Muff Malo

Project overview

Inspired by Fulltone’s Mas Malo, this circuit delivers the spiciest, vicious, and massive muff style distortion/fuzz sound waves.

Introduction

Muff Malo delivers thick distortion tones with plenty of hair and some massive fuzz sounds with lots of saturation – even at low volumes. With this versatile board, you will craft a pedal that can fit in all your muff desires. It comes with top-mounted jacks, High Impedance input, ultra-Low Impedance output, with an ability to match flawlessly with any guitar, effect, or amp. Part of this circuit magic resides on the 3 BC184C transistors that make all the difference.

Use the Drive knob to control the amount of distortion and get more saturation and harshness by increasing the Hot knob. If you turn Hot (which re-biases the first transistor in the circuit) to about 8 o’clock and the Drive knob to 11 o’clock, you will get a guitar sound very close to that of Badfinger’s 1970 rocker “No Matter What.” Dial them back and nail many Jimmy Page studio sounds and Pink Floyd waves.

Controls

• Color
• Drive
• Hot
• Volume

For any technical questions regarding this build don’t forget to check out our Facebook Group and our forum at Free Stomp Boxes.

Muff Malo – Building Docs

Muff Malo – Drilling template