In this photo, Nick can be seen with a Russian Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi, next to his volume pedal.

Seen during a 1996 show. **Actually that is a Sovtek Small Stone

In this image, Stephen O'Malley has the Green Russian Big Muff on his pedalboard.

In this rack, which Axess Electronics custom made for him, the EHX Green Russian Big Muff Pi pedal can be seen.

Alderete's favorite fuzz and the winner of Pedals and Effects' Fuzz Wars 1. Notable for its unusual blue replacement LED and the extensive erosion of its paint job, the pedal was a gift from Tyler Bates during their time together in Pet.

No Treble, March 29, 2012

But like the Sovtek Fuzz will always be on my pedal board until I find a fuzz pedal that I prefer more. My compressor pedal is the same thing, nobody makes a compressor pedal that sounds as good as that

(...) I think that the Sovtek Fuzz sounds best with a P-bass. It doesn’t sound with a J-bass, just a P-bass. But, you’ve really gotta get into it. You can’t just buy pedals and think they’re gonna blanket everything you do, because they’re not.

Ultimate Guitar, August 28, 2012

And then in the 90s, my main bay was using the Boss CS-2 compressor again, with a Sovtek fuzz, which I love, and then sometimes I would use a wah just to get filtering sounds, I would play a whole bass line filtered out. And I would use an Electro Harmonix micro-synth and so that was my basic setup for that.

Pedals and Effects, "Review: Fuzz Wars 1 Way Huge, Sovtek, Last Gasp Art Lab, Dwarfcraft" (November 15, 2012) (0:09)

We're gonna use the Swollen Pickle, my Sovtek fuzz that I've had for many, many years that I got form Tyler Bates. He was the guitar player in Pet, he gave me this. I'm giving props, shout out to him.

Reverb.com, July 19, 2014

Typically I like P's for heavier stuff and distortion. I just think it distorts better than the Jazz bass. Not to say that a Jazz bass doesn't distort well. It distorts well if you're not going too crazy. But if you really want it heavy and you want it to be the heaviest thing on the recording -- I'll use my Sovtek with my CS-2 compressor and my fretted P-Bass. I rarely hear bass sounds that heavy and huge.

(...) Reverb: I know you've done a long series of Fuzz shootouts on your site, you've done eight or nine of them with four pedals each time. What's the best Fuzz pedal you've played?

JA: By far, my Sovtek. Jonathan Hischke [Hella, Dot Hacker] -- my favorite bass player -- he's always saying, 'you're so lucky you own that one.' We've put other Sovteks against it, Russian Big Muffs, Electro-Harmonix Big Muffs, let alone any of the modern ones, and it just kills it. I've owned a bunch of them and anyone who's owned them knows they don't all sound the same. They can be close, but they have certain characteristics. I've had some that are super swirly in the high-end, but this one is just the beefiest. It kills all. We've actually had to retire it, so now it wins by default. We did another Fuzz shootout yesterday with Justin Meldal-Johnsen [Beck, NIN], and we had a Fuzzrocious and a few others. I can definitely say that my Sovtek would just kill all of them.

(...) You've got to have a good fuzz, but it's hard to recommend one you can't get. Like my Russian Sovtek Muff, they don't all sound good and I wouldn't want to steer you wrong. It's just not consistent.

Premier Guitar, Bass Pedal Wars Round 2 (August 27, 2014)

I have to go with my Sovtek Big Muff fuzz. Tyler Bates, a really great film composer, gave it to me. I went to record with him and he said, “Use this.” I thought it was awesome, so he told me I should keep it. He loved it, but he could see how lit up I was about it. That was in the early ’90s, and I’ve used it a lot since then. It’s the best-sounding fuzz. We do all these fuzz pedal shootouts on my website, pedalsandeffects.com, and it’s still the number one fuzz pedal. I have several other Sovteks, but that is the one.

[SoundCloud Demo]

Pedals and Effects, "Fuzz Wars with Sovteks & Salt in the City of Angels" (March 5, 2015)

[Alderete] [Points to Oz Inglorious' Big Muff's LED] This LED will blow that camera out with how bright it is. It's pretty awesome!

[Oz Inglorious] I call the "Luxer".

[Alderete] [laughs] Yeah! Right!

[Oz Inglorious] 'Cause you can read a newspaper ten miles in space with this LED, but...

[Alderete] And then, mine's been replaced as well, not by choice. A friend of mine did a little bit o' goofiness to it. Mine's battery operated.

[Oz Inglorious] It's been modified.

[Alderete] It's been modified.

Premier Guitar, June 8, 2017

Current Effects (...) Sovtek Fuzz (second generation)

Pedals and Effects, "Red Muck Bass by JAM Pedals" (March 22, 2019)

We went through all their pedals, it was awesome, they loaded us up. But, the talk of the afternoon was the fact that they were claiming that this is gonna sound really good and I might even consider it over my... [pulls Sovtek Big Muff from behind his back] Haaaa! So guess what Nick and I are gonna do, we're gonna do an A/B. (...) In fact, look at this, this motherfucker earned three flags. No pedal in my whole collection has three flags. (...) I don't like taking this on tour anymore, so I would definitely put this [the Red Muck Bass] in its place. I mean, it's not identical, but it's hella close.

Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World’s Greatest Guitarists (released November 11, 2020)

• Behind the scenes of the photo shoot (April 11, 2019)
• Teaser image of pedal 002

You can see the Russian big muff just to left of his flint tremolo/reverb. By the looks of it, it has some replaced knobs.

At 1:10 in the video, Ian is auditioning a dark green Russian Big Muff Pi.

In this video from Paramore BR, the bassist of Paramore Jeremy David gives us a tour of his live gear. At this point in the video, he shows a selection of pedals on his rack shelf. In the front row of this particular shelf we see 3 Electro-Harmonics Big Muff Pi V7 pedals.

The V7 pedals were designed to look like old war relics of the early 1940's and even ship on small wooden crates with Russian letter stamped onto them, the same way milsurp (Military Surplus) Ammo comes when bought from Slavic countries.

In this interview with Total Guitar, Andrew Stockdale mentioned that when they were recording, and perhaps after, the first EP, he used a Russian Big Muff Pi along with an assortment of other amplifiers and a 70's SG electric guitar.

In the user-uploaded photo, Jeff Mangum is seen using the Electro-Harmonix Sovtek "Green Russian" Big Muff Pi V7C, suggesting it is a key component of his setup.

Visible on Fender's pedalboard at 2:15 in the music video for his song "Leave Fast." The pedal was mentioned in the 2021 Premier Guitar interview.

An Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff Pi can be seen on Jordan Cook's pedalboard, at 10:41 in this performance video.