My parental units are the best. We have Christmas every year with the whole family. Not a winter solstice, for we are not trying to refind our pagan roots, we celebrate Christmas with all the enthusiasm a bunch of atheists, agnostics, buddists, and lapsed Catholics can muster. This past year, my parental units asked what I wanted, and I wall wanted for Christmas was a Russian Big Muff. Sure, that sounds bad, but I meant the Russian Sovtek Big Muff Pi Version 7 fuzz pedal in the big green tank box with the tall logo. And they delivered, in damn fine condition. Fucking A. Thanks, eBay Santa.
I’ve wanted one of these ever since Ludicra was playing Car Fest, and the bass player of Lullabye Arkestra fired up her’s, and I ran across the room saying, “What the FUCK was that beautiful noise?” Turned out to be this pedal. This particular model is coveted by bass players. It’s the same as any Big Muff, a classic fuzz on it’s own, but the capacitor values in the various fuzz stages differ enough from other models so that this is the one that can output the brown notes to hapless victims causing uncontrollable bowel movements. Plus, this version has that bad ass big green tank box, and that’s just cool. Yup, fashion beats function 28 days of month, as my friend Jamie puts it.
For more info on all Big Muffs, there’s an excellent resource here: http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html
The whole history of Mike Matthews, and Elektro Harmonix, and Sovtek is a fascinating novel in and of itself, and a topic for another day. I had other fish to fry inside this rooskie.