Electro Harmonix Bass Big Muff Pi

I use this Big Muff Pi with a Peavey Millenium AC 5-string bass guitar and an Orange Crunch amp.

This fuzz pedal offers a wide variety of sounds, from the most discret to the most extreme.

Three modes are available: "Normal" is the effect only, "Dry" blends the effect with the dry sound of the guitar, and "Bass Boost" re-introduce some low-frequency content to the fuzz when the tone is set quite high.

There's also three knobs, Volume to set the output volume, Tone to control the overall frequency content of the sound and Sustain to control the amount of distortion.

The "Dry" mode works well with a small amount of Sustain to give an extra bite to your regular bass sound in finger-style. The Normal and Bass Boost modes are more suitable for pick-playing. Normal sounds great with a good bit of sustain and when playing in the higher part of the neck (for Black Dog-style riff for example). But be careful when adding loads of sustain, it becomes quickly very noisy.
I wasn't convinced with the Bass Boost mode, but it's probably a matter of taste.

Hardware-wise, the overall is very sturdy and feels reliable. The major issue with me is that there is no easy access to the 9V battery with no specific compartment. So you have to unscrew the 4 screws at the back and open the box to access it. At that price you would expect that kind of feature. That's why it loses 2 stars in the Features section.

To summarize, a solid pedal with an overall good sound and enough parameters to tailor it to your needs, but the lack of a battery compartment is a big drawback to me, despite the included 9V battery that lasted quite long.

This is THE BEST entry level fuzz and I highly recommend getting it as your first fuzz for bass. The blend allows you to spice up your sound without losing too much definition, so it is quite useful for fast playing, although the clean volume cannot be controlled when blended. This can be easily bypassed with a compressor or a distortion after the Bass Muff, so you don't get a huge volume spike. The bass boost adds a substantial amount of lows; keep the tone low for monstrous rumbling!
Normal is the stock sound that you can't go wrong with. I found usable tones with sustain tuned both up and down and sounds sweet when paired with a distortion.

I have tryed some bass fuzz pedal's and i want to tell that big muff is one of the best's. It as a reat sound, and one of the best features is the "bass boost" mod. Some fuzz'ses lost the low end, but with this feature we can have always the low end. About the structure, it is realy great beause it is very solid and hard to damage. it doesn't change the tone beeing of like some pedals that is not true bypassed. So, it is realy a good item to buy, that can give an "hard" and lovely sound of "power"!. One defect is the dimensions. it is a litle bit big, and that provides a large ocupation on the pedalboard. But i recomend it

This is a nice pedal. It's got a warm, thick sound and yet it's able to cut through in a mix. I've used it mostly for playing in rock bands, but also for some jazz fusion and electro, which gave me a sorta nice "boomish" quality in sound. The sound is, as i mentioned, warm but you're able to get a nice crunch with it as well, especially with a pick. When i was playing with my fingers I could get sort of a digital sound, by having less treble & high mids on my bass, which worked kinda nice in a synthesizer & sampler setting. I would've liked an eq for it though, as I was having a bit of trouble hearing myself when I turned the "bass boost" function on. I also would've liked a "mix" function to blend the clean signal from the bass with the effect, but for that price I'm not blaming anyone. It's i nice pedal, and works as well for guitar as for the bass.