Hi everybody.  My Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker came today after @5 days wait.  Man was it worth it!  I’ve been playing 4-5 hours here at home with it today.  I haven’t been this excited since I got my new amp 6 months ago.

Allow me to introduce my limited knowledge of guitar pedals.  In 1989 I bought my first pedal.  It was an Ibanez Tube Screamer to go with my 1972 Fender Twin.  The Twin was cool and all, it just was too much power.  I had to really wake the neighbors to get that cranked tube distortion sound.  The Tube Screamer allowed me to get a resemblance of that saturation at a much lower volume level.  I remember nailing the Mark Knopfler sound in money for nothing.

Life happened and my music took a back seat.  Fast forward 21 years and my first good gear since then.  I have an all tube, all pine custom cab based on the late 50’s Fender Princeton from Li’l Dawg amps.  Props go out to Jim Nickleson at Li’l Dawg Amps for my Li’l Dawg Prince and Peter Mather at The Mather Amp Cabinet Company.  I use a 12 inch Weber Alnico speaker from Ted Weber Speakers and a 2008 Fender American Standard Strat.

I used the amp and guitar for months without effects.  The sound of the 12 watt amp cranked is nothing short of awesome.  Unfortunately it’s too loud for the house.  So I bought a Boss SD-1 Overdrive pedal.  Yuck.  Sucked my town, colored my guitar and just didn’t do it for me unless the amp was cranked.  At that point, the amp smoothed out and sounded really creamy.  Okay, not what I need for the house.  Maybe on a gig it’d be cool.

Next stop, return the overdrive pedal (I’m kinda poor) and get a delay to soften the amp and give it some sparkle since it doesn’t have reverb.  Enter the MXR Carbon Copy.  Nice.  Quiet.  True Bypass.  I like it.  Now, to do something about low volume breakup.  Enter the Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker. 

Just what I envisioned my sound like.  The Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker is everything the YouTube vids make it out to be and more. 

My favorite settings so far:
Volume: 1 O’clock
Tone: 1 O’Clock
Sustain: all the way counter-clockwise
-Tone on
-Wicker on

The volume is set to balance with my amp’s volume at low level.  The sustain is set so I’m clean at 7 on my guitar.  Anything higher and it starts to break-up.  10 is just perfect fuzz at bedroom levels.

Anyhow.  I just dig this pedal.  Thanks for listening.  I’ll try and get some sound demos on here as well.  Rock on EHX Community!

-Kirk

So here’s my setup.

-Kirk

Yeah, I got my Big Muff Pi w/ Tone Wicker not too long ago myself… This thing is perfect for grunge! Heck, it’s perfect for just about any style that demands some nice dirty fuzz!

The TW Muff is my favorite EHX pedal.

I use it a lot for lead and heavy riffing. My band plays lots of covers, Cherub Rock (Smashing Pumpkins), Sex On Fire (Kings of Leon) and Dakota (Stereophonics) are just a few songs that benefit from a bit of tone wickin’.

cabomano - 11 January 2010 03:32 AM

The TW Muff is my favorite EHX pedal.

Mine too, but the only other EHX pedal I have is the Memory Boy.

I find that I use the BMP w/TW far more often than I thought.  Sustain at 0, Tone On, Wicker On, Tone at noon is my stock sound lately (playing through a newer Peavey Bandit 112 Clean Channel set to Warm).

Love it.

Getting some OT due to travel for work this month, trying to figure out what EHX pedal will be sitting at home waiting for me (once I hug the wife and kids).
[Edit: It will be a full-size Small Clone.]

[[And depending how much more I drink tonight, perhaps a Cathedral and a SMMH too.]]