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LesPaulCustom79Member
When it finally gets down to vintage vs. current Big Muffs, it is like the old tennis pro statement,
“There are different strokes for different folks.”LesPaulCustom79MemberQuote:I think I know why you think your vintage muff sounds better.Because you want it to. Your brain and ears can do crazy things, and this whole thing could just be psychological! I also disagree about the components or handwiring being better than the machine made pedals. The 70S EHX pedals have some of the worst soldering I’ve ever seen on a commercial product.
Maybe, I got LUCKY and got a really good one!!! Alot of pedals were crap shoots in the good old 1970’s, depending on what stoner assembled them. BUT when you got a good one, you got a really, really, really, good one.
LesPaulCustom79MemberSeveral things about Gilmour’s tone, he used a vintage Strat with really, really, hot wound pickups, but very articulate at the same time, probably 57’s and played through 3 Hiwatt Custom DR-103 amp heads into several WEM 4X12 cabinets, loaded with 12″ FANE Speakers. That is the epitome of clean, bright, in-your-face tone, no wonder he liked EH Triangle Big Muffs, EH Electric Mistress Deluxes and Dynacomps to tone it down.
LesPaulCustom79MemberQUOTE:”Maybe they should just introduce a Big Muff with modder’s kit with sockets to change transistors, resistors, and wire up different switches.”
This is an excellent idea, mfg. a modable version Big Muff, with the sockets to easily change the transistor/transistors as needed to “Triangle Big Muff” specs or “Rams Head Big Muff” specs, and if you don’t like the tone for some reason, you can change it back to “current version Big Muff”. I’m not sure what type of prongs come on the current vs. vintage transistors and if the necessary socket is available. This would be a more economical route than paying hundreds of dollars on eBay for a beat-up early 70’s Triangle Muff only to find out it’s been fried and you can’t find replacement parts.
Analogman when he mods a TS-9 Tubescreamer, installs an opamp socket, so you can experiment with different opamps and find the exact one that floats your boat. If you don’t like the JRC4558D opamp for some reason, you can change it. I have even seen some guys stack and solder together two opamps to use at the same time to get a really different overdrive tone, similar to SRV running (2) vintage TS-808’s in tandem. (See the photo of a double stacked opamp).
LesPaulCustom79MemberQuote:OPAMP big muffs havent been made since 1979, all current big muffs are NPN and use BC550C or 2N5088 transistors.
BTW, they ALL sound cool as fuck!Let’s do a quick vote, which Big Muff Pi had you rather have on your pedal board?
1. An early 70’s “triangle knobs” Big Muff / mid 70’s “Ram’s Head” Big Muff? OR
2. A current Big Muff?Note: David Gilmour used a triangle knobs Big Muff similar to the one on the far left, on most all of Pink Floyd’s early recordings and 70’s tours. I guess he had no idea what the hell he was doing.
LesPaulCustom79MemberTo electro-melx “Dumbass”, I had the “bright” GREEN LED put into my 1981 TS-9 to make it different from everyone else’s, it came with a weak ass Red LED that you could barely see on stage.
LesPaulCustom79MemberTo all you “EH Homies”, sit there at your computer, with a straight face, without laughing out loud and state that the current mass-produced EH pedals sound better, are less noisey, and are made with better electronic components and better technical labor than the vintage, hand-wired EH pedals from the 70’s and early 80’s. If you swear that you can, EITHER, 1.You have never played/gigged with a vintage 70’s EH pedal OR 2.You are under 30 years old and wouldn’t know the difference if it jumped up and bit you in the ass, which makes you irrelevant to this thread.
LesPaulCustom79MemberQuote:Have you tried the Little Big Muff or Big Muff with Tone Wicker? They sound much better than the NYC or Russian IMO.If you don’t like either of those, you could always mod an NYC to Ram’s Head or Triangle specs pretty easily.
I like my 1979 BIG MUFF, it has more bottom-end, and the fuzz tone has more midrange grind or bite with articulation. You can actually hear the notes in bar chords. With the new Big Muffs the tone is a muffled roar, mushy slurry of notes, when you play chords plus the new ones are really, really, noisey. Vintage components is the only answer I can arrive at for the difference.
LesPaulCustom79MemberThe new Big Muffs may have a modern type of NPN transitor but they are not the same NPN or PNP transitors used in the old Big Muffs, I have examined them ad nauseum. Some other things such as types of wiring, resistors, quality of solder connections, etc…have changed which definitely make a difference.
To make my point, why do you think most everyone that uses a reissue Ibanez TS-9 or Maxon TS-808, has it modded to late 70’s, early 80’s specs by either aNaLoGMaN or Keeley? I have a 1981 Black Label (Japan) TS-9 and when the switch finally wore out and the opamp went bad, I had aNaLoGMaN, 808 mod it, when he replaced the switch, the Green LED, the JRC4558 chip, and it sounds 200% better. Why? because of better components and the NOS opamp.
LesPaulCustom79MemberFor the record I have a July 1979, according to the pot dates, NPN Transitor Big Muff Pi.
Compared to my vintage Big Muff, the new, current, Big Muffs sound like pure crap, with:
1. Absolutely No Bottom-end, 2. Sound raspy, thin, weak with no punch, 3. The high-end sounds shrill and piercing or however you want to describe it, 4. Overall they DO NOT have a pleasant smooth fuzz tone.DON’T FEED ME THAT CRAP THAT THE NEW BIG MUFFS ARE EVEN CLOSE TO THE 70’S VINTAGE BIG MUFFS!!!
I’ve A/B’d them to many times, especially the vintage “Ram’s Head” PNP transistor version and the “Pointed Knob” Red & Black graphic NPN transistor version against the new American & Russian garbage. The “Rams Head” versions have a distinct scooped mids tone which I don’t particularly care for but D. Gilmour seemed to use quite well.Don’t even get me started on the vintage Electric Mistress Deluxe with the T.I. SAD1024 Opamp, Gilmour used, against the new EH Electric Mistress Flangers.
If the new ones are the same then explain why Vintage 70’s Big Muffs and SAD1024 Opamps for Electric Mistress Deluxe Flangers sell for so much, when you can even find them? I’ll answer that, “IT’S BECAUSE THEY SOUND BETTER!!!” I have been trying to find a replacement SAD1024 Opamp for my Electric Mistress Deluxe for eight months now. Electro Harmonix refuses to stock vintage components and has abandoned all the EH vintage pedal users.
LesPaulCustom79MemberThe old PNP and NPN transistor based BIG MUFFS were it [versions: 1st Knobs in triangle shape, 2nd Ram’s Head black logo (mids scooped), 3rd Pointed knobs in a row, red & black graphics w/tone bypass switch on the front (tons of bottom-end and midrange grind)]. All of these have sustain that last longer than it takes you to shave, shit, shower, and shampoo. When you play chords they are thick as cream of wheat but you can actually hear the notes unlike most fuzz boxes today. Can David Gilmour (used Ram’s Head 2nd ver.) and Pete Townsend (Used 3rd ver.) be wrong?
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