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Electro Harmonix was founded by Mike Matthews in 1968. Starting out manufacturing boosters (power, treble, bass), they soon introduced fuzz units such as the 2 transistor muff fuzz. By 1970, the four transistor Big Muff Pi appeared. It soon became an industry standard used by Hendrix, Santana, John Lennon, Frank Marino, as well as, thousands of lesser known axe-men.

The first version was a chrome bent-sheetmetal box 4 1/2 w by 6" long with a black finished aluminum bottom. The angled top featured three knobs (volume, sustain, and tone) in a triangular pattern and an on/off switch for the battery in the upper left hand corner. Jacks were on the far end; graphics were minimalist, silk screened in black. By 1973 or early '74 the size had been increased to 5 1/2 " x 7", the knobs were now in a straight line across the top, and the battery switch was moved to between the jacks. Graphics were jazzed up and screened in red (rare in blue). This variation also has a goofy face in the lower right-hand corner; sort of a Tolkienesque thing with hair that looks like ivy. This has been referred to as a "sheep's face" but sheep around here don't look like that....

Circa '76-'77 the Big Muff made its final costume change; the logo was now inch high red letters with a shadowed effect. Control function type was in black; there was also a large black, solid block of ink around the foot switch (this was dropped from the design on some of the last big muffs made around 1984). The first pedals with this design had the battery switch but soon a switching input jack was used and the switch became a bypass for the tone control. Around 1978 some B-Muffs were made with a circuit using (2) 741 Op-amps instead of the usual four transistors. This design had one less gain stage, losing some essence of Muff and was discontinued after a couple of thousand were produced.

Odd info that didn't fit into thumbnail history: The circuit boards started out as large, hand-soldered boards with ID numbers. In the mid 70's the #3003 was used and later models used a smaller board with #3004. A plethora of knob designs were used on early models. By 1975 a Dakaware knob, with splines and pointer, was standard. In the 80's a black cylinder "hatbox" knob with a white indicator stripe was used. All the tri-angled knobs usually have a pot date of 1966. Apparently Matthews must have bought a supply of surplus pots for the first Muffs.

Later in the early 90's when New Sensor with Mike Matthews in charge brought back the Big Muff reissue it was in the color of green. The first of that series, which is very rare, was the Red- -Army overdrive and had a clean aluminum finish. Note: on the Red-Army the words Electro Harmonix does not appear only Mike Matthews and New Sensor. After a short run they changed the name to Big Muff. The Modern Big Muff,, as we know is green, made in Russia, and has come with so many different knob types and silk screenings it would take a whole page just for that. The best thing to do is just plug them in, turn up the amp, and hit the footswitch.........

Most of this was taken from an article written by Kevin Macy.