Please help me mod my Big Muff.

[bobbysatya]

Hello, everyone. I built my big muff few months ago only to find it's too woolly and flubby to be useful in most situations. I have tried to tighten it up by boosting it with a rangemaster clone but to no avail, it was still too woolly with barely noticeable less low end. I want my muff to sound tighter, more focused, less woolly, less flubby, less fuzzy/more into distortion territory. Yes, I completely aware that it might not sound like a Muff anymore but I hate to see it laying around in the corner of my bedroom being unused. So my question is, what mod should I perform to achieve my aforementioned goals? Oh, and by the way, I used tonepad's layout with the triangle spec. Thanks in advance.

[digi2t]

Food for thought....
The BMP is just a piece of the puzzle.

What kind of pickups are you using?

What kind amp/speakers?

Is there any other effect(s) in the chain before/after?

The reason why I ask;
I bought a Civil War Muff a while back, and when I plugged it into any of my amps (all solid states at the time) it sounded meh. I went through the same schlep of adding this, and EQ'ing that to get to sound good to my ears, but to no avail. I was really disappointed, major case of buyers remorse at the time (it wasn't effin' cheap!!). It sat in the closet until I got my first tube amp, a Traynor YBA-3. I decided to give it another try with the YBA, and guess what... it sounds absolutely massive, and I don`t mean from a volume stand point either. That pedal, and that amp were just meant to go together. Nothing else in the chain. Guitar, BMP, YBA, tonal erection. Guess what, my 6L6 amps love it too!

There are a ton of Muff mods to be found on the net, but at the end of the day, all those mods were born of one quest... each persons quest for tonal Nirvana. At the end of the day, your ears will be a much better judge of what`s "right". Who knows... maybe after all the dust settles, you might find that a BMP wasn't really what you needed after all.

[bobbysatya]

I plugged my Les Paul copy straight into the muff to three other true bypass pedals into a tiny Yamaha practice amp on the clean channel and the muff is at unity gain. You might suspect that my yamaha (being small solid state practice amp) is the culprit but I doubt it as I built many other distortion pedals and the amp handles them really well, in some cases even better than smaller wattage tube amps. Back to the pedal, not too long ago I built a clone of Devi Ever Hyperion and it kicked the muff outta my board at once. Just as the marketing crap says it is pretty much the muff killer. It has much more prominent mid-range and tighter tone. A lot more useful! However it couldn't completely replace the muff as the two sound very different. The Hyperion sounds too modern and aggressive in my opinion. It lacks the smooth, sustainy quality of the muff.

[Mark Hammer]

You go here, and follow the information.
http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_guts.html#Circuit

[edy_wheazel]

 My advice is to breadboard the circuit, it's much easyer to test and test until you get the tone you like. You might end up with a heavily modified circuit with more knobs then the original.
For starters follow Mark Hammer's link. The Big Muff is a very versityle circuit, so:
- decrease C10
- decrease C4
- you can change the tone circuit with a Baxandall, it's more versatyle. To compensate replace R4 with a trimpot, also it's a good ideea to use a high Beta transistor like MPSA18 for T4.
- play with the clipping stages.

Voila! You have your pedal. Mine started with a Paharaoh. Excuse my guitar skills, I'm not a guitar player.

[digi2t]

Another great tool for figuring out what kind of tone section mods you would prefer is the Duncan Tone Stack calculator;

http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/download.html

The AMZ mid scoop control is de rigeur on all my BMP builds.

http://www.muzique.com/lab/tone3.htm

Playing with the cap values in the clipping areas (C6, C7, C11, C12) can really bring a flat sounding muff to life as well. As mentioned, it's a circuit to be played with to find your tone. Breadboard all the way. 

[bobbysatya]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, but I think the tone that I after has more to do with pre-clipping equalization rather than post, therefore fiddling with the tone stack might not be that much of a help. I'll start messing around with the caps that are in series with the clipping diodes (C6, C7), but I confused. Some people on the net says that decreasing the value will make the diodes clip only the higher frequencies which will tighten up the tone, but some others also said that doing so results in letting more bass into the next stage which will make the tone woollier. Their values are currently 47nF. Should I decrease the value down to 22nF or increase it to 100nF? What do you think?

[digi2t]

Their values are currently 47nF. Should I decrease the value down to 22nF or increase it to 100nF? What do you think?

Yes.


Seriously, try different values and let your ears be the judge. Reducing C4, C5, and C13 values might help make it a bit crunchier as well. I tend to lean towards 0.1 or 0.15uF here.

[antonis]

I plugged my Les Paul copy straight into the muff to three other true bypass pedals into a tiny Yamaha practice amp on the clean channel and the muff is at unity gain.

Maybe you should check R19 and/or R12 (limiting resistors between stages) if you already are OK with R6/R4 (final gain ratio..)

[Scruffie]

Mod it in to an OpAmp Big Muff

[bobbysatya]

I made a couple of mods today and I'd like to share what I just found out. The first mod is sticking a small treble bleed between lug 2 and 3 of the sustain pot, this works really well in keeping the tone from getting muddy as well as making the thing a bit crunchy at lower gain settings. The second one is changing the value of two clipping capacitors. At first I wasn't so sure about either making them bigger or smaller. I tried the smaller ones first down to 0.01uF in order to get the real idea of what would happen. The result was exactly the opposite of what I wanted ; massive load of bass coming out from the circuit. 0.1 there and things got a lot better
Now it sounds more like a Ram's Head which I prefer. It'll definitely earn it's place back in my pedalboard. Thanks for all your thought and share guys.