Big Muff Collection

The Big Muff Pi (π), often known simply as the Big Muff, is a "fuzzbox" effects pedal produced in New York City by the Electro-Harmonix company, along with their Russian sister company Sovtek, primarily for use with the electric guitar. It is used by bassists as well due to the Big Muff's squeaky frequency response.

Back in 1969 I [Electro-Harmonix] was already selling the Muff Fuzz, which was a mild overdrive circuit in an LPB-1 box. I wanted to come out with a three knob distortion unit in a bigger box. I asked my buddy, Bell Labs designer, Bob Myer, to design a unit, one that would have a lot of sustain. When I got the prototype from Bob, I loved the long sustain. This was done by cascading the circuit into additional sections, each one clipped by twin diodes. However, when you clip, the tone can be a bit raspy. So, I spent a couple of days changing capacitors to roll off distortion in the highs, and eventually found that the best long sustaining tone that was a sweet violin-like sound was done by having three capacitors in different parts of the circuit rolling off the rasp. We plunged into production and I brought the very first units up to Henry, the boss at Manny's Music Store on 48th Street, NYC. About a week later, I stopped by Manny's to buy some cables, and Henry yelled out to me, 'Hey Mike, I sold one of those new Big Muffs to Jimi Hendrix.' [1]