Well, this one took a while with a busy year and supply line issues but my 25th anniversary SILVER BIG MUDᗡ is finally here.
Back at the end of last year I decided I was going to make 25 handmade Big Muds based on one of my personal favourite BM circuits, the Rams Head but in a form I hadn't built before for my anniversary this year.
Starting with the RH circuit I started tweaking components values based on some of my other favourite BM circuits, the Civil War and the Triangle to "shape" a RH to where I might like it better.
That's a big ask for me because I LOVE (I mean LOVE) the (my) basic RH circuit for its output and clarity while being huge while keeping it tight. I already make a few different versions of this 70's circuit in my standard Rams Head, my RH with different transistors, my Violet Rams Head, my Fuzz munchkin, and in fact one of my 15th anniversary pedals was a version of this circuit. It was also the circuit I chose to have a poke at EH after a C&D with my Double D, which this hand stamped version references too. Yeah, I've made a few of them (there's more ...) but there are plenty of great "Rams Heads" out there to make versions of because of EHs now famous inconsistency.
Once you've obsessed over the BM circuit like I have you get to know what components make the slightest number of differences and which ones work well together. Sometimes changing a part of the gain structure or tone stack works well with one circuit but make another one sound terrible. Finding these slight differences and working them into other circuits is a lot of fun and sometimes, just sometimes you find magic moments.
The clarity and tightness I love in the RH circuit is something that keeps me coming back to it but sometimes it can get a little ... bitey with some guitars and amps. As BM know sometimes just rolling off the tone control can choke the tone a little and it moves the mid-range around so having the perfect tone but a little too trebly is sometimes hard to work around.
So, using what I know about this circuit I have made this anniversary version a little, darker and more open sounding kind of like a good Russian version but without the flab.
I was going to use a stash of NOS tin can transistors I had but going through different gain stages I decided to use a box of NOS BC549s that had just the right amount of hFE for this circuit.
With the circuit sorted I ordered some of my stainless-steel enclosures which was the start of my supply lines issues this year (along with guitar neck building timber that took 6 months to arrive)
Once the enclosures arrived, I thought about contacting Tone for artwork, but I didn't want to bug him and lots of people have commented on how much they love my simple hand stamped enclosures. I thought this might be cool for a limited run and add a little bit more of a personal touch to a limited-edition anniversary run.
I had already decided on the name, the SILVER BIG MUDᗡ, being named for the enclosure and my silver (25th) anniversary so I set about hand stamping all 25 enclosures, by hand...
So, at almost the very end of my anniversary year they're finally ready to go out into the world. I am only making 25 of these all up. This circuit will not be revisited with new artwork like some other special and limited circuits that people beg me to make more of. This is a pretty special milestone for me having run this little business in Brisbane officially now for 25 years. Starting off under my house in the mid 90's and eventually building a dedicated workshop in the very early 2000's. Opening a shop and moving into bigger premises a couple of years later and then having that closed down by greedy landlords during a global pandemic and moving back into my little workshop to focus on making and fixing stuff that makes me (and hopefully you) happy.
These will be on the site early next week to give everyone plenty of notice they're coming. Check my NEWS feed for details.
Be safe. Be sensible. Support each other.