Big Muff's

[ritchieiommi]

Hi, im new here and I had a question about big muff pedals.
I noticed the russian one is alot cheaper than the american one but whats the actual difference between the two?

[GearJunkie]

Originally Posted by ritchieiommi

Hi, im new here and I had a question about big muff pedals.
I noticed the russian one is alot cheaper than the american one but whats the actual difference between the two?

sound quality. the russian one is a much thinner sound. it doesn't have that big "WHOOMF" sound that you'd expect from a US big muff. I had a russian one for ages and never could really like the sound. Then, I borrowed a US one from a friend of mine and it was like night and day.

The Russian one's a very transparent pedal. Bass players usually prefer this one for the sole fact that it lets the sound of their amp blend with the tone of the pedal.

For the quintessential, late-90's enormous guitar tone, I'd go with the US one. You wont be disappointed.

[robotnerd]

tone is totally subjective. that being said... i totally disagree with gear junkie.

all the usa muffs i've used are cleaner(by a hair), slightly more transparent, and less saturated than the russian big muff pi's. the US ones are the ones that all the bassist's I'VE seen like to use. the russian ones drop a lot of the low end of the original signal because it's fuzz is built so much on the upper end harmonics, when you use it to distort bass, it just disappears in the mix, a live mix especially. the us ones are a big smoother however, the russian ones will get a little buzzsawy sometimes. and if you crank either of them, it will feel like your ribcage is gonna cave in.

so i have just had totally different experiences than gearjunkie. as with any pedal, do your best to try one out, see which one you like, then buy.

[GearJunkie]

keep in mind, this also depends on the "russian" version you're talking about.

The black version which is on the market was the one I was referring to. The olive green boxes from the mid to late 90s were totally different.

I've got a US big muff on my bass pedalboard right now and love it.

[dagosto]

I smell a battle of the Muffs a brewin'. . .

that sounds a lot more akward than I had hoped.

I have one of the green russion ones myself. Never really got into it.

[ritchieiommi]

Well I'm looking for a fuzz tone like on the Vincebus Eruptum album by Blue Cheer, any suggestions what pedal to get?

[robotnerd]

Originally Posted by GearJunkie

The black version which is on the market was the one I was referring to. The olive green boxes from the mid to late 90s were totally different.

I've got a US big muff on my bass pedalboard right now and love it.

yeah, i've got the black russian one, i'd love to try out a green one though. i used to have it on my board when i had 15 pedals, but i scaled back and have actually really gotten into using more mid-level overdrives for powerful tones. with a great class A amp, and some really great sensitive pedals, you can get pretty heavily distorted without a pedal like the big muff. that's part of my problem with big muff's, they're not very sensitive, they're just really fuzzy, there's no real intensity contained in the tone. it doesn't really respond to playing dynamics.

[ritchieiommi]

Hehe Black Russian, anybody who likes Black Adder should be laughing rather hard by now :P