Mike Matthews Talks About The Big Muff

I'll always have a soft spot for the Big Muff pedal. 

It was, after all, the first pedal I played through that, to my adolescent ears, gave me a decent facsimile of the Jimi Hendrix sound at bedroom levels. 

Bear in mind that this was the era of behemoth non-master volume tube amps that simply refused to distort at anything less than tooth filling-loosening volume levels.  And those new fangled transistor amps (gasp!) had yet to get their act together -- they sounded better on paper in the guitar magazine ads than they did up close and personal. 

Fortuitously, Electro Harmonix Big Muff came along just as my musical tastes were gravitating toward the flavors of the psychedelic '60s.  If I wanted my guitar to distort and sustain like Jimi's on Love Or Confusion, the humble Big Muff was just a footswitch-tap away.

In this vid Mike Matthews -- hail, oh great one! -- talks about the origins of the Big Muff and its predecessor the Muff Fuzz, mentioning how he came up with the name because he thought it sounded 'muffled'.  I guess it dawned on Mike a little later to add the Pi after Muff, giving the Big Muff Pi a whole new meaning.  Nudge, nudge.. wink, wink..

Electro Harmonix' Effectology Series Featuring Bill Ruppert

I'm really digging this series of vids put out by Electro-Harmonix called Effectology. Generating impossible sounds using only a guitar and EHX pedals, guitarist Bill Ruppert really puts the pedals through their paces with equally high doses of musicality and experimentation.

And this clip, 'Telstar' is one of my personal favorites.

Bill Ruppert is one of those great guitarists you've never heard of.

Born into a musical family -- his grandfather played drums for Benny Goodman no less -- Ruppert got his start on the clarinet before switching to guitar at age 12. Lessons with jazz guitar legend Larry Coryell soon followed.

In the early to mid 80's Ruppert was a first-call session guitarist in the Chicago area, at that time the 'Jingle Capital of the World'. He also possessed a knack for creating sound effects on the guitar which sometimes came in handy on these jingle sessions.

Said Ruppert in a 1996 interview, "I'd be called to do things like 'wrench falling out of a toolbox' or 'spaghetti falling off the end of a fork'."

An excellent rock/fusion guitarist with a fluid, legato style, Ruppert was almost signed to Mark Varney's Legato Records in the mid 90's. But because of Ruppert's extremely busy session schedule, Varney signed Frank Gambale instead.

Here's a guy I wish we could hear more of.

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Eric Johnson's Cliffs of Dover | Techniques and Equipment

Here's a clip of maestro Eric Johnson doing his thing on Cliffs of Dover. In the world of instrumental rock guitar, it's rare that a piece stands the test of time while being the signature tune most closely associated with the artist. Eric's Cliffs of Dover is just one such rarity.

On this clip he plays a lengthy intro with his most pristine of chimey clean tones, courtesy of the 4th position of the pickup selector switch on his Stratocaster. His clean sound is pumped through two Fender Twin Reverbs amps, each driving two 12" speakers in a single Marshall 4x12 cabinet for stereo. This cabinet is an open back, which allows him to get the bottom-end of a Marshall cab while still maintaining the open-back characteristics of a Fender Twin.

His clean tone is awash with copious amounts of Electro Harmonix Memory Man and/or Echoplex tape delay and a hint of chorus from his TC Electronics Chorus unit which he also uses as a splitter to send his signal to his two Twin Reverbs.

The background 'loop' sounds like an a 800ms sample from a Boss DD-2 Digital Delay pedal. Back in the day, the Boss DD's were among the few that provided a short sampling feature so that loops could be created on the fly. But you were limited to only 800ms of sampling time.

At 1:41-1:51, Eric uses what he calls his ' japanese koto' technique. While fretting notes conventionally with his left hand, he employs a thumb and forefinger technique with his right hand -- he plucks the note with his thumb while the index finger lightly dampens a note on the same string right next to the fret played with the left hand. He then adds a little vibrato with the left hand.

At 3:01 he flips to the lead pickup on his Strat, switches to his lead channel and begins traversing the fingerboard with his trademark pentatonic flurries. Unlike most players who approach pentatonics with hammer-ons and pull-offs, Eric prefers to alternate pick most of his pentatonic ideas. He describes his slightly unconventional picking technique as alternate picking where he holds the pick at an angle to minimize friction and faciltitate speed. He also picks from the guitar's body up into the air, brushing the string with the side of the pick with a slight bounce in the wrist. He's been known to lightly sandpaper the sides of his red Jazz III picks to create a finely rough surface to facilitate this brushing effect.

On his lead channel is a TC Electronic's Sustainer, a Fender Reverb unit, another Echoplex and a Chandler Tube Driver.

Interestingly, Eric places the Tube Driver after his reverb and delays. This gives his tone a characteristic warmth with a bit of 'mud' as his effected signal is being pumped into his overdrive.

His amp setup for his lead channel is either a Marshall 100 watt head, or the holy grail of amps, the Dumble Overdrive Special. His speaker cabinet of choice for this channel is a closed-back Marshall 4x12.

At 3:31 Eric makes a quick tonal adjustment on the lower tone knob. Strats are conventionally wired such that the first tone knob controls the front pickup and the second lower tone knob controls the middle pickup. The lead pickup is not wired to a tone control. Since Eric is on the 5th position on his pickup selector, this shows that his lead pickup is wired to his second tone control. Joe Bonamassa also talks about this very useful and simple Strat mod, which I mention here. This helps take off some of the shrill top-end when using the Strat's lead pickup on its own.

Eric Johnson is one of those rare masters of touch, tone and technique and all three elements feature abundantly in both his live performances and in his studio recordings. But his near-fanatical attention to detail on his solo records means that he probably spends more time than he should on each one -- which makes his recorded output pretty scarce.


Check Out Eric Johnson CDs And DVDs Here!

Visual Sound 1 Spot Pedal Power Supply

I'm a big fan of Bob Weil and his company, Visual Sound.

I own a couple of his pedals -- an original issue Route 66 overdrive (with the coveted new-old-stock JRC4558D chip) and the ultra-lush H2O analog chorus/echo. This guy makes a good product.

And Visual Sound's 1 Spot is hands down my favorite pedal power supply.

Doing away with conventional notions of bulky power supplies with toroidal transformers, the aptly-named 1 Spot handles up to 1700 mA (milliamps) -- compare this to the once ubiquitous Boss PSA adapters rated at 200mA.

Assorted multiplug cables are available as options, allowing one to daisy-chain pedals with standard 'barrel' power sockets. It's interesting to note that this connecter was pioneered by Boss/Roland around 1977 and is now the de facto standard that has been adopted by virtually every manufacturer.

For very old pedals, cable adapters for the early US-type 1/8" (3.5mm) are available allowing one to power 70's and '80s DOD, Ibanez, MXR and Electro Harmonix devices -- I successfully powered my original 1980 TS808 Tubescreamer on my pedalboard from the 1 Spot before deciding the 808 was too valuable to take out on gigs.

Also available are adapter options for Line 6 pedals and reverse-polarity adapters for Yamaha devices. And there's even a battery clip converter to power pedals that do not have a DC socket such as the earlier Dunlop and Vox wahs, or (if you have 'em and are so inclined), vintage Fuzz Faces and Colorsound Tonebenders .

I bought two 1 Spots five years ago and the one I've been using has proven very reliable through several hundred gigs and, touch wood, shows no signs of quitting yet. And I've not had reason to break out the spare at all.