Scott!

If he had a Metal Zone, I'm sure he'd be unpleasantly surprised

Gay Bar is most certainly the greatest music video of all time

Plus there's a huge difference between using a pedal as a tone-eating crutch and as a delicate tone-shaping mechanism, the difference between which is usually how high the gain is cranked. I have an awesome Fender valve amp, yet when I crank the gain to 12 I still sound retarded. Everything at 11 is not necessarily the best way to get heavy sound.

If you have any you're going to throw out, PM me and I'll take it off your hands. Quick guess- you use a solid state amp and Zoom pedals?

I was so bummed when I first heard Speed of Sound, cos I was expecting the new album to be all experimental, like Coldplay's OK Computer, with weird references to Krautrock, and a complete rejection of their MOR roots. And so this song comes on the TV and it's the exact same riff from Clocks just played in a different order, and that was when I knew they were creatively exhausted. A real shame

I was up at Maplins today and got (most) of the stuff. They were out, except for a couple caps, the transistors (!) and their sockets, a stereo jack, and the footswitch and LED, but I got an ace enclosure and everything else. All that cost ~7 pounds not including the battery, which I got at Tesco for 32p. Once my dad gets home and tells me where the drill is I'll get building!

They both serve their purpose well in that Mogwai is shamelessly experimental and always doing stuff that definitely wouldn't be played on Northsound 1, whereas Coldplay is nice just for unchallenging MOR pop. I mean, if you've just been sitting on an airplane for 10 hours or whatever, then "Like Herod" is hardly the sort of music you'd be listening to. both bands are good at their own little niches, although Mogwai definitely is far more experimental and musically interesting.

I can't imagine why people would be bothered by absence of lyrics; personally I often find it a lot harder to concentrate and enjoy a piece of music when I have to filter out some inane, cliched lyric.

I'd rather be nerdy than not know the difference between "theirs" and "there's" and "to" and "too"

It is a shame it's Microsoft, but if it were a friendly superpower such as, say, Google, I'd be all for it just because it'd eliminate retards from writing stuff like hey doodz im a 12yr old hu tinkz im purty kewl cuz i cn use alot a smiley"s !!11111 which pollutes the waters of the internet with idiocy. The vast majority of intelligent internet users won't be terribly bothered by the loss of such an annoying novelty.

w00t! So it's the same circuit then. I saw the ggg schematic, but all the disorderly wires, barely visible cyan, and overtyped "GENERALGUITARGADGETS.COM" caused me to look away in immediate terror at the (seemingly) massive complexity. Oh well. I'm going to convince my dad to drive me to Maplins tomorrow, try to find a metal case there (would they have any?) and the great Big Muff build will begin.

You could probably just tape it

Is that sort of plug common? Because if you could get a connector for it at Maplins and a 1/4" one you could just wire the ends of the jacks together and put it in any suitably sized container.

Ok! I've got the parts list, so before I head off to Maplins I was wondering if the schematic on the website you posted (http://www.eskimo.plus.com/fxstuff/bigmuffboard2.jpg) would be compatible with the one here. Sorry for all these stupid questions, it's been so long since I've done anything like this and I don't want to come home from Maplins and realize I've blown 20 quid on little bits I can't do anything with because I've the wrong schematic. Zeenat: As long as the way that jack functions is similar to a 1/4" jack, you could probably just cut the end off and wire on a new tip. Ask somebody else first, though; I'm pretty new at this too and wouldn't want to screw up your stuff.

For anybody who wants to build a Muff themselves, there's a great, great site here with schematics, a part list and everything. Happy building! And to David: I wouldn't bother with buying one- look at the size of the PCB! Is that worth 45 of your hard earned cash? I think not

Ok... after looking at the circuit in befuddlement I'm going to have to be a complete idiot and ask some very dumb questions. 1. What impedance are all the resistors? Same goes with the capacitors' capacitance. 2. What are the little red squares with dots inside? I can't tell because the photo is so small. I probably will have more later. It's been more than a year and a half since I properly wired something...

The problem with IE is that it will display the most horrifyingly mangled HTML and CSS and make it look decent, whereas Firefox and most other browsers demand a more stringent usage of the W3C standards. The arguments these hacks are making is, essentially, that they don't want to fix their crappy code because they're too lazy. I've coded several pages before, and always checked them through the W3C validator, as everyone should do, and displaying them in Firefox was never a problem. It's not that it's picky, it's just that IE will display anything, mangled or not. I once read a cynical magazine article that suggested that Microsoft had done this so pages would look stupid in Netscape if they weren't perfectly coded. Bottom line: this isn't coders' fault, it's Microsoft's for lulling them into complacency.

You should build a micro big muff inside a cigarette packet like those amps they have at bruce millers. you could call it a "small muff fags" or something witty like that.

Thanks everybody. I emailed Stuart Braithwaite but he was fairly unhelpful, I might just have to be all obnoxious and keep pestering him until he reveals all his dirty secrets. I was looking at a DMM at R&B yesterday, and the power plug looked fairly bizarre, hardly like the standard 9V Boss thing. Unfortunately EH manuals are notoriously useless- the Memory Man one is a rubbish little 2 page thing all in ~18pt font, and contains such shockers as "When you determine the control settings for your favorite effects, make note of them so you can quickly set up the unit before playing" and "Overdriving the unit will cause distortion" and very little actual information. I think I'll email them. Anybody know what they go for new? Edit: Thanks for the advice David. unfortunately after a new Fender valve amp, a Mogwai CD and a packet of strings my personal fortune has been reduced to 75p (no seriously) so mojo may be slightly beyond my price range at the moment.

I like your style. Geek solidarity!

Quick, use more smileys, I think it's working...

Your point is flawed. Firstly, the webmasterworld site is a members only forum and requires payment. Just because somebody said it on the internet doesn't make it true. This snippet is from kalsey.com: "This is a critique of the Firefox marketing strategy, nothing more." What does this website have to do with your point in any way whatsoever? You have not once said anything about the marketing strategy of this program. From zdnetasia.com: "Firefox is certainly the best alternative browser I've come across." and, the smoking gun: "Lastly, as others have noted, Firefox is probably a safer security bet than IE." Whoopsie daisy! You've posted, as backup for your misguided argument, a site that unequivocally contradicts your point. Click the link: it's on the page. Instead of typing in "firefox sucks" or whatever on Google and pasting whatever comes up, you should probably read what the sites say too.You've lost the debate. This thread should be closed.

I like the analogue sound; I'm not primarily interested in using it as a "delay" where you'd be repeating notes to build up harmonies, or anything; more as a tool for creating a post-rock ambient wash, i.e. on the tracks "Helicon 1" or "Stop Coming to my House" by Mogwai. (I have MP3s if you want a listen.) I already have a cheap Zoom pedal with a digital delay that works alright for longer repeats; I'm more interested in the fuzzy, decaying analogue tone. Does anybody know if you can buy a new wall wart for the Memory Man? I'm going home to Canada for christmas and I'm planning on buying the delay there because stuff's easily 25% cheaper there, but I'd need to get a new adaptor for the MM to deal with UK voltage, which may be a bit of an issue. Oh well...

Apparently there are little trimpots in the bottom of the AD9 that allow you to pump up the delay time a wee bit, but I doubt it would make much difference. How long of a delay would you need on the digital one to nail Helicon 1?