Wednesday 14 March 2012

Big Muff clone completed

I've finished my clone of the well-known Big Muff distortion pedal. I painted it with some grey primer and then with a design of Cardiff Bay as I have a vague notion of making myself a range of Cardiff-themed effect pedals. Total cost in parts was around £16-17 and a lot of that is because I bought the extortionately expensive switch from Maplin instead of pretty much anywhere else.

It sounds quite a lot like the original as far as I can tell. It is REALLY LOUD, and is unfortunately not very useful for playing in our apartment as I get the feeling I must be annoying the hell out of the neighbours, even at low volumes.

Next up will be a Small Clone clone. A clone2 I guess. It's a chorus pedal that was used by Kurt Cobain on Nevermind apparently. I've ordered up the parts from far-flung ebay sellers across East Asia, so they'll take at least a couple of weeks to get here, which gives me plenty of time to change my mind and start and abandon another several projects.

2 comments:

  1. Nice work, Peter. I've got an actual E-Harmonix Big Muff Pi (the Russian one) and Small Clone, so I'll be interested in your results. Small Clone is indeed Kurt Cobain's chorus of choice - it's the one you hear on "Come As You Are". He also apparently augmented his usual Boss DS-1 distortion with a Big Muff for "Lithium".

    Billy Corgan (who I recall you being a big fan of back at school) was a big fan of the Big Muff back in the day, but it was a pretty popular pedal in the 90s generally.

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  2. Hey! Sorry I didn't see your comment - Blogger wasn't sending me notifications.

    Yeah, the main reason I made a Big Muff was because of the Pumpkins connection. I'd build a Mutron Biphase too if I had the time/skill/money.

    Thanks for dropping by - will definitely let you know how the Small Clone goes.

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