Welcome to my Big Muff re-housing page!
I set this page up to be a sort of guide for people who want to rehouse their own Big Muff pedal. I started out myself by rehousing green Muffs, but since then I have worked on a bunch of different Muff variants -- everything from blue/gray Sovtek Big Muffs (so-called "Civil War Muffs") to vintage transistor-based and IC-based USA models. This work has culminated in reverse-engineering and building my own clone of the famous Way Huge Swollen Pickle, which is one of my favorite Muff derivatives.
If you're here for help rehousing a Big Muff -- particularly a green Sovtek Big Muff -- then hopefully my projects will at least point you in the right direction. The earlier projects show how little I understood when I first started, so that should give you the confidence to dive in there and give it a shot. Be a little wary of following my work step-by-step, though. I wasn't always following the most efficient process!
The later projects are much more straightforward, as I had learned much more about bypass, switching, and reading schematics. Once you know what you're looking at, it's not very difficult at all. I also highly recommend Jack Orman's Muff and Rat e-book, which has been an invaluable tool in my Muff-modding exploits. He clearly explains the intent behind each component of the Muff design, as well as ways you can modify both the Big Muff and the Rat to fit your musical taste a bit better.
I'm going to leave each of these projects up for you to view, but keep in mind that a lot of these older Electro-Harmonix pedals had several internal variations, even when the outsides looked the same. Before using one of my projects as a basis, make sure it has the same circuit board and layout so you don't get in over your head. Though the basic schematic is always the same, the exact parts and layout sometimes differ.
The first two projects are photoessays that show most of the steps I went through. The next couple are much more simplified versions, labeling the important bits the Big Muff circuit board and relying on your ability to hook those up to new hardware. If I have the time, I'll try to do one more photoessay that can be used as a step-by-step guide for just about any Muff model.
It's actually not a very difficult process. When you rehouse and add true bypass to just about any pedal, there are just a few things you need to watch for.
PCB input (the signal coming in to the board circuit)
PCB output (the signal leaving the board)
Board power (usually +9 volts)
Ground
The PCB output most often goes to one of the outside lugs on the volume pot. Then the center lug is referred to as "board out" because it's the last part of the actual circuit, and the place where the signal goes from the circuit to the true bypass switch.
Once you know where each of these elements are, you can simply use this diagram from General Guitar Gadgets to put it all together. On the first two projects, I was still figuring all this stuff out. You can browse through the photoessays to see how I stumbled through it all. On subsequent projects, I understood a bit more about how it all worked, and I simply labeled the vital components.
Okay...now let's get on with the projects!
PROJECT #1 - Green Russian Sovtek Muff
PROJECT #2 - Green Sovtek Muff
PROJECT #3 - Blue/Gray Sovtek Muff
PROJECT #4 - Green Sovtek Muff
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