Your Favorite Muff?

[chromesphere]

Oh yeah, with a subject title like that im sure this threads going to be derailed with innuendo in no time

I just finished building pickdroppers compact big muff, (which is an oxymoron lol), last night.  Search for his mini muffin boards if your interested in that. Good board by the way if your looking for some compact and quite flexible.  I say flexible because (in case you havent seen it) you can populate it with different values to get different versions of the muff.

I'm no muff expert (<- here we go again with the muff jokes) but my mate brought around he's violet rams head a while ago and we compared it to my tonepad 'stock' muff.  They sounded TOTALLY different, his having more of a mid scoop.  I built the violet rams head on the pickdroppers PCB, and it reminded me of my mates muff.  mid scooped and quite gritty.

Now my curosity has been sparked.  There is a world of muff out there (  ) that i didnt know about.

Whats your favourite muff?  Extra points for those that respond in the usual most crass muff thread manner possible ;-)

Paul

[icecycle66]

What?! I would have never guessed you didn't know about Muff!

My favorite is the Green Muff.  I like my tone to be thick and muddy and cruncherific.
The green muff gives me that.  Even if I bump the tone knob over to the treble side a little bit it still holds a darker grind sound than the Ram's Head. 

[pryde]

Oh man I loves me some muff 

OK that's over, now I still search for the perfect muff variant but I still have a decent love affair with my most recent build, the Pharoah (Black arts toneworks). Cortexurizer introduced his build on here and I really dug it.

That being said, my search is ongoing because I know there is a better muff out there for me. I will be following this post.

[ch1naski]

I've only built /played thru one muff. So I'm biased. The Pharaoh.

Super heavy meaty dark loud doom fuzz.
And that's on it's lighter settings.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[chromesphere]

Another vote for the pharoah!?  Hmm might have to check that one out.

I would definitely say that my tonepad muff is better suited for darker, smashing pumpkins (wall of fuzz, thick...you get the idea) sort of fuzz.

This violet rams head is more gritty and scooped (as i said above).

They really are chalk and cheese!

Paul

[haveyouseenhim]

I just finished the THCustoms 1590A mini muff pi, and it sounds really great.

I've always said a muff that small should be illegal.  

I'm going to hell

[midwayfair]

I breadboarded all the classic ones and in the end the one I decoded to build and boz up was the green Russian.

A big part of the difference between various muffs is the tone stack values and what they do to that final transistor (which is easily overdriven). Since the tone stack comes last, it is still able to have a big effect on what you hear, as opposed to tone shaping that happens early, which is mostly obliterated by gain.

The other major thing is biasing. It's worth noting that some versions have much lower gain transistors than off-the-wall stock NYC muffs. Lower gain transistors here get grittier and change the balance between diode soft clipping and transistor distortion.

It is really neat though just how different small changes make in a circuit with so many components. You could easily spend a year making different variations.

Edit: something something dirty comment something.

[jimilee]

Im all a out the green Russian muff for sure. Sounds awesome on bass.

[Haberdasher]

mayo.
i wouldn't mind building a pharoah and p-19 though.  sounds like i need to check out a green russian too.  dang.

[alanp]

Of the ones I've heard so far, the Skreddy ?Lady (my copy built to Juansolo's specs) is head-and-shoulders above the rest. Awesome, awesome little box.

[jkokura]

Op Amp is great. I haven't built many of the transistor units, but the sounds I hear or have heard of the other ones are pretty great, but the Op Amp is different in a good way.

Some don't like it, compared to the transistor units, but I do.

Jacob

[chromesphere]

Edit: something something dirty comment something.

Jon i think you won

Funny you say that about the gain of the transistors, i used 2n5088's which i would have thought are pretty high gain, but this thing sounds very gritty. 

Hey would darlingtons work in a big muff?  lol

Paul

[hammerheadmusicman]

I built a vintage spec Green Russian for a bass player friend of mine, and i have to say, i really didn't want to part with it when it was done, sounded awesome! Even though i'm not usually a fuzz kinda guy, but that thing ruled!

I'm having a run of my own 1590A MiniBigMuff Boards done, when i am able to build again, i will try and build several of the variants on Juansolo's muff chart (man, that sentence ended strangely!). I'm really interested to see how they all sound. As i've only heard a few.

George

[ThePastRecedes]

I'm going to say rams head! I would modify the tone stack no matter what muff you have. I love the sound of a mid scoop when I'm playing in the living room but in a band context I like to have a flat/humped mids. I defiantly recommend the amz presence knob!

[Jean-Rock]

Actually, I'm not the big fan of the Muffs.....except for the one tuned by GGG....it's like half way between the big muff Pi and a Tonebender......meaning more definition when I play chords with extension notes.

Here's the project : https://www.generalguitargadgets.com/projects/17-distortion/108-big-muff-pi

Enjoye !!