Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (USA reissue)

[JHBASS]

Hello fellow four-stringers!
Just thought I'd give a quick review of the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (yes, it may be surprising, but it is the guitar version, and not a sovteck one either....just a standard USA big muff from 2008). Hoep this helps.

Price paid: £59 at Bonners

First Impressions: Lightwieght, iconic looking. Smart metalic finish. Feels pretty rugged and up to gigging!

Ease of Use: Very simple manual, which is nice for a change! The simple manual aslo copies across to the pedal, amazingly simple to use. You have a volume knob, to reduced volume changes when engaging the pedal, as well as boosting your volume to out of this world proportions, if needed! Next, is the tone knob. This can turn your bass from "standard fuzz" to an all out screaming top end. Finally, the sustain control ajdusts the amount of distortion and as the name suggests, sustatian. This allows you to keep those notes ringing and ringing and ringing. A standard stomp switch, and status LED completes "your part of the pi". Rating: 9.5

Sound: Ive put this pedal through both my Fender Rumble 15 and my Ashdown Blue 180 combo. Suprisinly, the bottom end does seem to stay in, so long as you dont push the "tone" knob past 3o'clock, which is what you would expect. I has the classic fuzz sound. My favourite setting is Tone and 9o'clock, and sustain at full whack. It sounds lovely with a enevelope filter after it in the chain, giving great and wierd sweeping sounds. With everything at full, its a screaming sound you get, which could work for some in your face lines. Ive made a quick video showing some of these settings. It can be found here:
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWybYd0RVA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWybYd0RVA[/url]
I feel it is an aquired taste, and Im yet to find a Bass Big Muff or Blogger to compare with it "instore". Rating: 7 (just becasue Im yet to know what the bass dedicated pedals are like.)

Reliability & Durability: Despite being light, the pedal feels incredibly rugged. The metal casing feels fit for purpose, and the jack sockets seem of good quailty as well, with know looseness leading to unwanted humming. The stomp switch feels nice and tight, and the control knobs are securely attatched. The battery compartment is on the underside, sucured by a single screw. May not be great for gig-changes, but an adaptor port (on the rear of the unit) is avalible. Rating: 8.5

Final Impressions: I play mostly self penned stuff with my band. There is the occasional need for some very dirty bass. This fills that gap neatly, and with an envelope filter on top allows some great sounds. Its one to try out, as I said, its probably not to anybodies taste, and I think I will have to try thr bass dedicated pedals before I can be sure that this is the sound Im after. But yes by all means give it a go....you'll never know what you may find!

Overall: 8


Hope this is helpful to some people,

Josh

Edited September 24, 2009 by JHBASS