The Original Big Muff - The Venerable V1 Perf

I know, I know, it's been only around three weeks since I posted a Big Muff Pi build, but I do enjoy the circuit and seem to have very good luck with them, regardless of the source of PCB. For this particular build I wanted to try and go as old school as possible, with the earliest V1 model - a "triangle" BMP built on perf board. Once again I'm using the AionFX Halo PCB for this build, and I'd already had an enclosure worked up in my most recent batch from Tayda. 

For this build, I'm using sort of a mix of modern and more vintage components, despite the fact that it is replicating a very early version of the BMP. I considered going "old school" with the resistors, but I didn't have stock in all of the correct values, as the load out is a bit different in many spots compared to my more typical Ram's head vintage builds. As you can see from the photo below from Kit Rae's site, this original version of the BMP was extremely primitive. Some day I may decide to get ambitious and try something like that as I think it would be a fun challenge, but I wasn't quite up for that this time around!

Perf Board V1 BMP from Kit Rae's page

While the resistors are all modern, the capacitors are a little bit of a mix. Most are new production film capacitors, MLCC, and a couple of ceramics. I did use a couple of the older Panasonic film capacitors because they were what I had available in the right value. The diodes are classic 1N914, and I'm using PN5133 transistors for the build.

For the enclosure, I went with a slightly changed version of the graphics I used for my Triangle build - although this is a Tayda UV print rather than a waterslide transfer! In terms of sound, this one is different from my later pattern BMPs in a lot of ways. It feels more like a "fuzz" in many ways than a distortion - at least until you get the gain cranked way up. It also has a bit different resonance than the later versions of the pedal as well. I really need to see how it stacks with other pedals because the sound is different enough to be distinguishable from other BMP variants.