ELECTRO-HARMONIX BIG MUFF NANO FUZZ

RRP: $209

Type: Fuzz

Bypass: True PROS

• Unmistakable sound

• Relatively affordable

CONS

• Doesn’t do low-gain well

• Scoops the guitar mids

Memorably described to us by one guitarist as a ‘hoover’, the Big Muff has been modded, cloned, reissued, rebuilt, and redesigned more than almost any other pedal in existence. With a distinctive ‘scoop’ in the guitar mids, the Muff can mean that you get lost in a band mix – it’s like the anti-Tube Screamer in terms of EQ profile – but when it works, there’s little else that has the same visceral impact.

Very broadly speaking, there’s about five main versions – although, in total there are over thirty versions by our count, with passionate fans of each – and it’s on these that the current crop of EHX Big Muffs are based.

The most common is the NYC Muff, which is available as the Nano Big

Muff, while there’s also several others; the Ram’s Head, Triangle, Op Amp, and Russian. We could go on about them for days, but the lowdown is this – the Russian is more ‘woolly’, think Sonic

Youth’s “100%”; the Op Amp is more compressed, and the version that The Smashing Pumpkins used on their classic Siamese Dream LP; the Ram’s Head is closer to a Dinosaur Jr., type tone; the Triangle is more old-school, a bit smoother and more articulate than the NYC to our ear.