Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi
Classic fuzz/distortion pedal
| Maker | Electro-Harmonix |
|---|---|
| Model | Big Muff Pi |
| Type | Fuzz/distortion |
Store
| Store | Price | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Thomann SE | 999 kr | 2026-09-20 |
Description
The fuzz on my pedalboard, super warm and thick. It's also physically huge, which makes it a pain to fit on the board.
This is a pedal I always heard people talking about. Besides the Dunlop Fuzz Face, this was probably the second most commented fuzz among everyone. Mine is a used one that came from Denmark.
The circuit is a different animal from the Fuzz Face. The Big Muff runs four silicon transistors in two cascading clipping stages with a passive tone stack, and it was built for sustain and a scooped midrange.
Impressions
I wasn't giving it much credit when I bought it, honestly. I thought it was just another fuzz pedal like any other, and I've never been a big fan of fuzz, because the distortion a fuzz makes is essentially an extreme overdrive, a very square wave, and it destroys the sound a lot and leaves it very weird.
But the Big Muff surprised me. It has a warm, velvety tone, and it's also a very nice tone to listen to. On top of that it has an absurd sustain and it's very easy to set up, so you can hear the differences in tone as you move the knobs around.
The bad part is actually two things. First, it's very big and it didn't need to be. I've opened it up to see if the board inside really was that size, and it's tiny, so I wouldn't need an enclosure this large. It takes a big amount of space on the pedalboard, and there are smaller versions of this pedal, so if I had one of those I could probably fit another pedal or two next to it. That's a pain.
Second, the input and the output are on the back instead of on the sides, so I have to run the cables all the way around to the back of the pedal to get the sound out. That kind of kills the chain, because every other pedal except the Klon has the input and the output on the sides. The wah doesn't either, but that one is more expected because it's a different kind of pedal. It doesn't get in the way that much anymore, I recently ended up building my own cables and it all worked out.
It's also very expensive. But of all the pedals on my pedalboard, this is probably the one I like the most.