This is one of my 20th anniversary pedals named after the place when all this started. Where I made all of my guitars and where my original shop was.
As anyone who follows me knows I LOVE the Rams Head era BM which is why I picked it for this very special fuzz. This is my favourite Big Mud with a few special features.
Its a Rams Head Big Mud with low gain (lower than in any other Mud) NOS big tin can transistors. I was cleaning up looking for parts and found a bag of old tin cans and put them in my transistor tester. Initially I thought the hfe was too low for a Big Mud so i put them aside but it kept bugging me. I like low gain BM's and the harmonics they produce but I realised I hadn't tried them in a Rams circuit.
I only have 100 of these transistors which is fine as I'm only making 20 (there's 4 in each pedal) of these to celebrate my 20th anniversary.
I started with the standard silicon clipping diodes but it was a little, insipid sounding with all those mids scooped out so I tried re-biasing the low gain transistors slightly and then tried some germanium diodes, which I've never used in any of my Big Muds before.
These two features give a warmer, less saturated break up with a slightly fuzzier tone and more harmonics. It's much more sensitive to turning down the guitar volume because of the low gain and those germaniums, with those tin cans gives REALLY nice harmonics.
The rest is all standard Rams Head Big Mud but it's housed in my custom flat top stainless enclosure I usually use for signature pedals or special occasions, which I guess this is.
I only have 100 of these transistors which is fine as I'm only making 20 (there's 4 in each pedal) of these to celebrate my 20th anniversary. I will be making 4 batches of 5 over 2017 to celebrate 20 years.
Huge thanks to Tony Guitarnerd for the awesome artwork (as always) and huge thanks to everyone who's supported this place to help it get to 20 years.