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I have heard that the 850 is basically the muff with some value changes. Is this true? I really like the little different textures the Ibanez has and if I can translate that to my muff I will be a happy boy!

Where did you hear/read this?
You can turn your muff into an overdrive, essentially.
Turning into a ts808? Nah. You can tweak it 'til you get kinda close, but not really.

Not the TS808 the OD 850 man. Check some demos. It is billed as an overdrive but sounds like a muff. Everyone I have ever talked to says it is a muff clone.

I hadn't heard this. Isn't the muff *also* just a Colorsound fuzz pedal with an additional boost stage?

My bad...link me. My fingers are tired.

The OD 850 is pretty tasty, and fetches big coin these days it seems.

kosta wrote:The OD 850 is pretty tasty, and fetches big coin these days it seems.

exactly why I want to convert my muff reissue! hahaha

OD850 is a Muff
The Colorsound Jumbo Tone Bender is a muff minus the first set of clipping diodes (Q2)

Here's how to change a NYCRI to a Jumbo Tone Bender

Schem for the 850

Just quickly comparing the 850 to the Muff...

The main difference is the tone control. Otherwise, they are nearly identical. The only other thing I see that stands out is the 850 has an emitter bypass cap on Q4, which would boost the output volume a bit, and possible cause Q4 to clip a tiny bit more.

I don't see a direct way to mod an existing Muff's tone control to that of an 850 without doing some trace cuts and off-board components (like on a small sub-board). The bypass cap you could add easily, but that's not really what's making the 850 sound different...or if it does, it's only a small part of the difference.


I think a cool project would be a tone-control-free Big Muff PCB that has a "tone out" pad so you can rig up whatever TONE control you want, or even have multiple simple tone controls that are switchable. That would be cool! Maybe I'll do that. hmmmmm

You are my DIY saviour.

It would also be an ideal platform for running a simplified Muff with no tone control. With no tone control at all, you can omit Q4 and all the associated components. A toneless Muff can sound damn awesome. But I also like the idea of doing a Baxandall stack, too. Or you could go buck-wild and use a Marshall-style TMB stack.

Yeah, let's do this.

On third thought, the same thing should be possible with just about any Muff clone PCB. Or perhaps with a real muff, provided you remove the existing tone control components and also the tone pot. Then you could run a wire from Q3's output coupling cap to the offboard tone control board, and then a wire from the tone board's output back into the input coupling cap of Q4.

Okay, so it can be done. I lied earlier.


What version Muff do you have? We can start by looking at the board layout.

I have 6 gruntbox PCB's just sitting here and I just found out I can make a tonebender. this is epic win

eatyourguitar wrote:I have 6 gruntbox PCB's just sitting here and I just found out I can make a tonebender. this is epic win

Yeah man. You can make about four different fuzz versions if you compare the schematics and swap out the right parts.

I think a cool thing to do (and it's on my loooooong list) is build up a Muff and have both sets of clipping diodes on switches (that is, first set on a switch and second set on its own switch). You have a Muff, a Supa Tonebender, and a couple other things.

You can also do the Jumbo tonebender if you leave off the last transistor stage. Other minor changes would need to be made (jumpers and such), but it's all doable with a good Muff clone board.

culturejam wrote:On third thought, the same thing should be possible with just about any Muff clone PCB. Or perhaps with a real muff, provided you remove the existing tone control components and also the tone pot. Then you could run a wire from Q3's output coupling cap to the offboard tone control board, and then a wire from the tone board's output back into the input coupling cap of Q4.

Okay, so it can be done. I lied earlier.


What version Muff do you have? We can start by looking at the board layout.

I have the NYC reissue BMP. I did the emitter mod and tone bypass as well. LOVE it now but kinda want to play around with it.