NPD! Musket!

[frigid midget]

I know, old news for a lot of you mahfakkas..But apparently the Musket is one of those praised pedlols that actually deserve their good reputation.

I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but as usual, when a fuzz pedal does NOT sound whimpy and nasal through my AC15C2, it can't be junk

I never got why so many muffs are often discribed as "sludgy" or heavy on the lows. I used to have a 70s EHX BMP and a Swollen Pickle MKII, plus a couple clones that aren't really worth mensioning. And they all had that brittle nasty high end sparkle. Depending on where I set the tone control, I could get it to sound pretty good, but the tone control was always a set and forget kinda knob. Plus, even with the so called 'tweaks', the Swollen Pickle didn't manage to cut throug a mix a helluva lot better than a stock EHX muff can.

But it seems like the BE peeps addressed all those things when they invented the musket. But mostly: It's got GAIN. Byebye overdrive/dist pedals in front of my muff, no need for stacking pedals and tap dancing my way towards gain levels that are well beyonde what a stock ehx can do, or to add some some beef/mids. I'm not sure which muff type it's derived from or what circuit it's closest related to, but it's definatelly smoother and less hars than any of the muffs I tried so far. Unlike on the Swollen Pickle, the tone and mids cotrols DO give me a nice range of usuable tones, which'll come in real handy when switching guitars and/or amps. One thing though: I'm not quite sure yet what the focus control is for (because fuck manuals), but the difference it makes is VERY subtle. Might as well been an internal trim pot as far as I'm concerned

Still though, I finally found a muff style fuzz I really dig


Thanks for the good advice, and most of all thanks Jeremy for the sweet deal

[blakestree]

Hey, congratulations. I'm starting to get on better with the Fix'd side of my Twosome, now. But, I was in love with the Musket side from the beginning.

[jrmy]

Glad it's working out for you man! The Musket is mighty indeed.

[misterstomach]

it's based on the green russian muff. i've owned a bunch of pedals based on that and while the musket is not my favorite of them all, i will say that in a side by side comparison of a bunch of them with my old civil war muff, the musket was probably the closest at dialing in that sound. i'd really like to try the blunderbuss musket at some point. the demos sound great. if you like the musket there's a few other "super-duper-tweaked-high-gain-green-muff-with-mids" pedals that you really should try. the most relevant contenders being EQD hoof, Earthbound Supercollider, and the BAT LSTR. If i had to say right now, i'd probably lean towards the hoof as being my favorite of that crowd, but it's a really really tough call. there's a bunch of other variations out there, but having owned everything mentioned in this post except the blunderbuss, i'd say you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to try to give those three a whirl if you can. the musket was the first of those type pedals that i owned as well and i'm really glad i went down that rabbit hole.

EDIT: i just reread your post and saw that you're playing through a vox, in which case they'll all probably sound like shit and it's a miracle that the musket tackled that amp.

[frigid midget]

^Don't get me wrong, the musket still doesn't sound stellar throuhg the vox, but it does okay considering that amp's ability to sound lame with whatever pedal you put in front of it. My Traynor YBA-1 is the opposite in that regard. Great amp imo, and just an excellent pedal platform.

At one point I decided that civil war muffs are not my thing. Probably somewhere around the time I got a LSTR, which I flipped shortly after. From what I remember, it sounded nothing like the musket. Very boomy, not at all as full and balanced, not nearly as tweakable.

It was either the musket or a supercollider for me, and the musket is what crossed my path first, plus it supposedly has more gain than a Supercollider.

I'll keep my eyes open for a Hoof. EQD is one of my fav pedal companies, and I've read nothing but raving reviews on the Hoof.

[vbps]

Hey, I have the same amp (AC15C2) and been struggling with fuzzes too.. and eventually found some that work OK (well unless the amp is fully dimed..). I’ve yet to find a good muff, so keep on updating this. The only muffy pedal I’ve tried was a Hyperion, and it definitely cut through the mix and had some balls, but it wasn’t tweakable and distinctive enough, it just didn’t sound very muffy through the Vox..

[sonidero]

All I hear from Vox Amp users is how hard it is to make 'en sound good with dirt... Why use???

[CyaNitrate]

Because you wanna sound like Brian May or the Beatles? May just dimes the amp and controls gain with his guitar's volume knob and a treble boost.

[goroth]

Focus control adjusts the amount of bass being cut going into the circuit. More bass in = looser fuzz, less bass in = tighter.

[frigid midget]

All I hear from Vox Amp users is how hard it is to make 'en sound good with dirt... Why use???

It's picky with guitars and pedals, but it's the only 2x12 combo I know of that doesn't have too much power for home use, and still enough to hold its own in the oaccasional loud jam. As long as you have another rig for teh brootalz, and just use the vox for mellow indie-esque shit and home noodling, it'll get you by. With the volume turned up a little bit, that typical chimey Vox magic appears, which imo beats glassy piercing boring fender cleans. Plus it's not that it's aweful with ALL dirt pedals, it's just that you can't throw just any fuzz pedal in front of it the way you can with a twin reverb.

Gotto admit though, I sometimes think about just replacing the vox with a nice 2x12 cab. I could haul my Traynor YBA-1 back and forth from rehearsels, attenuate it a bit, and get fucking great tones out of my fuzz pedals, AND save a couple $100 in the process...