Shnobel Tone is one of my favorite go-to demo channels on YouTube. Good stuff. Great player and tends to hit all the right points when showcasing pedals. He recently posted a comparison video of the new Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Op Amp (that I’ve been super excited about and talked about a few times here on the site) against an original vintage 1978 Big Muff. I was personally curious how close things are. I know Billy Corgan did a quick demo at Reverb.com and it was about as ‘pumpkins as pumpkins can get, but that is also factoring a large portion of tone coming from the hands and the player. I would suspect that Billy could make any muff sound pretty damn close.
Check it out…
EHX Big Muff Op Amp vs 1978 Big Muff
I was pleased to hear that it sounded really close to the original. Obviously settings on the knobs had to be adjusted to match, but that would come as expected with +/- variants within component tolerances, etc. Overall, I thought it sounded great, and for that price.. it’s pretty hard to beat. The Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Op Amp reissue is available for around $80 on Musician’s Friend.
Let me know what you think by commenting below!
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