July 12, 2008

Electro-Harmonix - Bass Big Muff Pi - Review

Stashed under: Reviews - Fuzz — grygrx @ 5:37 pm

  1. Overview
  2. Initial thoughts
  3. Video Overview
  4. Samples
  5. Picture Gallery
  6. Construction and cosmetic concerns
  7. Conclusion
  8. View All


EHX - Bass Big Muff Innards

Construction and cosmetic concerns:

The “shake test” presents dead silence, as this pedal is packed in extremely well, feels solid, and has a thick in metal enclosure in the (now standard) EHX XO line packaging. Jacks and switch are direct mounted to the printed circuit board. This all looks very tight, professional, and manufactured (which of course it is). I’ve not heard of anyone having problems with these XO pedals, but I always find direct mounted jacks a little frightening (perhaps because I’ve had bad luck with other pedals using this style in the past). There is no clip for the battery, but it is well sandwiched in the case between the true bypass switch and a couple of pieces of foam. EHX was nice enough to include a battery, which always makes me happy.

Side layout of jacks with a top power connector is my preferred configuration, so nothing for me to bitch about there.

<repeating rant> Battery access is the standard (dumb) 4 screw system.</repeating>

Power is disengaged when there is a battery present and a guitar cable is not inserted in the in jack. If you are using a power supply the pedal will power up even if the guitar cable is no present.

The bare metal enclosure is a little austere for my liking, but it gets the job done. The image on the front looks like a sticker at first glance, but scrapping at it with my thumb nail a little leads me to believe that it is actually painted on (either that or it’s the best sticker ever). Labeling the one port ‘Dry Out’ and the low position on the toggle switch ‘Dry’ was not the best decision either, because it makes on assume that the two are in some way linked (which in fact they are not).

10 Comments »

  1. Thanks for the review

    Comment by Maibanez — July 14, 2008 @ 4:56 am

  2. I’m wondering if maybe some of the features you found were missing here might be found in the EHX Bass Blogger?

    I think it would be interesting to hear them in tandem. After seeing this site, I no longer have a problem with having more than one fuzz box!

    Comment by Captain_Arrrg — July 17, 2008 @ 12:09 pm

  3. Yo!
    awsome review man! im am now looking for buying this pedal.
    but as i said in youtube, i dont understand what is the use of the dry output…
    Where should i plug in if my config would be like this:
    Bass > Muff > tech 21 vt bass (ampeg emulation) > power amp
    i mean, wich one of those outputs should i use?

    Swe

    Comment by Nils — July 22, 2008 @ 4:14 pm

  4. The dry output is CLEAN (no fuzz). Only use it if you have a reason to, otherwise pretend it doesn’t exist.

    Comment by grygrx — July 22, 2008 @ 5:52 pm

  5. I was wondering how this pedal would compare to the standard Muff Pi combined with the Knock Out (with the Knock Out used to boost low freq.)

    Comment by Hank — August 29, 2008 @ 12:10 am

  6. I’ve not used the knockout, but it’s it an attack equalizer rather than an eq?

    Either way, not sure it would work… the same way EQ pedals don’t really work in this scenario.

    Muff - > EQ = Muff kills lows, eq tries to boost non-existent lows
    EQ - > Muff = EQ Boosts lows, Muff kills them.

    Comment by grygrx — August 29, 2008 @ 10:12 am

  7. I have had some 2 months and is a great pedal, it not big fuzz or gain as the others but it has a lot of low end (not like the other), it was just what I was looking for …. I read somewhere that the bassist Muse uses two AMP , one clean and one Muffed, you can do the same with this pedal in the dry mode the difference is you can do that with a single AMP … I have mixed with everything I have been crossed on my way in this mode (Delay, BassBalls, octave, overdrive, phaser chorus) and sounds great whit all…
    alone is not worth it
    but whit something else it’s great
    I have all the others muffs it’s not the best but work better whit bass

    Comment by Maibanez — September 25, 2008 @ 1:14 pm

  8. I agree that the Dry setting works really well; one thing I did find (opposite to some comments and the review), is that the volume does seem to effect the prominence of the Muff sound. Unless you are looking for serious gain and buzz-saw break-up, I think this pedal does a great job in Dry mode when you need some clarity or the detail of what you’re playing matters. I’m impressed with this pedal in Normal mode too, btw. Another thing, sustain and break-up are a lot different with almost all fuzz, overdrive, and bass distortion pedals depending on if you’re using a tube amp (or amp with a full tube pre-amp section) vs. a solid state amp. Gain and break-up, etc. (from a pedal) tends to come off “bad” with solid state and dynamic, organic, and “awesome” with tubes. All respect to solid state amp players!

    Comment by mathrockspazz — October 19, 2008 @ 3:05 pm

  9. I was just wondering how this works with active pickups. I have a schecter with emg’s and i was thinking about getting this. If this one doest work to well with active pickups do you have some advice on one that does possibly in the same price range?

    Comment by CJ — November 1, 2008 @ 2:31 pm

  10. I had no problems at all with my active J.

    Comment by grygrx — November 1, 2008 @ 2:36 pm

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