Question: what do David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and Jack White (the White Stripes, The Raconteurs) have in common?
The Big Muff Pi
Answer: they are all avid users of the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff pedal and a lot of their recordings would not have been the same without the raunchy, dirty, gritty, fat tone of “the muff”. I will demonstrate in two videos the tone of the Big Muff but first, let’s go briefly over the troubled history of this famous distortion pedal.
Short history
The Big Muff originated in the 70s. It is often called a “fuzz” but I rather think it is a distortion pedal as it is quite a departure from the fuzz pedals of the time. Two versions came out in the 70s: the “triangle” Big Muff (triangle because of the shape formed by the knobs) and the “Ram’s head” Big Muff (because there is a little picture of a ram on it).
The maker of the Big Muff, Electro-Harmonix, went bust in 1983. Mike Matthews, its founder, went on to build Big Muff pedals under the Sovtek brand starting in the early 90s (on a side note, Sovtek had a killer line of amps at the time). Electro-Harmonix were “rebooted” later on in the US and they are now very much alive. Their current range of pedals is huge. If you are looking for a brand new Big Muff, you will have to go for the current Big Muff Pi or maybe the little Big Muff which has a smaller casing: those are closest to the “muff tone”. A lot of other pedals currently made by Electro-Harmonix have “Muff” in their names, like the Metal Muff, but they sound quite different from “THE” Big Muff.
The connoisseurs think that the current range of Big Muff is quite inferior sounding to the 70s gear and even to the Sovtek Models. This explains why a number of clones exist like the Ron Sound Hairpie, clone of the US 70s stuff or the Absolutely Analog Green Russian, clone of the Sovtek models. As to the BYOC Beaver, it is a highly regarded kit for you to build your own 70s US Big Muff clone (good luck to get it outside of the US).
If you would like a much more detailed history of the muff, check out this post on Gilmourish. It also tells you which Big Muff version David Gilmour used on the different Pink Floyd albums and tours. You can also visit this awesome site for more details and schematics.
How to get that Big Muff Tone
First of all, let me tell you that the Big Muff is an animal that is difficult to tame. You might try it and think that it sounds really harsh. Know that you really have to use the right amp and will have to play quite loud: don’t think you will get a big smooth tone out of a Big Muff at low volume, especially if you use it on its own.
Used with Humbuckers, the tone goes into “big indie riffage” territory. For this video, I use only the Big Muff with my SG and my little 5W all tube Fender Champ miked with a Shure SM-57 (some reverb was added afterwards in Cubase). The settings on the muff were VOLUME at 10 o’clock, TONE at 10 o’clock and SUSTAIN at 11 o’clock.
The good thing about the Big Muff is that it plays quite well with other pedals. For instance, a compressor placed before will really smooth out the tone whereas an overdrive placed after can remove the relative harshness of the tone, especially at low volume. Use single coil pickups and add a delay to the mix and you might reach the lead tone nirvana, Gilmour style. Here is a video made with a Stratocaster showing the muff interacting with an overdrive or a compressor:
In case you are wondering, the Big Muff I use is a standard current US Big Muff Pi model, no fancy clone or vintage model. As to the Stratocaster, it is a Custom Shop American Classics Stratocaster with Kinman AVn Blues Pickups.
The Settings were as follows:
1974 Fender Silverface Champ (BASS on 10, Treble on 2.5, Volume on 3).
Big Muff settings: VOLUME at 10 o’clock, TONE at 10 o’clock and SUSTAIN at 11 o’clock
BB Preamp Settings: GAIN at 8 o’clock, VOLUME at 1 o’clock, TREBLE at 12 o’clock, BASS at 2 o’clock
Dynacomp settings: OUTPUT at 10 o’clock, SENSITIVITY at 10 o’clock.
DD-3 Settings: LEVEL at 10 o’clock, FEEDBACK at 12 o’clock, TIME at 2 o’clock and MODE at 800ms
As a guitarist, sooner or later comes the question of the volume balance between rhythm and lead tones.
You probably all know the devastating feeling of playing the best solo of your life only to be told later on by members of the audience that nobody could hear it!
A nice affordable clean boost pedal: the MXR Micro Amp
In 2010, one could think this is a trivial problem but it is not. This is essentially due to the fact that a volume or gain modification anywhere in an effect chain can have a big effect on the overall tone. Unless you are a rock star and your sound engineer knows exactly when to boost your volume, there is a number of solutions to this problem that I will list in this post.
Using the guitar volume control or a volume pedal
The first solution that comes to mind is of course to use the volume control of your guitar. After all, why is there one? The problem is that reducing the volume of your guitar will reduce the amount of signal sent to your pedals and amp thus directly change the amount of distortion/overdrive in your tone. It can fit certain styles like blues rock where rhythm work is not as dirty as lead work. For instance, Jimi Hendrix made use of this extensively on stage: he could go from clean to dirty just by manipulating the volume of his guitar (note that the stratocaster is especially good for that). It also works well if you are more of a clean tone player. Using a volume pedal at the beginning of your chain is the same thing as using the volume of your guitar except it might be more progressive. You will have the same problem though: reducing the volume will reduce the amount of overdrive or distortion from any device placed after.
Using an amp with multiple channels
Another solution is to use an amplifier with 2 master volumes or 3 or more channels so that you can dedicate some of them to rythm work and some of them to lead work: usually these amps are not the cheapest and offer slightly different tones depending on the channel but they can be a good solution. For example, the high end models of the Marshall JVM series feature 2 master volumes and are programmable which makes them very flexible. Note that for those of you who need tons of distortion for their rhythm tone, a lot of 3 channel amps (especially those made in the 90s) won’t cut it since the middle channel is often tailored for crunch tones rather than devastating ones.
Using two overdrive/distortion pedals
This is a very flexible solution: you can set the volume of one pedal in “rhythm mode” and the one placed after in “lead mode”. In lead mode, you can have the two pedals together for more gain or just the lead pedal. It can be tricky to switch from rhythm to lead but it is doable especially with BOSS or Ibanez pedals which have a large switch. One stomp and you can switch off a pedal while switching on the other one. Combining two overdrive/distortion pedals is a broad topic in itself and I will soon post about it. A few recent distortion/overdrive pedals feature a “boost” switch to increase the volume for lead work, check out the Satchurator and the upcoming Ice 9 overdrive designed by VOX for Joe Satriani or the ZVEX box of rock.
Using a multi-effect unit or a modeling amp
Those of you with super sophisticated gizmos don’t have much of an issue since you can program rhythm and lead patches. They can even sound good plugged straight into a PA. This is not something that purists love but I have used my Line 6 Pod straight into a PA for gigs with very good results.
Using a clean boost or volume pedal at the end of your chain
If you play against a clean amp and all your overdriven tones come from pedals, this is by far the easiest solution. A clean boost pedal will take the signal and make it louder without altering it. I personally use a BOSS LS-2. The LS-2 can also be used as a looper to switch between 2 chains of effects or use them in series, each chain having its own volume. I have heard the MXR micro amp is also pretty good placed after a chain of effects to increase the overall volume, not to mention all the boutique clean boost pedals. I stress that you need to have a clean amp with enough headroom because otherwise the extra volume might make the amp clip (which can also be a cool effect). Alternatively, most equalizer pedals feature a general volume control and will be able to get you a nice boost, check out the BOSS GE-7 or MXR 10 band EQ. And of course, you can also use a good old volume pedal but at the end of the effect chain rather than at the beginning as mentioned earlier in this post.
The BOSS LS-2 can act as a clean boost or a more sophisticated looper able to manage two effect chains each with their own volume
If your dirty tone comes from your amp, it is a bit trickier. People have had good results using a booster and or a volume pedal in the effect loop providing your amp offers such a facility. Be careful what kind of pedal you use. Most of them are OK but some of them won’t work in an effect loop since the signal strength is too different from a guitar output (check out the impedance). Check also that your effect loop has an adjustable level because in this case it will probably adapt to any pedal.
The beauty of this “end of chain” boost solution is that you can boost either your clean tone or your distorted tone which gives you a wide variety of tones for soloing.
Note that placed at the beginning of the effect chain, say right after your guitar, a clean boost pedal will have a different effect. If it is placed before a distortion/overdrive pedal, the more gain is dialed, the less the clean boost will have an effect on the overall volume, it will rather have an effect on the amount of distortion (this is because a side effect of distortion or overdrive is that the tone gets compressed). With a moderate amount of gain on your overdrive/distortion stompbox, a clean boost will fatten your tone and moderately increase the volume which is like going from the crunch to the lead channel on a 3 channel amp. As always when unsure, just experiment!
Conclusion
Solving the lead volume issue is linked to your style of playing and one or several solutions amongst those I have mentioned in this post might be available to you. And don’t forget that the volume is not everything and your tone will have to cut through the mix as I have explained in a previous post. Also you might want to check another one of my posts about the use of compressors at the end of your effect chain, it is a possible solution to boost your volume for solos although I have not always found it workable in live situations.
BOSS US is doing a nice series of videos explaining what some of the basic effects do with demos by the most excellent Johnny DeMarco. It is called Effects 101 and can be found here: www.bossus.com/go/effects_101/. It is mostly aimed at beginners but more seasoned guitarists might like it too (well, I did).
As an example, here is the video about the overdrive effect:
I thought it was about time to write my take on the most famous overdrive pedal ever: the Ibanez Tube Screamer.
This little green machine and its clones are ubiquitous because they do two things extremely well:
Used against a clean amp, a Tube Screamer will go from a bluesy to classic rock tone that will cut through the mix thanks to a mid-range hump (check out my videos below).
Used against an already overdriven amp, or even another overdrive or distortion pedal, it will push your tone and will give it more body and sustain. This trick was used by numerous rock and metal players in the 80s, before high gain tube amps arrived.
A cheap early 90s TS-5 and a high end Analogman modded TS-9
Short history of the Tube Screamer
There is a lot of historical resources about Tube Screamer pedals on the internet, the best being probably Analog Man’s Tube Screamer page. I will give you a short rundown here. The first incarnation of the Ibanez Tube Screamer was called TS808. It was launched in the late 70s as a relatively cheap offering and promised, like every other overdrive and distortion pedal, to give you “the natural overdrive of a good tube amplifier”.
As always, everybody was very skeptical but in that case, it is not far off at all! The Tube Screamer became a piece of choice in the rig of numerous pro players and of course the most famous of them at the time was Stevie Ray Vaughan, who, at some stage, even used two Tube Screamers in series!
The TS808 was quite short lived and was replaced by the TS9 in 1982, then the TS10 in 1986 and the TS5 in 1990. After that, this becomes quite complicated as Ibanez decided to bring back the TS9 in 1993 and the TS808 in 2004 while keeping the cheaper TS7 produced since 1999. I have summarized on this chart the years of production of the different models and this is only for the most common models (more on that later):
This means that, as of now, Ibanez is selling 5 different Tube Screamers: the TS808 reissue, TS9 reissue, TS7, TS9DX and TS808HW.
In a nutshell, the differences are as follows:
The early TS808 models made between the late 70s and 1982 have become absolute collector items which explains why Ibanez has decided to bring this model back. Because of its circuit and the chips used for its manufacture, it is considered the “best sounding” Tube Screamer.
The TS9 has its followers, it is a bit brighter than an 808 and was the first “old model” to be reissued in 1993 and more importantly the only one available until 2004. This explains why guys like Analog Man were and are still modifying TS9s to bring them to TS808 specifications using carefully selected components (have a look at Analog Man’s website for the technical details). The mod market has not been killed by the release of the TS808 reissue in 2004 as these are still considered in some ways inferior to the modded TS9s.
The TS7 is a cheap alternative and is part of the tonelok series of effects. I had the chance to try one and it does not sound bad at all. It even features a “more gain” mode that the others don’t have.
The TS9DX was launched in the late 90s as a “super Tube Screamer” offering more sonic possibilities. It can be modified too.
The TS808HW is a very recent model and is supposed to be a TS808 with even better components. Is it a gimmick or not, I could not say but this is clearly a response to all the modders and clone makers.
On top of these currently made models, the discontinued TS5 and TS10 can be found more or less easily but the original TS808s and TS9s from the early eighties are very rare and expensive. To make things more complicated, Ibanez, especially in the late 70s and 80s, were in a pedal making frenzy and some of their more esoteric models are more or less related to the Tube Screamer in their conception. I am thinking of the SD-9 or the strange SM-9 which is a bit of a metal Tube Screamer. Mind you these are a departure from regular Tube Screamers but can be interesting nonetheless. Finally, I must mention that a lot of of “boutique” overdrive pedals are Tube Screamer clones with a twist to make them more appealing than the original one (see the “Clones and components” section after the videos).
Which Tube Screamer should I get?
First off, I would say that I own a TS5 which was the cheapest Tube Screamer ever made. Although it does not sound as good as a TS808 or a modded TS9, it does give you a taste of the Tube Screamer tone. It is said that Stevie Ray Vaughan used several models including a TS-10 at the end of his career which gets to show you that you don’t need a TS808 from 1980 to be cool.
Now I think that the safest choice for a reasonable amount of money is either an Ibanez TS808 or a modified TS9. I personally own an Analog Man modified TS9 and it sounds very very sweet as you will see in the videos below (check out the link for purchase information or go straight to www.buyanalogman.com). Mind you, they are not cheap pedals and I would understand if you’d go for a TS-7 as these are less than half the price of a TS-9. I have seen TS-7 for about 50€ whereas a TS-9 is about 120€ and a TS 808 149€.
As to an original late 70s/early 80s model, I think we have now reached the point of irrationality in terms of pricing, these are collector items. If you have the money and the will to find one, go for it but I would not say it is indispensable. Again, check out Analog Man’s Tube Screamer History page if you are in the market for an old one as there is a lot of details which should help you identify a true vintage one from an almost vintage early 1990s reissue. Be warned about one weakness that all these old Ibanez pedals share, it is the switch! The switch of my TS-5 has become very flaky and I have the same problem with my SM-9. These switches can be replaced but if you don’t have the know how, you will have to find someone to do it.
What is all the fuss?
Well I will now try to demonstrate why the Ibanez Tube Screamer is so sought after and why you might well end up adding one to your rig if you haven’t done it already.
First, with a Strat, it can do the Stevie Ray Vaughan tone as well as some more classic rock tones. Alas, it will not give you SRV’s fingers and there is obviously more to his tone than a Tube Screamer but I find you can get pretty close. In this video, I play my American Classics Custom Shop Strat equipped with noiseless Kinman pickups.
The guitar goes into the Analog Man modded TS-9 Tube Screamer and a Fender Silverface Champ. I show various drive and level settings. At high level settings, the pedal is pushing the amp into breakup, pretty cool! The amp was close miked with an SM-57 and some reverb was added in Cubase 5. At the end, I show briefly what it can do to a distortion pedal (a Pro Co RAT 2 in this case), namely increase the sustain and add some fatness.
And now the same pedal and amp with a gibson SG 61 reissue:
I don’t share the opinion that a Tube Screamer is not very well adapted to Humbucker pickups. My theory is that people say that because the Tube Screamer lets the tone of the guitar through and a Humbucker based guitar will obviously sound totally differently from a single coil based one. You will not get the “quack” of a Stratocaster of a Telecaster but it is interesting nonetheless. And I am talking about using it against a clean amp because against an overdriven amp, a humbucker guitar and a Tube Screamer are an excellent match (ask 80s metal guitarists…).
Clones and components
And because a post about the Tube Screamer would not be complete without mentioning the JRC4558D op-amp chip that was used in the TS808, you will have to know that some of the original TS808 were not made using the JRC4558D but another cheaper alternative called RC4558P and these still sound great. Anyway, this chip is one of the major differences between the TS808 and the reissue TS9 so for the latter, the mod consists, amongst other things, in replacing the existing chip with a JRC4558D. I will stop here on the subject as I am not a specialist in electronics and there are entire websites devoted to this issues such as here and here.
Although I am not going to mention all the vendors making clones of Tube Screamers, I think I should mention Maxon. Maxon was actually making the Tube Screamers for Ibanez in the early days and they have now a full line of effects including a TS808 clone named OD808 which has gathered a lot of praise. Is it really a clone if it is made by the company that made the originals? 😉
Finally I know that I mention Analog Man a lot in this post, it is only because he is the original Tube Screamer modder and stick to a pure vintage tone philosophy. The other famous modder, Robert Keeley, seems to have less of a pure vintage approach in his Tube Screamer mods which does not mean they are bad at all but I don’t have first hand experience with those, hence will keep my big mouth shut.
Conclusion
There is much more to say about Tube Screamers and I will post follow-ups but I hope you will get from this post why this is such a popular pedal. Actually, to me, it is almost like the natural extension of any electric guitar. So, if you don’t have one, check it out! If you have any questions or remarks, feel free to leave a comment.
