rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on my build of the classic Home-Wrecker Nurse Quacky circuit. I built this pedal because I had a little voice whispering in my ear. A voice that said "this is it. This is your chance to be the very first. You could do it. You could create the first Mary Tyler Moore-inspired guitar pedal! Anyway, you can find the gerbers here.
Inspiration
So I was in the mood to do some PCB layouts and I was looking around for-non overdrive or fuzz circuits. Home-Wrecker/ROG are a good source of these and I was interested in the Nurse Quacky. Of course this really lends itself to a bird theme. One of the facts that blew my mind when I first started learning about birds is that only mallard ducks make the classical "quack" sound. Other ducks and geese make different sounds. So I decided that a 'mallard' pedal would be great and named it the Mister Mallard (you can see this in the gutshot). But I had a gnawing realization that something was wrong.
Male mallards don't quack. I went and looked it up to double-check. Yes. The only quacking birds are female mallards! (I do think nuthatches make a sound that's a little like a quack). Anyway, I had to keep a title to align with the original 'Nurse' name. So, the pedal became the Ms Mallard.
I don't know how the inspiration came to me, but I just pictured a sassy Ms Mallard making it in the big city, like Mary Tyler Moore. I couldn't get it out of my head - a Mary Tyler Moore guitar pedal. I'm always looking for new inspiration and style inspiration for my pedals. I think I spent like 3 months just pondering the idea. Finally I did some googling and realized that the DVD box covers were a good fit for the layout. But it still didn't work with a white "M" behind the bird. Finally, switching to the red/orange/black color theme made the whole thing pop, like in Mary's shirt below.
Now I'm not old enough to have ever seen Mary Tyler Moore live on TV. I remember my parents getting some of the DVDs out from the library when I was a kid and I probably saw a handful of episodes.
After seeing the printed pedal, I would probably make some tweaks. The color of the printed "orange" background, which defines the large "M" shape behind the duck, is very close to the oranger color of the Tayda enclosure itself. It's always hard to tell the exact shade of enclosures before you order. So it makes the design look more like it's inadvertently off-center, rather than a deliberate choice; I'd probably darken the orange slightly. Second, the position of the black is almost perfect for echoing the black & blue wing patch of mallards, which I'd lean more into.
This is the first time I've used these knobs, too. I think they have a nice era-appropriate retro kind of feel. In the end I'm happy with the design and to have potentially broken ground (let me know if you discover I'm not the originator of a MTM pedal).
The Build
No problems, this is an easy build with a limited number of easily sourceable components. In fact given the intensity of the effect, the circuit is surprisingly simple. I think more than fuzzes or overdrives, envelope filters and autowahs really feel kind of magical for what you can achieve with a small number of components. It's kind of hard for me to picture how the components interacting with the signal lead to the effect (compared to clipping or boosting).
The Pedal
It's a really strong autowah. I'm not really a huge fan of the autowah effect and I really haven't played enough with it to get beyond the novelty of the sound. I think this is a good one. The Nurse Quacky feels a little cleaner and more 'elegant' than the Snow White/Poison Apple, but I think that one felt a little more tweakable.
Ratings
Inspiration
So I was in the mood to do some PCB layouts and I was looking around for-non overdrive or fuzz circuits. Home-Wrecker/ROG are a good source of these and I was interested in the Nurse Quacky. Of course this really lends itself to a bird theme. One of the facts that blew my mind when I first started learning about birds is that only mallard ducks make the classical "quack" sound. Other ducks and geese make different sounds. So I decided that a 'mallard' pedal would be great and named it the Mister Mallard (you can see this in the gutshot). But I had a gnawing realization that something was wrong.
Male mallards don't quack. I went and looked it up to double-check. Yes. The only quacking birds are female mallards! (I do think nuthatches make a sound that's a little like a quack). Anyway, I had to keep a title to align with the original 'Nurse' name. So, the pedal became the Ms Mallard.
I don't know how the inspiration came to me, but I just pictured a sassy Ms Mallard making it in the big city, like Mary Tyler Moore. I couldn't get it out of my head - a Mary Tyler Moore guitar pedal. I'm always looking for new inspiration and style inspiration for my pedals. I think I spent like 3 months just pondering the idea. Finally I did some googling and realized that the DVD box covers were a good fit for the layout. But it still didn't work with a white "M" behind the bird. Finally, switching to the red/orange/black color theme made the whole thing pop, like in Mary's shirt below.
Now I'm not old enough to have ever seen Mary Tyler Moore live on TV. I remember my parents getting some of the DVDs out from the library when I was a kid and I probably saw a handful of episodes.
After seeing the printed pedal, I would probably make some tweaks. The color of the printed "orange" background, which defines the large "M" shape behind the duck, is very close to the oranger color of the Tayda enclosure itself. It's always hard to tell the exact shade of enclosures before you order. So it makes the design look more like it's inadvertently off-center, rather than a deliberate choice; I'd probably darken the orange slightly. Second, the position of the black is almost perfect for echoing the black & blue wing patch of mallards, which I'd lean more into.
This is the first time I've used these knobs, too. I think they have a nice era-appropriate retro kind of feel. In the end I'm happy with the design and to have potentially broken ground (let me know if you discover I'm not the originator of a MTM pedal).
The Build
No problems, this is an easy build with a limited number of easily sourceable components. In fact given the intensity of the effect, the circuit is surprisingly simple. I think more than fuzzes or overdrives, envelope filters and autowahs really feel kind of magical for what you can achieve with a small number of components. It's kind of hard for me to picture how the components interacting with the signal lead to the effect (compared to clipping or boosting).
The Pedal
It's a really strong autowah. I'm not really a huge fan of the autowah effect and I really haven't played enough with it to get beyond the novelty of the sound. I think this is a good one. The Nurse Quacky feels a little cleaner and more 'elegant' than the Snow White/Poison Apple, but I think that one felt a little more tweakable.
Ratings
- Build: 5/5
- Pedal: 4/5
