Tremolo vs Vibrato: What's the difference

Some of the earliest effects available to guitarists were tremolo and vibrato.  These effects were usually built into the amplifier.  Between the vibrato, tremolo, and reverb there was little else available to the electric guitarist.

Leo Fender's company while prominent in the development of the electric guitar led to some great confusion with the mis-labeling of their amps tremolo channel as vibrato.

Seasoned guitarists have figured this out but for anyone who hasn't quite nailed down the difference here is a quick video to demonstrate to the difference between tremolo and vibrato.

Russian Big Muff

I have a friend who had a Big Muff pedal that was intermittently cutting out. Knowing that I'm a tinkerer and build pedals I was asked if I could look at it. Of course my response was yes.

Since I don't own one of these glorious distortion devices I though tit would be a great opportunity to play around with this "Made In Russia" monster of sonic madness.


I initially thought it might be a faulty switch.  Once I opened it up and tested it with the circuit board exposed I came to the conclusion that the switch was fine but there was a loose connection somewhere.

Since EH uses a ribbon wire that is split off to the various connections on the pots, switches, and circuit board I basically started re-soldering all the connections on the pedal.

Fortunately, after I did the switch the tone control and the volume control the pedal came back to life and the sound was loud and proud with no cutting out.














Check out the demo of the revived and revitalized pedal.