9 of the Best Stomp Under Foot Fuzz Pedals

This Flipside Music exclusive is described as a punchier, more mids and more gain Russian era Big Muff - which I'm equating with the later Black Russian varieties. You get the classic Muff 3-knob topology of Volume, Tone and Sustain - and a somewhat slightly more richly flavoured Russian Style Muff. This still sounds great, but is down in my pecking order - below all the more versatile 4-knob varieties. I have classified this as a 'nice-to-have' while most of the others listed here are more 'essential' at least for me!

I still love this first of my SUF acquisitions - with its beautifully textured Tweedy-Fuzz style tones. This is a Hybrid Fuzz significantly evolved from a Muff style circuit - featuring here 3 silicon and one germanium transistors. I see this pedal as somewhat adjacent to my True North Rocky Mountain Fuzz - the latter of which provides a slightly more cutting texture and articulation. They are both what I term as 'Fuzz-Drive' pedals sounding like a really well balanced mix of Overdrive and Fuzz - where you can obviously crank up or temper the constituent fuzz portion in the tone. Nick Jaffe introduced me to this pedal - and it probably needs to go back up on the rotation again fairly soon!

I've mentioned several times on this blog that I generally don't much favour the original / simpler 2-knob iterations of fuzzes - although I do have a few. I much prefer a third Bias or Tone knob to give me more variety, and help me get the right mix of tone and texture. In this case though Matt has engineered a slightly aggressive Silicon Fuzz to work very well with the 2-knob topology, where the 'Fuzz' knob is just amazingly calibrated and gives you everything from fairly subdued overdrive to a monstrously ripping, gnarly fuzz at its peak. Like the best of the silicon fuzz faces - the Regulus VIII varieties in particular - this can deliver a really vibrantly and visceral fuzz experience - which can be one of the most exhilarating fuzz tones to play with. I own the early 2N222A transistor variety Hellephant - while its replacement is the BC239 Iron Tusk variety!

This sort of Triangle / Green Russian Hybrid Muff seems to have been recently discontinued - which puts it at the very top of my SUF acquisitions list. As with all SUF pedals these come in a variety of artworks - and the one I like best is the one pictured up top! One of the flagship 4-knob SUF Muff pedals - but understandable somewhat in the shade of the more popular Civil Unrest and Violet Menace varieties. There aren't too many of these doing the rounds as such - so I need to pin one down relatively soon - or play the endless waiting game on Reverb.com! I've had the opportunity to acquire one of these a few times now - but my ever-shifting priorities have always gotten in the way. It will undoubtedly happen someday soon though!

This of course featured in my recent 28 Best Rat Style Pedals roundup and is widely considered one of the very best of that type. This has been on my wishlist for a while - but is not necessarily top tier in priorities - as I have around 20 Rat Style pedals already in the collection. If you're looking for an authentic LM308 ProCo Rat style original experience - then this is one of the very best straight up clones. There is very little between this and the Big Ear Woodcutter, but for some reason the latter is slightly ahead on my wishlist. I will most likely possess both eventually though.

This is often equated with the Queens of the Stone Age / Josh Homme kind of Fuzz tone - where Josh uses a number of pedals in combination to get his core texture. In some ways a sort of Stoner / Doom fuzz with vague Big Muff underpinnings, but leading to a sharper velcro style texture at the extremes. It's a pretty great visceral / textural fuzz, but not quite in my top-tier SUF wishlist. Lots of players really like this variety though - nice-to-have for me currently.

This is a relatively rarity - the 4-knob edition of a Colorsound Jumbo Tone Bender style fuzz - actually Colorsound's only Big Muff Pi circuit variety. I quite like this, but it is pipped by the trio of 4-knob Muffs already mentioned. Falls under a nice-to-have for me. Super cool though if you come across one at the right price! I certainly would not mind having one of these - while it's acquisition will likely be rather opportunistic if and when it happens.

And so the 3rd of my favoured 4-knob Muff trio alongside the Civil Unrest and Red Menace. This is based on one of the earlier editions of Ram's Head Muff - the 1973 Violet Ram's Head variety - of which I already have an Alchemy-Audio-modded version of the recent EHX compact reissue edition. I'm certainly not lacking in Ram's Head varieties - while this is another excellent variation on that genre which I consider highly worthy and it will be entering my collection in the not too distance future.

I'm a big fan of Roland's Bee Baa Fuzz sound - and already have the Anarchy Audio variety - with the Basic Audio version also on my wishlist. I would put those 5-knob varieties slightly ahead of this one - while I still really like this one too. Another nice-to-have Stomp Under Foot edition - but one that I'm actually quite likely to hunt down at some stage in the future.