With the Large Beaver, we set out to give you the most absolutely accurate sonic recreation of an early era Big Muff Pi, but with some added tonal flexibility. Since the component selections used by Electro Harmonix in the early days were very inconsistent, there are many conflicting opinions of what exactly Triangle Era specs and what Ram's Head Era specs should be. So we decided to investigate for ourselves. We sampled dozens of vintage Big Muffs and recorded the component values for dozens of specimens. We then compiled the data to determine what the average value (or closest to a standard component value) was for each component. This gives us a far better idea of what the intended component values should be and a tone that is more consistently familiar.
The BYOC Large Beaver kit comes with parts to build to Triangle Era specs or Rams Head Era specs including BC239C transistors. We also added a modification to make the circuit better adapted for any playing situation.
Because the Big Muff Pi has such a scooped mid EQ, it can make it hard to cut through in a band setting or impossible to nail your favorite famous recorded muff tones because of post recording EQ. We added a 4 way EQ switch that affects how the tone knob works. Position 1 is the standard mid scooped tone knob that we all know and love. Position 2 is a flat mids tone knob that you'll find on a lot of the modern boutique Muff clones. Position 3 is a mid hump tone knob which really cuts through and gives it a real overdrive flavor when you roll back on the guitar's volume knob. And position 4 is a tone knob bypass, like you'd find on some of the later versions of the Big Muff Pi, but never before on the Triangle or Ram's Head Era versions. When you take the passive tone stack out of the way, the tone knob bypass offers a huge volume boost with unadulterated vintage muff tone....very cool!
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