The Big Muff – a tribute

January 29th 2012 | Posted in Big Muff | 28 Comments

The Big Muff. Anyone who’s stomped one knows its power and tone and when you hear one you nod and go “yeah, that’s a Big Muff”. The larger than life tone is as mythical as the pedal it self. Let’s dip into the wonderful world of the coolest sounding pedal of all time!



I got my first Big Muff in 1996. I had played guitar for some time but never really cared much for effects. Well, I did care for tone but this was before the internet revolution, or at least at the very beginning of it, and the local guitar stores only offered Boss and Ibanez pedals. I remember asking if they had Big Muffs, never really knowing what it was, but they just waved me off. Anyway, by 1996 the whole grunge era was almost gone. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden etc was past their peak but they left a legacy – the music and their guitar tone. The grunge guitarist didn’t care for DS1 or chorus. They wanted an old school nasty tone and the Muff saw its comeback. Electro Harmonix founder Mike Matthews had just moved to Russia and started Sovtek. The timing couldn’t have been better as a new generation was eager to buy their first Big Muff.

Sovtek green Big Muff

Finally, my local store had gotten a green Sovtek Big Muff Pi. I remember trying the pedal in the store and thinking “what the fuck…” It sounded like shit. Of course, now I know that a Music Man Wolfgang into a Marshall stack is hardly the best combo for a Muff and certainly not for replicating David’s tones. Luckily, I was so determined to get this pedal that I bought it. I never figured out the settings so the first year or so I hardly used it.

One day, probably around 1998, I found some settings on the net. A guy recommended something that would fit David’s PULSE tones. I plugged the Muff into my old Sound City 50w stack, maxed the volume as usual, stomped the green beast and “whoa!” I felt like Marty McFly almost being thrown to the other side of the room. The tone was so powerful that I almost fainted. After some tweaking around and adding a delay I was soon fooling around with Sorrow, Echoes, Comfortably Numb etc. I’m sure it sounded horrible but I never forget that day and I still have the pedal.

I’m sure David didn’t feel the same when Phil Taylor presented the Big Muff to him around 1975. After all, he was used to standing in front of a wall of speakers and the sound of his Hiwatts being violated by a screaming Fuzz Face. Apparently, David didn’t care much for the Big Muff at first but he did end up using it for most of his lead tones on Animals and the pedal has been with him ever since.

Electro Harmonix ram's head Big Muff

It’s hard to say just why David settled with the Big Muff. I mean, no matter how much we love the pedal we must admit that it’s quite… unique… in lack of a better word. It’s a perfect match for Floyd, Santana, grunge or Sabbath but hardly for Bon Jovi or a mellow jazz improv. The Big Muff is a nasty beast that can sound quite out of place if you don’t appreciate its limits. But, this was 1975-76 and still a couple of years before the classic distortion appeared, like the Boss DS1, ProCo RAT and MXR Distortion +. Guitarist didn’t have that much to chose from so a Big Muff must have sounded quite sophisticated compared with the fuzz they’d been struggling with for some years.

David’s first Big Muff was a so-called ram’s head model (named after the ram head logo on the pedal). The pedal has the unmistakable saturated gain, scooped mid range and thunderous lows. The pedal became his main distortion for well over three decades. He also got Pete Cornish to make him a clone that would fit his new pedal boards – the P1.

But all this praise and admiration doesn’t mean shit when you sit at home with your little amp while trying to get your newly purchased Big Muff to sound like David’s guitar on PULSE. How can this be? Have I been fooled? You toss the pedal out the window while you demand to know what NASA shit he’s put into his amps to get that tone. Well, this isn’t really about gear or how much money you spend but about physics.

To get that silky smooth sustain and growling bite you need power. Lots of power. And with power I mean volume. People often ask me why David’s Muff tones almost sound as if he’s playing with a clean tone. That’s the essence of a Big Muff. It was designed to boost the clean tone for a smooth sustain. The “bonus” was that to achieve this it needed to clip or distort. That’s why a Muff is often referred to as a booster or sustainer. All you need is a guitar a loud tube amp and a Big Muff. David’s 100w Hiwatts and 200w WEM cabinets are furiously loud and he can set these almost as loud as he wants without them distorting. What he gets is this incredibly powerful clean tone that’s just on the very edge of tube breakup. This is the perfect combo for the Muff. The louder you’re able to play the smoother the Muff gets and the more it opens up.

A little snippet of the wonderful On the Turning Away solo from Delicate Sound of Thunder. The tone is inspired by David’s tone at the 1994 Modena, Italy gig. I’m using a Fender CIJ ’65 reissue with EMG DG20 pickups into a Laney CUB12 stack, Sovtek green Big Muff, Boss RT20 and digital delay and reverb.

To understand how a pedal works and how to get the tones you want, you need to understand how the pedal was designed and how it was intended to be used. The Big Muff was designed at a time when guitarists used loud amp stacks on stage as their only source of monitoring. These amps could distort to some point but for most this wasn’t enough. Treble boosters and fuzz pedals were designed to take these amps over the edge. The Big Muff was designed to offer something more. Something louder and nastier. Now guitarists could make their overdriven Marshalls and even their clean Hiwatts sound like some beast from hell. The louder you played the more the pedal reacted with the tubes and the more compressed the tone got but equally important, the speakers reached their limit and sent out sound waves that would get your ears to cut the high frequencies. This loudness, the bass, the compression and clipping is the secret of David’s Big Muff tones. Sadly, this is almost impossible to recreate on a smaller amp in your bedroom.

So what do you do? Well most of you I guess, have already gotten a clone that’s tweaked for smaller amps or perhaps found ways to combine the Muff with other pedals to simulate a cranked tube amp. The distortions that started to appear in the late 70s were designed to capture the tone of a cranked Marshall and a fuzz. This meant that you could use a RAT or Tube Screamer to make your small solid state amp sound like a huge stack. Of course these won’t recreate the sonics and physics of an amp that’s about to blow but it will be a far better option than forcing a Big Muff to be something which it ain’t.

But why is David always using a Big Muff with a booster or overdrive? well, he’s using the booster just like an EQ. It’s not needed to get that smooth tone but it allows you to emphasise some frequencies depending on the nature of the booster and you can also make the amp slightly hotter by adding more volume and gain. This is important to understand and not just go ahead and crank both pedals for an insane amount of gain. That will only add noise. We’ll look at ways to combine the Big Muff with booster later.

The first Pink Floyd album I got was Animals. It must have been in the late 80’s. It forever changed my life and after hearing Dogs for the millionth time I realised that David Gilmour was the greatest guitarist in the world. Tonewise I didn’t have a clue. It was until I heard Delicate Sound of Thunder some years later that I knew that I wanted THE tone. The soaring, thunderous opening on Sorrow and the silky smooth sustain on Time and Comfortably numb had me completely mesmerised. Now I prefer David’s 70s tones but I still get goosebupms when I put on Delicate and I still can’t quite believe how he managed to get that tone. The Big Muff operates in mysterious ways.

Check out Big Muff guru Kit Rae’s Big Muff site for details on just about every Muff ever existed.

Please feel free to share your favorite Big Muff moments!





Competition – win an Evidence Audio Reveal!

January 23rd 2012 | Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

It’s time for a new competition and this time you get the chance to win an Evidence Audio Reveal instrument cable. All you need to do is to answer one simple question and submit your entry!

The Reveal is the latest addition to the Evidence Audio line of instrument and signal cables. Built with the same high standard as all Evidence Audio cables the Reveal is slightly thinner and more flexible, making it a perfect choice for both stage and small bedrooms. Read more about the Reveal here.

Evidence Audio Reveal - Competition

On which historical event did David first start using Evidence Audio cables?

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See this Q&A with Evidence Audio founder Tony Farinella for some great tips on the importance of good cables. I also recommend visiting E.A.R.S. Pro Audio for other Evidence Audio models and your custom requirements.

The winner will be drawn monday February 6. Good luck!

CostaLab ChorusLab review

January 13th 2012 | Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

The chorus effect has been a crucial part of guitarists’ tone since the early 80s. Dismissed by some as cheesy, others can’t play without it. Italian CostaLab has received a lot of praise for their Cornish-inspired pedals and clones of old classics. Here’s my review of the ChorusLab.

I must admit – I’ve never been a chorus kind of guy. Still, I tend to use it quite a lot. It’s one of those effects that, to me at least, sounds better when someone else is using it but I also appreciate how it make a dull overdrive or distortion sound quite sweet. David Gilmour has been using chorus since 1980. Two Boss CE2 pedals were featured in his Wall stage rig assigned to each channel for a wide stereo spread. As most other guitarists in the 80s David featured the CE2 in all of his rigs, either for stereo spread or a single pedal depending on the purpose of the setup.

Gilmourish.Com CostaLab ChorusLab review

The CostaLab ChorusLab is housed in a TRex sized box with true bypass switching, a bright easy to see led and it runs on either 9V battery or Boss-style power supply. The pedal feature controls for depth, speed and mix.

It feels almost sacrilege to not dismiss every Boss CE2 clone but I’ve ways found analog chorus like the CE2, EHX Small Clone and similar to be just a little too dominating with too much mid range. The ChorusLab is quite the opposite. No doubt the pedal is based on the classic CE2 with the same analog flavour but the ChorusLab is much warmer and smoother and blends better with other pedals. A huge improvement in my opinion.

I’m using a Fender Road Worn 60s body with a Warmoth 57 super thin neck and TexMex pickups into the ChorusLab and a Laney Cub12 15w stack. Reverb and delay is added in Logic.

A welcomed bonus is the mix control allowing you to mix the effect signal from 0 to flat to near flanger-ish. This makes it easy to adjust the chorus effect to match the other pedals. Clean tones and mild overdrives could do with a fat chorusy tone, while distortions sounds better with a milder setting. You can also dial in a pretty convincing rotary tone that stays in pitch unlike most chorus pedals, which tend to get all wild and swirly when you increase the rate and depth.

Chorus pedals tend to be a bit noisy. Part because of age but also due to the boosted mid range. The ChorusLab is dead silent and the true bypass switching makes it easy to blend it demanding vintage pedals.

If you’re not really a chorus guy or simply think that other chorus pedals doesn’t sound warm or natural enough then the ChorusLab is highly recommended. Whether you’re seeking the magic ingredient for David’s PULSE tones or just something that will beef up your tones you’ll find that the ChorusLab nails pretty much everything. Check out the CostaLab website for more info and ordering.

Dave Allen pickups review

January 2nd 2012 | Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

The pickups in your guitar are as important as any stompbox and a good set of quality pickups can do wonders for your tone. California based Dave Allen pickups has gained a lot of praise lately for their hand wound custom pickups and I recently got a couple of sets that promised classic Gilmour tones. Here’s my review of the Tru Vintage 54 and 69 Voodoo’s.

Choosing the right pickups for your setup can be a challenge. You might realize that the pickups you finally decided on doesn’t sound anything near what you’d expected. All of my Strats has featured Fender CS69s at one point and all of them sounded different. The reason is that there’s no such thing as two identical guitars. Even though they have the same wood, contour, lacquer etc, there are all these little nuances that creates a unique tone. So what pickups should you choose? Well, that really needs to be your decision, based on the gear you have but one thing is for sure – hand wound quality pickups will always be a welcomed upgrade.

Dave Allen pickups review

All Dave Allen single coils are made by hand, making each bobbin with laser cut fiber flatwork, hand beveled alnico magnets, scatter wind, wax pot, use USA cloth push back hookup wires, finish off with a fabric tape. The tone character is designed in close relationship with guitarists and by meticulously studying vintage models.

The Tru Vintage 54s (alnico 3) are based on the pickups featured in the very first line of Fender Stratocasters. These are known for their glassy transparent tone with a rounded lower end and a hint of mid range. This is instant surf and Shadows but also a perfect match for David’s legendary #0001 Stratocaster.

I’ve always been a fan of the 54s and in my opinion they’re ideal for big pedal boards when you want a transparent tone as possible. They can sound a bit thin and bright though. Especially if they’re combined with maple necks or if you’re used to hot overwound pickups or humbuckers. However, the Tru Vintage 54 has an incredibly smooth top that stays creamy even when you crank the amp really good. The fat lower end and slight mid range makes them very dynamic and versatile – almost to the point that you forget that these are indeed low output vintage style models. Highly recommended if you’re desperately seeking that Stratpack 2004 tone or simply a set that’ll cover most of David’s 70s tones.

The 69 Voodoo’s (alnico 5) are based on the late 60s Fender pickups employed by Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, SRV etc. Recognized by their transparent tone, thunderous lower end and crisp top, this is as close as you’ll get to Machine Gun and Echoes.

Over the years I’ve become more and more fan of the 69s. Although similar to the 54s, they respond even better to tube amps and high gain pedals and the boosted lower end makes them slightly warmer. Having used numerous different Fender 69 clones over the years I must admit that the Voodoo’s gave me a huge grin when I plugged in my trusted Strat. First of all these are so scooped (middle frequency rolled off) that they can easily be mistaken for John Mayer’s Big Dippers. A perfect match for the Ram’s Head Muff and Tube Driver!

A common complaint about the late 60s models is that the bridge pickup is just too spiky and thin. Dave Allen has solved this by offering a slightly overwound bridge – right in the middle of the CS69 and the much darker sounding Duncan SSL5. A great upgrade and perfect for that little extra when you stomp your distortions.

Compared to the TTS Crazy Diamond set that I reviewed a couple of months ago, the Voodoo’s sound a bit more open and they also seem to have a slightly more pronounced and crisp attack. However, the Crazy Diamond bridge is slightly hotter, which I think suits the set better. It’s apples and oranges really and more down to what you prefer and what fits the tonal character of your guitar.

I always try to stress the importance of a good sounding guitar and amp. This is a much better and longer lasting investment than any pedal. After all, playing an instrument is about inspiration and no pedal will sound inspiring without a good basis. This, however, doesn’t mean that you need to blow all your savings but a guitar that you’re comfortable with will sound even better with proper pickups. A good rule when you buy a new guitar is to focus on the comfort, playability and how it sound acoustically. If the pickups do sound good, then you got yourself a bonus. If they don’t then I strongly suggest a new set of good quality hand wounds. For me, good quality pickups can be measured by how well they respond to your picking technique and whether they maintain their character when you adjust the guitar volume. Dave Allen’s pickups passed the test and I warmly recommend them!

Check out the Dave Allen Pickups website for more details and ordering info.

I haven’t recorded any clips for this review. Soundclips will never do pickups justice because you can manipulate the sound with different recording techniques (choice of mic, mic placements, recording and mastering software etc). Check out these songs for a close reference:
TruVintage 54s: David Gilmour performing Marooned at the Stratpack show, Wembley Arena 2004. #0001 1954 Stratocaster with Demeter Compulator, Chandler Tube Driver and MXR digital delay into a Hiwatt+WEM setup.
69 Voodoo’s: David Gilmour performing Then I Close My Eyes at Royal Albert Hall, 2006. The Black Strat with Demeter Compulator, BK Butler Tube Driver and delay into a Hiwatt+WEM setup.

Merry christmas!

December 22nd 2011 | Posted in Miscellaneous | 19 Comments

Just want to wish all of you a merry christmas and all the best for 2012! I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for your support and for reading all my scribbles. It means a lot to me!

2011 went by in a flash but it turned out to be quite year after all with the (second) reunion of Roger, Nick and David at the O2 Arena in London in May. As promised, David sang and played guitar on Comfortably Numb – on top of the wall – and both he and Nick joined for Outside the Wall. It was a fantastic event, not least due to Roger’s superb performance of The Wall! There are also rumours of a new Gilmour solo album. Both Polly and Nick Mason has talked about David writing new material but nothing’s confirmed yet. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best!

The clip is a rare recording of the Merry Xmas Song written and sang by non other than Nick Mason with Richard Wright on piano (BBC radio broadcast 1975). It’s a reminder of how wonderful the holiday season is and how bad things can go when you allow the drummer to sing! Sorry, Nick…

Merry christmas!
Bjorn

Strymon Lex Rotary review

December 13th 2011 | Posted in Reviews | 19 Comments

I’ve had a lot of requests for the Strymon Lex Rotary lately. This rotary speaker simulator seems to have caused a lot of stir and not least among Gilmour enthusiasts. I recently got my hands on one and here’s my review.

Rotating speaker cabs has been David’s secret weapon since 1971-72. His stage setup at this point featured the classic 3-head Hiwatt rack, WEM speaker cabs and a Leslie 147. The Leslie was swapped with two Yamaha RA200 cabinets in 1976-1983 and the jaw breaking 1994 stage setup featured custom designed Doppola rotating speakers. Read more about David’s rotary setups here.

Strymon Lex Rotary - Gilmourish.Com review

While Clapton, Vaughan, Harrison etc used Leslies as a main effect, David would blend or mix the effect with the main amps. This subtle liquidy swirl is the essence of many of his classic tones throughout the years. The newly released recording of Dark Side of the Moon from Empire Pool, Wembley 1974 is a great example of how the Leslie 147 cabs adds a huge dimension to his tones. You could easily use a chorus or flanger to create something similar but it’ll never be quite the same.

The Lex Rotary was designed with a painstaking focus on details and the complexity of a rotary cab and look no further people – this is as close as you’ll get to fit a Leslie in a box!

The Lex is housed in a slightly bigger TRex sized sturdy box with easy to reach big knobs. There are four controls allowing you to adjust the fast rotor speed, mic distance at the horn, horn level and preamp drive (quite decent but I recommend a better sounding overdrive pedal). There are also two on/off stomp switches for slow/fast and bypass. The pedal runs on 9V Boss style adaptor and feature true bypass switching. This is only the beginning though. The Lex also has a number of “hidden” controls that’s engaged by stomping both foot switches simultaneously. The four controls then allows you to make additional settings like different mic placements, volume boost etc. There are so much technical specifications that I won’t even dare to begin describing them. Fear not though – the Lex is super easy to operate. Check out the Strymon site for more details and soundclips.

No I haven’t become bald… I haven’t done any clips for this review simply because I can’t do it any better than this excellent demonstration. Please check out the clip and see the Strymon web site for more details, sound and YouTube clips.

I’ve tested the Lex both in mono and stereo. You can place it among your pedals like any other chorus or flanger and get a very dynamic chorusy tone with that classic tremolo swirl. However, if you need to run the pedal in mono I strongly suggest that you split the signal and place the Lex on one line with a second amp. This way you get a setup similar to David’s and you can adjust the level on the assigned amp for the desired amount of Leslie effect. See this feature for more on replicating David’s rotary setup.

The Lex should be operated in stereo though. The tone can fool even the most devoted Leslie fans and I had a hard time telling it apart from a Leslie 760 that I compared it with. Standing in front of the stereo setup you can hear how incredibly dynamic and sophisticated the Lex is. A Leslie or rotating speaker isn’t just a static effect like your average distortion but there are all these nuances that makes up the tone. A pedal alone can’t replicate the acoustics and dynamics of your studio or a stage but the guys at Strymon seems to have cracked the code and delivered a pedal that’s almost as organic and alive as a real Leslie.

So how does it compare to other rotary sims? The Lex is very similar to the old Korg G4 and HK Rotosphere. The Lex however sounds more natural and organic and the ramp to slow/fast is much smoother. The Line 6 Rotary Machine does a nice job but sounds almost like a ring modulator at high speeds. The Lex stays focused and allows you to carefully place the mic just where you want it for the right swirl.

I use the Boss RT20 a lot but it doesn’t really sound anything other than a very sophisticated chorus and that’s pretty much why I like it. In my opinion you can’t really compare the two but the RT20 has one huge advantage, which is the mix effect control. This is a slight draw back on the Lex especially in terms of David’s tones. The reason is that you don’t really want a dominating rotary effect but rather a mild swirl. Not quite a chorus and certainly no flanger but just a hint of that certain something. The Lex works very well for cleans and mild overdrives but gets all too dominating and dark when you try to run a Big Muff through it. In this case you’re better off with a Boss RT20 or simply a chorus.

But, the Lex was never made with Gilmour in mind. Judging by the Strymon website they set out to create the most authentic sounding rotary simulator and in my humble opinion I think they’ve done it. Highly recommended!

The gear gallery is up!

December 4th 2011 | Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

A popular feature on Gilmourish.Com is at last back up – the gear gallery! Browse lots of great images of Gilmour inspired rigs and pedal boards from all over the world! Visit the gallery.

Help make the gallery bigger and submit a photo of your guitar collection, the whole rig or the pedal board. Please note that I’ll only include one picture from each! A good advice is to focus on your pedal boards – that’s were the GAS is! Send the picture with your full name or a nick with a full description of the items. Please submit only high resolution images. Blurry phone camera pictures aren’t that interesting to others.

Submit your image now – gallery(at)gilmourish.com

I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to include all the images from the last gallery. If your image is missing, please send it again and I’ll add it. You can also send updates whenever needed.