rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on the PPCB SuperHeterodyne Receiver, based on the EQD Data Corrupter. I saw this on a few lists of "weirdest effects" and built it a while back. It sat in an unfinished enclosure for a while before I eventually rehoused it.
Inspiration
I knew early on that I wanted a bird being "corrupted" by data. I had something else in mind - a more pastel/painted sort of look with the tail scattering into pixels the breeze, more like the cover of This is How You Lose the Time War. But as I played around with different ways to "corrupt" a pedal in Photoshop I ended up with the current design. It's not quite what I had in mind but I still like it. This is a really weird pedal to design for because it has a lot of "menus" - but that works with the computer look and "Data Corruption" concept I wanted.
For the bird, I also knew early on that I wanted this pedal to feature a cuckoo. I think they're some of the nastiest birds. Cuckoos will lay eggs in the nests of other species and when the chicks hatch, they'll grow more quickly and outcompete the native hatchlings, eating more food and sometimes pushing the other chicks out of the nest. Meanwhile, the parents will continue to feed the cuckoo chicks. Cuckoos themselves are obligate brood parasites, meaning they don't even know how to build nests themselves!
I'm very happy with this design - it's among my favorite pedal designs so far. While I prefer 125B enclosures, the larger enclosure really lets you work with more and put more of personal print on the pedal. This is the first of two 1590 designs I've laid out so far.
The Build
For such a complicated effect and design, the pedal itself is a really easy build! I guess the 6 CD chips are really doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I think there's about as many ICs and pots/switches as there are resistors!
The Pedal
This was my first PLL and it really blew my mind. It's a lot of fun. But I've since built more and I think I prefer both the PPCB Flock and a few of the Parasit pedals to this one. The tracking isn't great on this compared to alternatives.
Still, there's an awful lot you can do with this pedal - there's a decent standalone fuzz, various types of oscillation, and then subharmonics and harmonics.
Firsts
Pedal rating: 4/5
Inspiration
I knew early on that I wanted a bird being "corrupted" by data. I had something else in mind - a more pastel/painted sort of look with the tail scattering into pixels the breeze, more like the cover of This is How You Lose the Time War. But as I played around with different ways to "corrupt" a pedal in Photoshop I ended up with the current design. It's not quite what I had in mind but I still like it. This is a really weird pedal to design for because it has a lot of "menus" - but that works with the computer look and "Data Corruption" concept I wanted.
For the bird, I also knew early on that I wanted this pedal to feature a cuckoo. I think they're some of the nastiest birds. Cuckoos will lay eggs in the nests of other species and when the chicks hatch, they'll grow more quickly and outcompete the native hatchlings, eating more food and sometimes pushing the other chicks out of the nest. Meanwhile, the parents will continue to feed the cuckoo chicks. Cuckoos themselves are obligate brood parasites, meaning they don't even know how to build nests themselves!
I'm very happy with this design - it's among my favorite pedal designs so far. While I prefer 125B enclosures, the larger enclosure really lets you work with more and put more of personal print on the pedal. This is the first of two 1590 designs I've laid out so far.
The Build
For such a complicated effect and design, the pedal itself is a really easy build! I guess the 6 CD chips are really doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I think there's about as many ICs and pots/switches as there are resistors!
The Pedal
This was my first PLL and it really blew my mind. It's a lot of fun. But I've since built more and I think I prefer both the PPCB Flock and a few of the Parasit pedals to this one. The tracking isn't great on this compared to alternatives.
Still, there's an awful lot you can do with this pedal - there's a decent standalone fuzz, various types of oscillation, and then subharmonics and harmonics.
Firsts
First 1590BB print
Pedal rating: 4/5
