Electric Eye Audio's Mud Killer is still the most innovative tone-enhancing boost / overdrive for High Gain Amps and Distortion Pedals
This pedal surely needs no introduction now - so pervasive was it’s impact on its launch in 2020 - that this is more of a refresher as to what makes it so great - considering how many are already aware of it and using it.
As I mentioned in my fairly recent EEA brand overview - Silas Fernandes initially came up with this concept back in 2012 - way before Horizon Effects’ Precision Drive was a thing - while the path to market was somewhat more tortuous for Silas and involved a move from Brazil to Charlottesville, Virgina in the middle of that project.
Nowadays we have a number of High Gain Specialist Pedal Brands - these also include Airis, Fortin, and KHDK among others. While I feel overall that Silas generally makes the smarter choices for his circuit designs overall - that’s not to diminish the prowess of the competition.
High Gain and Metal players have long used the Ibanez TS808 and similar mid-humped overdrives to Tighten and Enhance their High Gain Amps - in fact the combination of Mid-Hump Boost / Overdrive with Amp is pretty much signature for so many of the key Metal Genres - including especially Death Metal and Thrash Metal.
While those late 70’s / early 80’s overdrives were actually fairly limited in their granularity and precision tone shaping, and not specifically honed toward the specific task at hand - for proper high gain applications. That would come much later with those Metal-centric Pedal Brands - which started to refine and make more specialist versions of those mid-hump boosters. The first one really to gain traction was Horizon Effects’ Precision Drive - while had luck been more on Silas’s side his Mud Killer would have been the ice-breaker for that genre.
I’m always of the opinion that it’s more important who did the best version or variety versus who did it first - while there is often some first-mover advantage to be gained if you managed to get out ahead of everyone else. In any case the success of the Mud Killer was pretty much guaranteed - as has proven to be the case - with said pedal universally lauded among many of the leading luminaries for that genre.
Controls - Tone (± 2.5kHz - 6kHz), Post Gain (Output Volume), Pre Gain Off/On switch, Pre Gain Level (Overdrive), Amp Remote (Channel) switch Off/On, Mud Control : Fat > Skinny (<200Hz HPF), Comp switch : Silicon / LED.
The pedal has fairly universal applications though in most every rig - while it's obviously mostly honed towards tightening up the Profile of High Gain Pedals and Amps.
You can easily think of the Green knobs as being the same Overdrive, Tone, and Level controls you find on a Tube Screamer (hence the green colour of the knobs most likely!). So on the Mud Killer Overdrive, Tone and Level correspond to Pre Gain, Tone and Post Gain - where the Pre Gain is switchable, and the Tone very specifically targets the 2.5kHz to 6kHz frequency cluster - which you can cut or boost - so essentially refine the Top-End of the output or near enough.
The 'Mud Killer' control is a precision-calibrated High Pass Filter with a Maximum threshold of 200Hz - so it can progressively cut any frequencies below that - for a significantly Tighter and Skinnier Low-End. You further have dual Compression options - with a Looser LED Diodes texture to the right, and a Tighter / Lower Silicon Diodes output to the left.
As mentioned, you can switch the Pre Gain 'Off' thereby simply rendering this as an EQ pedal, and you also have a further 'Close/Open' switch which allows you to utilise the Remote Amp Switch socket on the left of the pedal to trigger Amp Channel changes - so that as you Press the On/Bypass Footswitch on the Mud Killer - it can trigger the Higher Gain Channel on the Amp to switch at the same time. (Note that said feature won't work with all amps - some trial and error is required!).
You don't really need this pedal for EEA's magnificent The Thrasher pedal as that is already plenty tight and does everything it needs to do - but sure you could refine it's output further with the Mud Killer.
The Mud Killer is best really for those older more saggy / slightly mid-scooped amps and distortions - which need to be brought up into the modern era. So that there are obviously numerous highly suitable amps and distortion pedals that tend toward the more vintage mid-scooped voicing. Both the heavy hitter pedals I currently have on the board - EEA'sThe Thrasher and Bardic Audio's Rival - already have plenty of tone-shaping onboard and don't really need the Mud Killer - while it does really cool things for a number of the Marshall Distortions and fuzzes currently in my signal chain.
I recommend you start with Tone, Post Gain and Pre Gain all at noon, and the Mud Control dialled fully back - you can then adjust levels to reach Unity values, and then apply further tone-shaping and experiment whether the Silicon or LED Compression suits that Amp or Pedal better.
It's actually a pretty cool sounding overdrive on its own, but you obviously feel more of the benefit when using it as a full on Metal Tone-Enhancer, Clarifier and Tightener - which is what it was engineered for!
The Standard Green accented Mud Killer edition is $175, while the Blackout / Stealth edition goes for $189.50 - both currently available for order on the Electric Eye Audio Webstore.
Demos
