MusicRadar Verdict

A Big Muff at heart, but a great-sounding, well-made and handsome-looking boutique version.

Pros

+
Superb sounds.
+
Beautifully-built.

Cons

-
Expensive.

MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.

Greer Amps pedals are designed by Nick Greer and hand-built in Athens, Georgia (hometown of REM).

A Big Muff-style fuzz, the Tarpit is based not on the common four-transistor versions, but on the version from the late 1970s, which featured two op-amps (ICs), was favoured by Billy Corgan, and is generally regarded to have a little more edge than the tranny versions.

To our ears, the Tarpit has a classic  Big Muff sound and, in an A/B test with various vintage and modern transistor Big Muffs, the differences are subtle, with small variances in the midrange. It has a singing quality in the upper mids and a slightly crispier, grainier edge to the distortion.

This is an excellent variation on a theme and it’s out there for Big Muff aficionados who appreciate the nuances of different models. Others may question the price when there are less expensive alternatives around...

Trevor Curwen has played guitar for several decades – he's also mimed it on the UK's Top of the Pops. Much of his working life, though, has been spent behind the mixing desk, during which time he has built up a solid collection of the guitars, amps and pedals needed to cover just about any studio session. He writes pedal reviews for Guitarist and has contributed to Total Guitar, MusicRadar and Future Music among others.

"It’s a piece of music software history": ReCycle gets recycled as Reason Studios makes the classic sample editor available as a free download

“The verse tricks you into thinking that it’s in a certain key and has this ‘simplistic’ musical language, but then it flips”: Charli XCX’s Brat collaborator Jon Shave on how they created Sympathy Is A Knife