scooped” tone circuit, meaning the mids are scooped out of the tone. That’s what gives them their huge, mean sound, but it also means Muffs occupy the same frequency in a band mix as the bass guitar, bass drums, and some keyboard sounds. The Bass Big Muff and Sovtek Muffs have more mids, so they stand out more, vintage USA Muffs and the USA reissue have less, so they can get lost. You have to set your guitar amp and bass amp EQ so there is more separation when using a Muff. Adding some compression boost the clarity of the tone, and adding a booster pedal to color the EQ a bit can both make the muff stand out more. Boutique Muffs like Skreddys and Cornish have more mids built in, and some others have mids switches, like the BYOC and Musket. They are easy to make stand out in a mix.

You may also not hear yourself in the middle of a band mix when playing, but others listening may hear fine. Thats a problem people like Billy Corgan had playing live, so he stopped using them. Others like J.Mascis huge wall of Muff sound, have no problem at all. Gilmour has no problem standing out, but he just uses them for solos. Sometimes your ears can’t handle all that sound at once when you are right in the middle and you just seem to “disappear”.

You just have to work on the right EQ mix. Some people just can’t get along with them, some can. Muffs are tricky to learn how to use, but once you get there they can sound incredible.