After my 28 strong Compact Tone Bender roundup it was inevitable that I would do the same sort of thing with Big Muffs. My understanding and experience has of course improved immensely since I last did a proper Big Muff overview, and here like I did with the Tone Benders, I try to select a representative selection by each of the different main varieties of Muff - as indicated by icons in my above visual.

Even though Kit Rae’s Big Muff Page identifies 12 specific versions of Big Muff - each ...

Last time I did a Tone Bender overview I limited the selection to 12, and as much by chance as anything else I still managed to get a pretty decent roundup of most of the main Tone Bender varieties although not quite all as featured here. In the world of fuzz though only the Big Muff can compete with the convoluted and complex nature of the Tone Bender Family Tree - which I will endeavour to distil first, and then extrapolate into my own favourite / preferred pedals!

It all starts with the ...

When I do my category roundups and reviews, my remits are always to be as broad as possible within the set criteria, and I typically include one or two older and discontinued models alongside the usual suspects and new releases. It is always with some degree of sadness that I witness pedal builders going out of business for one reason or another. This industry seems to have a fairly high burnout rate and with competition getting ever fiercer, it is unfortunately understandable that some ...

They are a key functional element to all pedals - in terms of working practicalities, look and tactile feel - and there are hundreds, if not thousands of possible varieties and variants, yet certain types of Knobs tend to dominate. Ever since we’ve had electrical devices - well over 100 years now, we have had a variety of control knobs and dials - initially metal, then bakelite, and now mostly modern plastics, hardened rubber and aluminium.

In doing this feature/guide I referenced 5 sites ...

Before this current fuzz tone quest, I was not that familiar with the Tonebender style of fuzz and its 5 different iterations - MKI, MK1.5, MKII, MKIII and MKIV - much like the Fulltone OCD - each version sounding different to the other. This is a rather raw sounding fuzz - which I really like, at it’s most aggressive in the MK1 version and then sort of evolved and smoothed out somewhat as it progresses in later versions. I recall seeing these large wedge-shaped pedals in guitar stores - ...

I’m fairly familiar with Big Muffs Fuzzes, seeing as my main Fuzz pedal for a while was the JHS Muffuletta - which carries no less than 5 of the vintage Muff flavours in one pedal, and adds its own higher gain voicing - a pedal which is an absolute must for Muff fans. I have also latterly been playing around with the superb Foxpedal Defector - which takes a fairly novel approach at the Muff Sound - with a core default sound based on the Russian Muff obviously - and with additional Silicon...

I’ve already covered off most of the major reverbs in my 12 Reverb Workstations post, as well as some of the more unusual ones in the one on Ambient Delay + Reverb Pedals; I will also be doing a separate post on Spring Reverbs. This article covers the more spacey sci-fi style reverbs - which give you a taste of that otherworldly dimension of deep outer-space.

These are all about modulation really, and how they manipulate, move and make those frequencies dance, shimmer and sparkle...