This little £59 gizzmo can put several hundred pounds' worth of sound quality into a bass guitar's armoury. Sound has more attack, is more focused, crisp, and it vastly reduces problems of muddiness.

This site, however, could do with a little tweeking... it would be nice to have a search box where I could have put name of said item... I looked at the vast array of categories to click on and couldn't seem to find the right one.

Easy

Very good

The Big Muff Pi is a reissue fuzz box/sustainer made in Russia. Its a very different manifestation of the classic in appearance, in a sturdy black metal casing with chicken beak knobs, and comes with a cool wooden storage box. It has 1/4" input and outputs, which are annoyingly on the opposite sides from where you would expect them to be, like other effects boxes.

Dialing it in is pretty easy and self-explanatory with just a gain, tone, and volume knob. I never used the manual.

I have to admit, I don't understand what the fuss is all about with the Big Muff, or fuzz pedals in general. Its thin, hissy, buzzy, fuzzy. It is not thick, pleasing, or even musical sounding to my ears. I played with it for a while, using my Les Paul style guitar through a small tube combo, and found no usable sounds. I don't think theres anything wrong with mine, I just think the overall tone of it makes me cringe.

I will stick with my TS9 Tube Screamer for creamier sweet sustain, and other pedals for more heavy distortion. This Big Muff just does nothing for me.

The Micro POG is, as its name implies, a polyphonic octave generator. With the three knobs, you can control the mix between the dry signal, sub octave, and octave up. It includes an input, a wet output (effect out), and a dry output, along with a 9V connection, no battery clip. Electro-Harmonix includes a power adapter to get you going right out of the box.

The pedal is housed in a sturdy little enclosure, the same type as the Little Big Muff. It's a smaller version of the regular POG, which has more features and octave capabilities, but for the cheaper price, the Micro POG can do many similar sounds.

Easy as pie. Plug it in, dial in the amount of dry, sub, and octave up that you want, and hit the button. It doesn't get any easier, because the effect is so straight-forward.

Sounds great. I had a Digitech Whammy (the current version, not the original) which didn't track notes anywhere near as good as this does. It tracks really well. It has a sort of character to the sound, and it seems to work better after distortions rather than before, though I suppose it really depends on the sound you like best. If you place the POG after a distortion, the distortion itself is replicated over two octaves, so it gives a more distinct sound of 3 different notes. If you place it before the octaves, the sound kind of runs together. The octaves have sort of a digital sound to them; it doesn't sound bad at all, and I think it sounds pretty neat, but the octave up (for instance) isn't going to sound exactly like the guitar would if you simply played an octave higher. I think this sound quality is interesting and lends another dimension to the palate of sounds you can create with it.

I almost sounds like an organ when you add all three octaves together. And when palm muting, it almost sounds like a brief orchestra hit. I like the sound quite a bit.

According to Electro-Harmonix, the Little Big Muff is identical to the Big Muff, only smaller. It's a rather basic, but seemingly sturdy stomp box fuzz pedal. One input, one output, three knobs (volume, tone, and sustain), and a foot switch.

I chose this pedal primarily as a compromise between the Big Muff and the Nano Muff. The Big Muff is just too... big, and I honestly don't understand why the pedal has to have such a large housing. The Nano Muff only has a volume control, and I wanted to be able to tweak the sound. But I really feel that the Little Big Muff is no compromise at all, more like the best of both pedals, and it seems deceptively flexible.

Some people have complained that it adds too much low-end. While I do tend to keep the tone above 12 o'clock, I feel there is plenty of room for adjustment, and it might be more about the amp they are playing out of; my tube Peavey Classic 50 makes this pedal sound a bit less bassy than my digital Peavey KB-60 keyboard amp (but surprisingly enough, I feel that this pedal sounds good through both of them).

I was inspired to try an EHX Muff pedal when I heard some of the gritty fuzz tones coming from Jack White's guitar on the DVD "Under Blackpool Lights." It's extremely easy to get a very similar sound with this pedal and variations on it. Perhaps this pedal IS a bit more bassy than the regular Muff, but someone searching for Jack's sound is probably better off with this one, because I feel some of his low end is probably coming from that hollow-body Res-o-Glass Airline guitar, as they tend to "growl" quite a bit. But most people don't have an Airline.

Anyway, to me this pedal sounds "full," so I'm not complaining at all about any perceived amount of low-end. It's got a sound that I like a lot.

There's no real manual to speak of. The instructions that come with it give a basic overview, and the gist here is that if you plug in an AC adapter, it must be outer-ring positive (like most pedals). EHX didn't supply an adapter with it, but they did include a battery. I've got mine plugged into a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus.

It's simple to use by just adjusting the three knobs. The volume, tone, and sustain all seem to have the ability to affect the sound, which is a good thing, because it gives the pedal quite a bit of versatility. I just love the sound I get from it, and it's hard to come up with a combination of settings that doesn't sound good. It does seem to get a bit too bottom-heavy with the tone control set low, but if you like fuzz, it'll be easy to get a satisfying sound out of this pedal.

In my opinion, it's a perfect combination of simplicity and versatility. Very easy to use.

"Sound quality" is an interesting metric for a fuzz pedal. As I said before, I love the sounds from this pedal. It trashes up the signal very nicely, though inevitably there will be people who do not like it for one reason or another. I was actually a bit shocked by how much I liked the pedal. It sounds a lot fuller than the overdrive box I have. I thought maybe the pedal would be redundant seeing as how I had two other fuzz pedals as well. But this pedal seems to have its own character, and a significantly different fuzz sound than the two Effector 13 pedals.

I play a Switch Wild One (single bridge humbucker with coil tap), an Eastwood Corona (SG clone, with excellent Eastwood humbuckers), and a modified Squier Strat through this and the rest of my pedals, and each guitar has some subtle differences that can be heard. It sounds good with all of them. It even cleans up a bit if you put an overdrive after it, but I'm not really liking much of the sounds I'm getting from my overdrive. A Boss DS-1 would probably be more to my taste than the AMT Du Hast pedal that I have now. But that's not the Muff's fault.

My favorite guitar, as far as sound from the Muff is concerned, is the Eastwood Corona, and it sounds so good that I often leave the other pedals turned off. However, a new addition to my pedals is a BBE Sonic Maximizer, and this makes the Muff sound even fuller. You can almost sort of adjust the tone of the Muff even further with this pedal. So while I liked the sound of the Muff by itself, I tend to leave the BBE on at all times.

***WARNING: THE FOLLOWING (RATED G, FOR GENERAL AUDIENCE) REVIEW APPLIES FOR THE BLACK RUSSIAN-MADE ELECTRO HARMONIX BIG MUFF (THAT ON THE PICTURE ABOVE), NOT THE EARLIER (USUALLY MORE EXPENSIVE) TANK-GREEN MODEL WHICH MAY SOUND DIFFERENT***

This analog stompbox is something in-between a distortion and a fuzz. The controls are Volume, Tone and Sustain (which also controls the amount of distortion). No D.C. in, and the input and output jacks are reversed compared with ALL other pedals that I've ever seen or owned... Please note that although some units (like mine) were provided with a true-bypass switch, not all were... This model is no longer produced, replaced by the U.S. Big Muff which is said to sound a bit cleaner.

Well, three mere knobs... could be worse, couldn't it?

It took me some time to get used to this very dark, grainy, almost experimental kind of sounds. I rarely use it alone, most of the time I have it follow a cheap overdrive which gives the Big Muff the mid frequencies that it lacks, and the whole provides for one HUGE distorsion sound...

The way the tone knob shapes the sound is a bit surprising as you get in no time from an almost total lack of treble to a shrieking sound. This pedal is rather versatile as it goes easily from punk to vintage rock to a growling metal sound (needless to say that in the latter case you definitely shouldn't expect a sharp-edged sound -- hey, that's a FUZZ).

The Small Clone is a monaural analog chorus pedal with only one knob and one (two-position) switch. Seems rather sturdy, although the (non-true bypass) switch on mine is kind of messed up (it is almost detached from the metal case, still works though). Uses 9V battery or can be plugged using an adequate 3.5 jack AC adapter.

I bought it used so there was no manual provided with it. The pdf available on Electro-Harmonix's website seems pretty useless though, unless you've never seen a stompbox in your whole life and/or don't trust your ears to set up that kind of basic pedals.

Used with a Fender Fat Strat through a SansAmp GT-2 with the Small Clone in between (although most people use it in their amp's effect loop that is after the preamp). In both clean and distorted sounds, this pedal brings both warmth (a REAL LOT of) and clarity to any clean sound, while it will smoothen the harshest distortion. I love the way it sounds, very reminiscent of Nirvana's Nevermind (remember the vintage Small Clone was one of Cobain's favorites before he turned to the Polychorus). With the depth switch drawn in the upper position, the chorus sound is noticeably detuned, which may remind of some 80s-90s experimental rock bands such as Sonic Youth -- thus not very easy to use in most context... With extreme settings of the "rate" knob the effect is a little more on the Leslie side. Contrarily to what I've read here and there I haven't noticed a drop in volume when this pedal is active -- maybe it's different in an effect loop?