Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi NYC

     This pedal is well known, a total classic.   The world famous Big Muff Pi, made by Electro Harmonix.   This is the most recent version, a total steal at $70.00, pretty amazing for a pedal made in NYC.
     The pedal offers a smooth, slightly dark distortion/fuzz sound with a scooped mid, a fat bottom end, and a sweet high end.   With the three knobs you can get a fairly wide variety of fuzz tones.   With the tone at noon, the pedal is slightly darker than most, but the tone knob has enough range that you can dial in a bright enough sound with ease.  Lower gain settings sound pretty awesome, the pedal sounds pretty distorted with the gain knob at noon, and with the gain knob dimed, you get massive sustain and tons of gain.   There's so much written already about this pedal and all of the variations that I don't feel the need to write anything more.   Buy it.   A pedal collection without at least one Big Muff Pi is not complete.

Catalinbread Karma Suture, new superior Harmonic Percolator copy

     First of all, the silk-screened box, custom pick and free sticker were really nice.   I've never bought a pedal that came in a static shielded bag before-- nice.   Secondly, the graphics on the Karma Suture are really nice and the white vintage-style knobs are cool too.
     After I did the review of the Chuck Collins version of the Interfax Harmonic Percolator, I ended up selling it.   The pedal was noisy and had a subdued high end on all of it's settings that started to bug me after a while, and it ended up on Craigslist.  Although it's authentic to the original, the enclosure was flimsy and the components, although NOS, were not the highest quality.   The enclosure was held together with huge wood screws and one of the holes stripped.   It looked home-made, which it was, mostly due to it's lack of lettering or other graphics.
     A few months later, the folks at Catalinbread introduced the Karma Suture.  This is a boutique pedal, with NOS and newer components of the highest quality.   Right off the bat, it solved both the noise issue and the subdued high end.   Plus, at it's highest settings, it never gets nasal, like the Collins version.   It's got the standard output (volume) and input (gain), plus two extra knobs: one for diodes and one for density.
     The diodes knobs goes from more open and uncompressed with less clipping, less high end and more volume to a more saturated, compressed sound with more high end and less volume., Between the two extremes ther's a wide variety of tonal shades, which you can fine tune to your liking.   The output knob can be used to compensate for the differences in volume.
     The density knob controls the amount of low end fed into the input and goes from a thinner, cutting brighter tone all the way counter-clockwise to a fatter, slightly more saturated sound all the way clockwise.    With the knob at noon, it offers the most balanced tone.   The tone is a little cleaner with the knob all the way down and a little more saturated with the knob all the way up.
     With the two extra knobs, the pedal offers a substantially wider range of usable sounds than the Collins version, with more fidelity and less of the Collins pedals unwanted noise.   The enhanced even order harmonics are still there, with useable tone on all the different settings of the density and diodes knobs.    The pedal is touch responsive and dynamic, with excellent note clarity, even with complex chords.   The even order harmonics the pedal churns out keep all the notes clear and distinct.
     This is probably the best Harmonic Percolator type pedal out there.   I haven't seen or actually tried out of them (obviously), but of the two I've tried, the Karma Suture is definitely the better sounding and more versatile of the two.   Plus, it's substantially cheaper than the current price for a new Chuck Collins Harmonic Percolator.

Electro Harmonix Germanium 4 Big Muff

     This pedal receives a more bang for the buck award for combing two separate pedals in one, an overdrive and a distortion, with the option of stacking both sides at once.   It uses two Germanium transistors in each side, hence the Germanium 4 in it's name.
     The first side in the chain is the distortion, with knobs for gain, bias, volts, and volume.   The bias knob goes from compressed and squishy counter-clockwise to having more attack and a sharper sound clockwise.   The volts knobs controls how much voltage the circuit gets and can be decreased for a starving battery effect.   The volts knob is highly interactive with the bias knob.   With both of them, you can get low-fi tones, stuttery gated tones, open ringing overdrives, all the way up to more modern high gain distortion and everything in-between.
     The overdrive side has knobs for gain, bias, tone, and volume.   This side has a warm, low gain overdrive.   Even with the gain knob and bias knob maxed, it doesn't have alot of gain.   The bias knob offers a decent amount of gain shaping range and the tone knob is functional enough.   I wish it had more range on the gain knob, but it's a minor complaint.
     With both sides on the tonal options increase and you can further modify the overall sound substantially.   This pedal offers a wide range of options and has fairly complex tones for a pedal in it's price range.

Boss DN-2 Dyna Drive

     This pedal used to go for over $100.00, then it dropped to around $90.00, now it can be had new for about $50.00.   I don't know if this is limited to stock on hand, it might be on sale for being discontinued, I'm not sure.
     This pedal is in-between an high gain overdrive and a distortion.  Although it's a digital pedal, it still sounds fairly warm and musical.   It's got a fairly transparent tone, none of the mid-scoop and screeching high end of the DS-1.   Although not as sophisticated as the Fulltone OCD, it's got a nice touch responsive mechanism in it's circuit based on the Dyna Amp circuit of the Roland Cube 60, so that when you play softly it distorts less and as you play harder the gain increases.  At it's current price of $50.00, I'd say it's a steal, offering yet another flavor of Boss dirt for the budget-conscious guitarist.

Vanhouten Maestro MFZ-1 copy fuzz, currently available as Chicago Ironworks Black Fudge

   This pedal is no longer made as a custom pedal in a plain yellow enclosure, but it's currently available as the Chicago Ironworks Black Fudge.   If you order it now it comes in a nice silk-screened black enclosure with the Chicago Ironworks logo and Black Fudge graphics.   It's a copy of the infamous Maestro MFZ-1 fuzz, with the original TL022 chip and modern and NOS parts, built in a smaller enclosure with user-friendly knobs.
     The pedal has two knobs for volume and gain.   The volume has to be turned up fairly high to get unity gain.   The gain knob goes from a crunchy lower gain overdrive/distortion to a fairly high gain fuzz, with an emphasis on the odd order harmonics.   The pedal sounds good throughout all of the gain settings, with a fairly smooth distortion that has it's own unique sound.   It's a cool sounding pedal and although I never tried an original Maestro, I'm convinced that it faithfully recreates the vibe of the original, as it has a unique and musical sound.   Both creamy and gritty, sounding like the 70's pedal it copies, it was worth the low price I got it for,   The new version is well worth the money too, with it's improved look.   Vanhouten has been building all sorts of cool boutique-quality pedals for a long time, his new line of Chicago Ironworks pedals are the next logical step in his development as a worthy pedal maker.

Moen Moo fuzz

   This sturdy pedal from Chinese pedal makers Moen offers a nice, inexpensive version of the Electro Harmonix Big Muff, with gain, volume and tone knobs, like the real thing.   It's got a similar sound, with a little more upper mids and high end and a less pronounced low end, although it still sounds fairly fat.   It seems to have a little less gain, but still offers alot of sustain and harmonics.   I read somewhere on the internet that it's circuit is similar to a Ram's Head or Triangle Big Muff, but i have no idea of this is actually true.   If you're on a budget or if you simply collect Big Muff knockoffs, this pedal might be right up your alley, for around $50.00.