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I recently received a new pedal I traded for with guitarfeak. It's based off of the InterFax Harmonic Percolator, an oddball distortion pedal from the 70s. The Percolators claim to fame is that it filters out odd harmonics (bad) and leaves in the even order harmonics (good). This is similar to what a tube amp does naturally. It's a decent pedal, but I wanted a few improvements, hence this:
First and foremost, the aesthetics. I wanted it to look like it was handmade, which it did. I also took a few stylistic cues from the Klon Centaur, which is where the enclosure color and knobs come from. The blue LED has two purposes: it makes it look more boutique and if I ever have a gig on the sun, I won't loose my pedal.
As for the improvements over the standard Percolator here they are:
And the part you've all been waiting for: the tone. It has a decent tone for bedroom playing, but I suspect it might sound better in a mix. I'll get back to you on that once I get a chance to use it in a band setting. It has really powerful upper mids and a decent responsive to attack if you set the controls right, the bass control is a must however, if your amp is a bit light in that department. It has just the right amount of gain on tap as well. It could use a few tweaks to perfect it, but it is pretty nice as is.
There are a few issues however. For one this pedal doesn't stand alone. It's boomy with little gain if you don't have any sort of buffer before it, this I intend to fix if possible. Other than that, a few hard wired eq tweaks and some changes to the tone stack is all it needs.
Again, thanks to guitarfeak for this wonderful pedal.
First and foremost, the aesthetics. I wanted it to look like it was handmade, which it did. I also took a few stylistic cues from the Klon Centaur, which is where the enclosure color and knobs come from. The blue LED has two purposes: it makes it look more boutique and if I ever have a gig on the sun, I won't loose my pedal.
As for the improvements over the standard Percolator here they are:
- The clipping is assymetrical, which I prefer over symmetrical.
- It has a 3-band eq on the top row. I might change some electrical values so that they make a more radical difference in tone. The bottom row is the input and output gain that comes as standard on the Percolator.
- A few modernizations. The input and output jacks are on the proper sides, unlike the Percolator. The Percolator also doesn't have an LED or 9v adaptor. I also wanted knobs instead of sliders.
And the part you've all been waiting for: the tone. It has a decent tone for bedroom playing, but I suspect it might sound better in a mix. I'll get back to you on that once I get a chance to use it in a band setting. It has really powerful upper mids and a decent responsive to attack if you set the controls right, the bass control is a must however, if your amp is a bit light in that department. It has just the right amount of gain on tap as well. It could use a few tweaks to perfect it, but it is pretty nice as is.
There are a few issues however. For one this pedal doesn't stand alone. It's boomy with little gain if you don't have any sort of buffer before it, this I intend to fix if possible. Other than that, a few hard wired eq tweaks and some changes to the tone stack is all it needs.
Again, thanks to guitarfeak for this wonderful pedal.
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