rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on my build on the PPCB Hydra Delay, which I think is a PPCB original circuit. I'd seen this recommended on the forums as a really unique pedal so figured I'd see what the fuss was about.
Inspiration
The pedal is based on Common Mergansers, which are indeed common here in the Pacific Northwest. I can't rightly recall why I selected this bird for the pedal, beyond the fact that it's a waterbird that you usually see in groups of 4-8, and the pedal is called the "Hydra" and has 4 heads. But I designed this pedal a good 6 months ago so I can't really recall the rationale.
Mergansers are one of my favorite water birds in the Puget Sound. They're one of the rare birds where I'd say the females are more distinctive and colorful than the males, with red-brown heads and messy "hair." The males look more like generic ducks or loons. I was only after a few years of watching them that I realized the females were the ones with the distinctive profiles!
I wanted to continue with some of my synthwave designs with turquoise/purple/magenta colors, and the pedal is kinda spacey sounding so... mergansers swimming through space!
I'm very happy with the design. It is a full bleed print, which I do less of these days, but I really wanted the "space" effect. Full disclosure, the core of the design was executed via AI (Gemini), but then I made substantial edits to make the mergansers look more accurate and simplify glitches, add northern lights, fit the design to the pedal, and add more geometric reflections below the birds. I'd estimate I spent 4-5 hours on the design all told. This method seems to best fit my level of artistic/design skill and let me achieve an end result I'm satisfied with, so I'm using AI more and then adjusting it. I've included the initial version of the artwork for those who are curious.
The pedal is the Tayda metallic candy pink, which looks awesome. I love the metallic colors for any "fun" design like this.
The Build
For such a complicated effect, it's a pretty simple pedal. The FV-1 is doing the heavy lifting, and I would recommend that anyone interested in the pedal order the pre-soldered FV-1. I think this is one of two FV-1s that I've soldered and while it's not that bad, it's SMD and stressful given the high cost.
Besides that, it's a low parts count board and came right together. I think a these modulation pedals often seem like they'll be more daunting than they actually are, because they tend to have 1-2 unusual components or aspects (FV-1, Belton Brick, etc).
The Pedal
It's a unique pedal, but I'm not sure it's great for me. While it's a delay it doesn't really fill the same niche as the Seabed or more traditional delays. Instead, it feels more like a Reverb. I have now made three reverbs (Gravitation and Deflector being the other two), and I think this is both the most unique and the least useful for everyday tasks. In fact (this may just be my bad ears) I think it's fairly close in behavior to the Deflector/Afterneath, which has both delay and a reverb on the delay.
The Hydra is really good at making a wash of sound. I've paired it with the Funbox Venus program (which has a ton of shimmer) and the two together are basically an ambient machine. It's a lot of fun and I do like playing ambient stuff if I'm feeling lazy. It's just not my favorite genre.
I need to spend more time with the pedal, though, because I still don't feel like I have a good intuition about how the different heads work - for now I'd give it 3.5 stars.
Build rating: 5/5
Pedal rating: 3.5/5
Inspiration
The pedal is based on Common Mergansers, which are indeed common here in the Pacific Northwest. I can't rightly recall why I selected this bird for the pedal, beyond the fact that it's a waterbird that you usually see in groups of 4-8, and the pedal is called the "Hydra" and has 4 heads. But I designed this pedal a good 6 months ago so I can't really recall the rationale.
Mergansers are one of my favorite water birds in the Puget Sound. They're one of the rare birds where I'd say the females are more distinctive and colorful than the males, with red-brown heads and messy "hair." The males look more like generic ducks or loons. I was only after a few years of watching them that I realized the females were the ones with the distinctive profiles!
I wanted to continue with some of my synthwave designs with turquoise/purple/magenta colors, and the pedal is kinda spacey sounding so... mergansers swimming through space!
I'm very happy with the design. It is a full bleed print, which I do less of these days, but I really wanted the "space" effect. Full disclosure, the core of the design was executed via AI (Gemini), but then I made substantial edits to make the mergansers look more accurate and simplify glitches, add northern lights, fit the design to the pedal, and add more geometric reflections below the birds. I'd estimate I spent 4-5 hours on the design all told. This method seems to best fit my level of artistic/design skill and let me achieve an end result I'm satisfied with, so I'm using AI more and then adjusting it. I've included the initial version of the artwork for those who are curious.
The pedal is the Tayda metallic candy pink, which looks awesome. I love the metallic colors for any "fun" design like this.
The Build
For such a complicated effect, it's a pretty simple pedal. The FV-1 is doing the heavy lifting, and I would recommend that anyone interested in the pedal order the pre-soldered FV-1. I think this is one of two FV-1s that I've soldered and while it's not that bad, it's SMD and stressful given the high cost.
Besides that, it's a low parts count board and came right together. I think a these modulation pedals often seem like they'll be more daunting than they actually are, because they tend to have 1-2 unusual components or aspects (FV-1, Belton Brick, etc).
The Pedal
It's a unique pedal, but I'm not sure it's great for me. While it's a delay it doesn't really fill the same niche as the Seabed or more traditional delays. Instead, it feels more like a Reverb. I have now made three reverbs (Gravitation and Deflector being the other two), and I think this is both the most unique and the least useful for everyday tasks. In fact (this may just be my bad ears) I think it's fairly close in behavior to the Deflector/Afterneath, which has both delay and a reverb on the delay.
The Hydra is really good at making a wash of sound. I've paired it with the Funbox Venus program (which has a ton of shimmer) and the two together are basically an ambient machine. It's a lot of fun and I do like playing ambient stuff if I'm feeling lazy. It's just not my favorite genre.
I need to spend more time with the pedal, though, because I still don't feel like I have a good intuition about how the different heads work - for now I'd give it 3.5 stars.
Build rating: 5/5
Pedal rating: 3.5/5
