What ought to be the final word on Big Muffs

[Mark Hammer]

I have said on too many an occasion, that people draw inferences about different issues of the Big Muff Pi that are perhaps unwarranted unless they are based on many different copies of the same issue pedal.  Here is what Mike Matthews has to say about the matter in the current issue of Premier Guitar, and although the questions seem to revolve around pots, the response is really not limited to pots.  The indicated emphasis is mine, not his.

Q:  So by using tighter tolerances and specific design choices you can keep the variances to a minimum.
Even with all that, in something like a Big Muff, there are some variances from unit to unit. One thing we don't have control over are the pots themselves. The pots tend to have huge tolerances, like plus or minus ten percent. It's very difficult to get a tighter tolerance on a pot, so if the pot itself is in the middle of a tone circuit, then it's going to cause differences from unit to unit.

Q: Is it just the quality of pots that are available now?
It's always been the case. I've never done this, but if you were to take five Big Muffs from the same production line from 1973 and listen to all five, you would probably hear something different out of every one.

[skiraly017]

It should be the final world...but it won't.