J. IRVING-GILES: Did you know that in Soviet Russia Muff Bigs You? Hi. I'm J. Irving-Giles from Gearwire.Com. Today I'm here with the Russian made Big Muff Pi from by Electro-Harmonix, and say reissued pedal based on the one that was popularized when the Sovtek sister company was just pumping these pedals out of the Soviet Union back when the originals were out.

Guys like Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour were using these, had these in their repertoire. More recently, bands like Helmet and Mudhoney, for all of you Mudhoney fans out there, they've been using the Russian-made pedal, and not much has changed from the reissue. They've got some low-noise, military-grade transistors that they added to the unit, but other than that it's pretty much the same unit.

They have the American-made, made-in-New-York-City Big Muff Pi, but the Russian-made kind of tones it down a little bit, and speaking of toning things down at all so tones the tonal options up. You can dial the just three knobs to get kind of a wide variety of tone, a little wider than the focused sound of the Pi, and that's kind of why it was popular with a little bit more of a classic rock crowd of the aforementioned artists. So, without further ado, why dn't we got take a look at this pedal and listen to the sounds that it can create.

All right. In here you see the Russian-made Big Muff Pi reissue I wish I can almost pronounce, and as you see it's very simple. It's got three knobs on it, one for volume, one for sustain as it is a distortion/sustainer unit according to the text right there, and the last one for tone. And as you can see right now we've got the sustain and tone controls just right about 12 o'clock there, this is the pedal off, and this is just the clean amp tone we're using. It's a Fender 1 x 12, it's a Hotrod Deluxe.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI BYPASSED]

All right. That's kind of a pretty tone there so let's turn this pedal on and make it a little bit uglier.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI ENGAGED]

All right. And now let's dial back the knobs a little bit, give just an idea of the range of tone you can get.

[J. IRVING-GILES TWEAKING AND AUDITIONING THE TONE OF THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI]

Notice it's a little more subtle of an effect if you dial back the sustain and just a little sample of playing here, now using some of the passages played in the earlier riffage.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI ENGAGED]

All right. And then we'll see the opposite effect if we dial the sustain all the way up.

[J. IRVING-GILES AUDITIONING THE TONE OF THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI, SUSTAIN KNOB CRANKED FULL]

It gives it some more beef there.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI ENGAGED]

All right, and then if we just dial the sustain back a little bit and work with the tone knob. See if you turn it more to the left of 12, you get a tone with more just kind of bassy mid driven flavor.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI ENGAGED]

Where if the tone knob is dialed up higher, it adds more treble in, a bit of a fuzzier tone, something that's a bit more piercing.

[J. IRVING-GILES PLAYING GUITAR WITH THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX RUSSIAN BIG MUFF PI ENGAGED]

All right. So as you can see, this pedal here has got some pretty decent range to it, especially considering the price. It's the cheapest of the Big Muff pedals that are on the market today, so yeah that's basically it on the Russian-built Big Muff Pi.

Thank you. I'm J. Irving-Giles, and you have been watching Gearwire.Com.