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Old EHX Little Big Muff with Expression/Volume Pedal setup?

Re-Pete

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I have an old Electro Harmonix  Little Big Muff that's quite a nasty piece of work.

There's no tone pot, just the volume pot. You have a slide selection switch that gives you a choice of either chainsaw-buzz or old-fat-guy-letting-one-go.  :sad1:

I was wondering if one of those Mission Engineering Expression Pedals or Volume Pedals might be a way to leave the little beast up on full and bring it into circuit via use of the pedal? If it can be done - also to have right out of the circuit, when the pedal is OFF. :dontknow:
 
As I recall, there's very little to those things. Then, there's a ton of room in a Mission pedal. You could probably fit the electronics of even a full Big Muff Pi into one. Basically, it's just a simple solid state preamp stage with some inverse parallel diodes to turn your signal into square waves before sending them to the amp's input.

So, what you're asking for is doable - you might have to change the pot value in the Mission unit to whatever EH uses for a level control in the Muff PI, but pots are a dime a dozen. Probably want to buy one of the better parts if you can, but you're still only talking $12 or so.

I'll tell ya, though... EH makes a thing called an LPB1 (Linear Power Booster 1) that will bang the socks off the input stage of your amp (very similar device to the Little Muff, without the diodes). If you want some nice distortion, that's a more satisfying way of getting it than chewing up your input. Sounds more like an amp turned up to irresponsible levels, and they're relatively inexpensive.
 
Thanx for the advice Cagey. I don't wanna touch the FX unit - it's a bit of a collectible these days. Most of those Little Big Muffs have a pot adjustable tone control but this one doesn't. Slide switch instead.

It's not been broken or any way damaged because the darn thing is just about useless! If some rich Microsoft executive wants to offer me a few hundred for it in a few years time, I'll take it...Otherwise, it's small enough not to take up too much real estate on the shelving in my spare room.

But for dramatic overtones, if I could sweep in a foot pedal, it might just make the thing workable. I was thinking of just taking an output from a Expression or Volume Pedal, into the EHX then out of the EHX - back into Pedal or onto amp? Not sure how I could do this but if I get the motivation some time later, I'll look it up & figure something out. Would be nice if I could control the thing by the expression pedal and take it completely out of the pedal circuit when it's off, but I'd guess that would take me into Bradshaw territory (and $$) if I wanted that sort of sophistication?

It was the first pedal that I bought.

Stupid thing was, I passed up many a new product back then because it was 'Made in Japan'. So I bought this Little Big Muff - Made in USA you see. I do hope I didn't pass up a first series genuine Tube Screamer, but chances are, I probably did. (You see, they were only Ibanez back then and well, being "Made in Japan" had a stigma to it. How times change!)  :doh:

I have a truckload of FX with the Kemper, and that Kemper is going to keep me busy learning. But if I can find out the input impedance of this Little fart box at some later stage, I'll bother Mission Engineering with an enquiry.

Thanx for your interest. :icon_thumright:

EDITED to include pix of pedal..

http://en.audiofanzine.com/guitar-distortion-overdrive-fuzz/electro-harmonix/little-big-muff-pi-original/medias/pictures/a.play,m.15491.html
 
I'm sorry - I didn't consider the collectability of thing as that means nearly nothing to me. I'm more of a pragmatist.

Regarding that, though, you're going to wreck it with any kind of modification.

Perhaps if there's a sonic quality to the thing that you like, you might want to look at some of the clones out there. A lot of those old pedals were pretty simple, so building replacements isn't difficult. They don't give the little rascals away, but there's no collector value to them so you can do whatever you want without punishment.
 
Nah, the unit is just about useless to me. It was more a passing thought for me last night (my time), about whether it could be looped into a pedal board via a volume/expression pedal dedicated to it, to somehow control the FX tone.

I found a few years after I bought this, that the tone pot was extremely useful when dialling in distortion, as I bought a Rat pedal. It was 100% better than this Little Big Muff.

I think if there's any pedal I'd bother getting these days (that's not on some digital profile within the Kemper), it would be a Bad Monkey. I have a Clinch FX EP3 type pedal which does some tone shifting/boosting to an amp that beefs it up a bit, but otherwise most of my stuff is now in the digital domain.

Now, also with the Kemper, I can 'crank' up the profiles of the amp I originally wanted to have, and get the tone I was originally aiming for, but at manageable volume levels.  :occasion14:

 
Re-Pete said:
Now, also with the Kemper, I can 'crank' up the profiles of the amp I originally wanted to have, and get the tone I was originally aiming for, but at manageable volume levels.  :occasion14:

That's probably the most enjoyable thing I've found with the Axe Fx. Even at low volumes, it romps and stomps. I can jam at 2am and nobody knows it.
 
If that EX muff is really collectable, I recommend selling it and using the proceeds to buy a unit that will do what you want.
 
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