Electro Harmonix Deluxe Bass Big Muff Pi

The Deluxe Bass Big Muff Pi was an instant hit for me, it has an awesome fuzz tone, but the thing that really makes it worth the money is the extra features. The noise gate is awesome, because the pedal will pick up background noise from the guitar and amplify it. The blend knob adjusts how much of the clean tone you want mixed with the fuzzed tone. The crossover function on it allows you to make your clean tone more bass-y and your fuzzy tone more treble-y. With some adjusting, you can make it sound great on bass and also guitar. Adjusted correctly it can have an awesome fuzz tone with a lot of low end, which sounds awesome.

This thing is brilliant.

If you're familiar with Electro Harmonix products, then you'll know what to expect - superb build quality and creative functionality. This thing has both in spades, mine has survived beer spills and produced some truly wonderful sounds, live and in the studio.

There's no superfluous controls on here, so it's not needlessly overwhelming. Everything has a very clear function, and will have a massive effect of the sound.

To the sound itself, a massive range is possible. The blend control allows you to be sure that no low-end is sacrificied, which is usually the one main drawback of fuzz effects. I've found the pedal will do pretty much everything from a subtle, dirty overdrive, to a full on wall of stoner fuzz. Hours of fun to be had by slamming out chords.

Engaging the crossover control opens up what is effectively a second fuzz effect (2 in 1, how bad!) and you can adjust the high pass and low pass filters to your heart's content, for an altogether different kind of fuzz. I find this option tends to open up a range of more grinding tones, which wouldn't be out of place in hardcore, death metal, etc. I've used this in a few situations to produce screaming high gain feedback, and other noises. Really with this pedal, your imagination is the limit.

The -10dB switch is a life-safer, as the signal coming off my pedalboard is quite hot, especially when the Big Muff is thrown into the mix. The master volume knob has ample headroom to get you back where you need to be.

This has been well worth the money, and I'm not going to be looking for any other fuzz pedals any time soon, because it just does everything so well. I'd highly recommend testing it out for yourself.

What can I say? You can really dial out anything! When I watched it's demo from EHX, I said, OK, what I'll need is Tone at max, Blend at max, sustain at max, everything at max to get that really thick, booming, aggressive sound I though I'd fancy. Guess what! I was wrong. Even for my extreme metalhead ears, the maximum settings are waaaaay too much :) I didn't like the recommended settings either, so I had to find my tone with it which needed some time, but it was worth it! Juicy little fuzz pedal.

If you are interested in what I use:
Volume at twele o'clock
Blend at four o'clock
Tone at twelve o'clock
Sustain at a little more than three o'clock
Gate at eleven o'clock, but this varies from setup-to-setup, I was relieved to hear that it makes no dominant change in the sound.
Crossover ON:
Both filters at nine o'clock.

But you can really dial out any tone you want. I'd highly recommend this over the standard BigMuff, on the first hand because of the Gate, without it your ears would explode, because it brings through a lots of noise...but a friend of mine explained, that to get the exotic Muff sound, it has to be nosiy...and on the second hand, because of the crossover section. It increases your tonal possibilities, but can be disabled if you don't need it. Very useful.