Is the Big Muff a noisy pedal and is there a quieter fuzz that does a similar job?

[S.Crow]

I picked up an EH Big Muff recently and whilst I like the sound, used with my Yamaha with 3 SC pups the noise level is more than I like.
Compared to my drive and distortion pedals, the background noise is noticeable from about the 2 position versus 5+ for the other pedals.
Is this typical for this pedal?
Do people use noise gates to reduce this type of noise or just live with it?
I’m wondering if I’d be better off with a more modern fuzz or does this just go with the terrain?
Any recommendations for a replacement that isn’t boutique pricing?
Thanks

[CS70]

Yes, very high gain pedals are the reason noise gates are used with guitar playing

It's not that the Big Muff is noisy per se - it is no more, no less than any other pedals.. but since what it does is that it boosts the input signal, amplifies in order to clip it, add whatever Tone you've dialed and finally boosts the output again, any little amount of noise will be amplified to sky levels. And single coils will have noise unless you're on the moon.

Having buffered pedals afterwards can increase the highs making the noise even more noticeable. You can try to use an EQ pedal before or after and see what it does.

Also really be careful of anything that can picked up by the single coils: away from computer monitors, lamps - anything really.

[Murray B]

I had a Double Muff for a while - it didn't strike me as being excessively noisy compared to anything else I've used over the years. I haven't used any fuzz / high gain pedals that I would be able to describe as quiet - but they may be out there....

Single coils are a pain for high gain sounds in general though unless you have noiseless pickups / have shielded the guitar very well / fitted a noise cancelling coil in the cavity.

Shielding / Noiseless pickups have been covered in other posts recently so have a dig around the forum, but it's not easy to get pristine high gain sounds from standard single coils. A guitarist I used to play with used a noise suppressor pedal to effectively silence the guitar when it wasn't being played - it worked okay for him as the noise wasn't that noticeable compared wall of guitar coming out of the amp when he was playing.

I've gone down the noiseless pickup / hum cancelling circuit route and not looked back. Some would argue that the guitars lose a little tone compared to the standard pickup types (I agree) -but it's a compromise I'm happy to make.

[S.Crow]

Thanks all.
It's likely that my next guitar will have Noiseless pickups as I used to have no problems with the Lace Sensor Gold in my 90s Strat Plus.

I wanted to get the lay of the land to see whether I should return the Muff within the 30 day window.
I will keep it as I like the tone.

My Yamaha isn't particularly well shielded I think, but I am going to replace it so don't plan on modding it.

[Wonks]

I have a big muff mini and that isn't particularly noisy. It's a pedal that uses a lot of gain to get a high level of clipping - it is a fuzz, not an overdrive or distortion - so it's going to get quite noisy if you turn the gain up quite high.

Turn the guitar volume right down and all the noise you hear with the BM on is created by the pedal, not noise from the pickups. With the BM gain/sustain and tone at at 50% and the volume set for parity with the bypass level, you really shouldn't notice a lot of hiss if the pedal is healthy. If it's very noisy, then it's probably faulty. But check the pedal on it's own, with just it plugged into any common PSU in case you've got some ground loop noise making it worse (you shouldn't get this if the PSU has proper isolated outputs).

[S.Crow]

Thanks Wonks.
The power supply is an MXR M239 ISO but I will swap it for a Voodoo Lab tomorrow.
The setup generally is very quiet.
My concern is that it seems noticeably noisier than my boost and distortion pedals.
The distortion gets noisy on full but I don't use it like that.
The Muff gets noisy even on moderate settings.
I will try what you suggested and see if I can live with it.

[CS70]

My concern is that it seems noticeably noisier than my boost and distortion pedals.

Yeah it would: a boost adds only a moderate amount of gain, and possibly only in certain frequency bands; a distortion pedal doesn't add gain at all per se: it changes the signal shape by other means, but the peak level can just as well be the same.

A fuzz is like an overdrive on steroids, or like having three one after the other.

Which is why even at low-ish settings it will gain up the signal (and any noise) much more than other pedals.

[S.Crow]

Thanks CS70, that's useful to know.
I'm going to give it the "Wonks Test" this morning.

[Wonks]

CS70 is wrong here, a distortion pedal does add gain.

[CS70]

I remember hearing Keeley talk about how the point of many distortion pedals is that you could reshape the signal without boosting it.

I haven't seen all the distortion pedals in existence and I hear there are a few but I will leave you to your certainties

[Wonks]

Lets start with Keeley's own Filaments distortion.

https://robertkeeley.com/Keeley-Filamen ... Distortion

"Three stacked gain stages". Must be a misprint. "Tube amp high gain" Another misprint.

There may be some pedals that don't use gain to create a distorted signal; digital bit crushers for a start. But without any gain, you'll get a quiet fuzzy signal that doesn't add any sustain or increases feedback. Which is what 99% of distortion pedals do.

The Boss DS-1 in Boss's own words:

"In 1978, BOSS engineers changed all that by developing a unique distortion circuit for the DS-1 that produces tight, hard-edged gain with rich harmonics while retaining the unique characteristics of different guitars and playing techniques."

That 'gain' must be another typo.

[CS70]

Right, so according to you the only _way_ to distort a signal is to add gain. Ok.

[Sam Spoons]

I don't know of an analogue distortion or overdrive pedal that doesn't generate it's distortion (and overdrive is also distortion) by overdriving a component or group if components*. The resultant clipping may limit the output and thus the overall gain of the pedal.

* I'm sure there are but certainly the likes of the Big Muff use gain to drive the distortion circuit

[Wonks]

You obviously can't read, CS70. If you did, you might learn something.

Wampler pedals video on overdrive and distortion. Technical bit starts at around 12.10.

https://youtu.be/5iM6ZdDLRP8

[S.Crow]

I tested this morning with a simple chain and got different results.

Big Muff (with MXR M239 ISO) – Vox MV50 Boutique – Headphones

The Muff is quieter than my drive and distortion pedals in this combo so at least I know it isn’t faulty.
I then put it into a Yamaha THR5 amp and it sounded fine there also.
Result. Thanks all.

[Wonks]

Good. So it could be down to something like a ground loop, which you’ll need at least some isolated outputs on your PSU to cure, especially if you are using some digital pedals as well. If you have all analogue pedals, then it’s rarely an issue, but digital pedals always raise the risk of ground loop noise.

[CS70]

You obviously can't read, CS70. If you did, you might learn something.

I could point out at your lack of logic - if I could not read, I could not reply here.
But life's too short. I don't know why you choose to be so overbearingly pompous and arrogant in your dialogue, but it's your choice.

I hope you are fine and I wish you all the best.

[Wonks]

I don't know why you choose to be so overbearingly pompous and arrogant in your dialogue, but it's your choice.

You are just describing yourself here. You ascribe statements to me that I didn't say and then act as if I did.

Act like a grown-up and admit you're basically wrong this time, not like a 6-year old who hasn't got their own way.

[Watchmaker]

meh. Both of you.

[SecretSam]

Ooo, good. An internet handbag fight. Hang on while I open a beer and get some crisps.

OK carry on.

[Drew Stephenson]

Rather than give SecretSam the drama he so obviously desires, why doesn't everyone just step away from the keyboard for a bit.
Or better still, drop each other a PM and sort it out between you. We're all the good guys here.

[Guest]

CS70 is wrong here, a distortion pedal does add gain.

Surely for the final output output it is “can” not “does”?

[Wonks]

Are you talking about the output volume control? That is normally independent of the distortion generation, and because the distortion stage of most circuit designs typically adds so much gain to the original signal level, that it Is actually almost always just an attenuator. Like the volume or master volume control on a guitar amplifier.

You might get a low gain overdrive pedal, like a Klon Centaur, that can provide unity gain and a fully clean signal, but it is an overdrive, and they typically have a single adjustable gain stage, from OdB gain upwards to the limits of its amplification device, and often limited to keep things in overdrive territory.

Distortions normally have two or more gain stages in order to get closer to a square wave approximation. The Boss DS-1 has two distortion gain stages. The first is a fixed theoretical 35dB of boost. The peak signal level here exceeds the battery voltage, so the top of the waveform is already being clipped. The second stage, which is the adjustable gain/distortion section, is adjustable for between 0dB and 26.5dB of further gain. This stage then feeds into a diode hard clipping circuit. There's then a tone control, the volume control (simply a potential divider like a guitar volume control) that attenuates the signal output. Either side of all this are unity gain input and output buffer circuits.

But the circuit is always applying gain to get the distortion. You may well attenuate the signal back to the level it entered the pedal at, but the gain has been applied to achieve the very different output waveform.

[CS70]

CS70 is wrong here, a distortion pedal does add gain.

Surely for the final output output it is “can” not “does”?

Indeed. Beyond the unpleasant digression, I cannot but repeat what I wrote

Yeah it would: a boost adds only a moderate amount of gain, and possibly only in certain frequency bands; a distortion pedal doesn't add gain at all per se: it changes the signal shape by other means, but the peak level can just as well be the same.

"Gain" as "output level" - or signal amplitude at the pedal output. Simply meaning that with a boost the output level will be necessarily higher than the input (it's why it's called "boost"), but with a distortion it doesn't need to be, and it often won't. It's fairly common ime to use "gain" as a loose synonym for "amplitude at the output" when talking about pedals among guitarist friends, and this is the guitar section, not the electronics DYI one.

The Big Muff is like lining up a clean boost, a distortion, an EQ and another boost - so while not being a particularly noisy pedal by itself, the two boost sections alone will gain up any noise in the signal quite a bit.

[Wonks]

The Pro Co Rat uses a different circuit design, with a single gain stage. However the way the circuit is arranged, the the op-amp gain is theoretically 0dB -67dB (which is a lot). But at the 67dB setting, the signal peaks will be clipped due to the power supply rail limitations, but low level signals will be amplified by that amount. The op-amp used also has a limited bandwidth at 67dB, so at the maximum gain setting, only frequencies below 500Hz will get fully boosted, and frequencies above that falling off in gain as the frequency rises.

The boosted, peak levelled signal then gets passed to the familiar diode clipping pair for further signal peak flattening. The higher the gain applied, the more the signal gets clipped.

Again an EQ section and a passive, voltage divider volume (attenuator) control.

With both the DS-1 and the Rat (and many other distortion pedals), the signal that's output from the diode pair section is almost always much much lower than the op-amp boosted signal that's fed into it, but still louder than the original guitar input signal (unless you have enormously powerful pickups).

It's the EQ sections that really create and differentiate the sound signatures of the distortion pedals. One op-amp boosts the signal very much like another. Different diode pairs may clip at different input voltage levels, but basically work in the same way. So it's the EQ sections, the low and high pass filtering before and after the gain and clipping stages that really define the tone/sound of the distortion.