This is a "one-off" pedal I made for J Mascis since he was here and dropping into Tym guitars for a signing but I think I need to make myself one now ..................
So I guess the concept here is pretty straight forward. The Munchkin is my clone of J's Ram Head era Big Muff that he uses for Dinosaur Jr live sound and the Fuzzilla 666 is my clone of the six transistor Univox Superfuzz which is a pedal J uses live as well.
Both of these pedals are two of my personal favorite fuzz pedals and obviously are a big part of J's live sound so I got to thinking, why not make one of my double pedals with both, just for J ?
The idea of my two pedal enclosures is that I can build any two of my pedals into one box, with one power supply so you can run them together as essentially one pedal. The enclosure is the same footprint as a standard US Big Muff sideways or exactly two of my portrait type enclosures put together.
The artwork plates are just put together depending on what pedals are to be joined. Easy, right ? Well, no because some of my pedals are in a landscape style so Tony, who does all my artwork changed some designs around so I could get them printed in both styles. Then it's easy .......
I probably don't need to go into the details of the Munchkin as there's plenty of info here about it already.
The Univox Superfuzz is one of the other truly great fuzz pedals from history. It is a six transistor monster of a fuzz with an octave and heaps of gain.
The original had a tone switch on the side to take a lot of top end off and make it truly one of the great "stoner" fuzzes of all time. This is the mini toggle I've added just above the Volume (or olume) and Tone knobs. The original doesn't have a tone knob but this gets you all the tones from one side of the switch to the other.
Since taking the pics I also went back and added a volume bypass switch to the Munchkin side. It's a mini toggle in the same position on the Munchkin side. I just can't leave things alone.
The original Superfuzz has a trim pot inside (some don't) to adjust the bias on the octave. I have added this to the outside on this pedal just above the in/out jacks on the back. With the gain at higher settings you fine tune the octave to get the sweet spot and with the gain at low settings you can get the fuzz to splutter which gives a cool effect. I don't imagine J ever gets down to those lower settings ................
Like most of my double pedals each pedal is wired as a single pedal so you run a patch lead between them to join them. This gives you the option of running them in either direction by patching the pedals back to front (Fuzzilla first) OR using each pedal separately in a stereo set up.
I'll talk to J as to weather we might be able to offer this as a limited edition or special issue type thing ? The original plan was to make 300 Fuzz Munchkins and that was it. That may still be the case and to be honest this would still be a GREAT fuzz with another Big Mud on one side but the Munchkin just makes it that little bit more special ..............