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I have a harmonic percolator clone. Made by CBC pedals. Sounds awesome. Weird oscillations and other craziness which I love. Anyway I thought I'd try my DIY devolt circuit on it and see what happens. The fuzz sound becomes normal. No oscillations or craziness. Just a straight up nice sounding fuzz. It's quite odd I think. When I starve my Ge fuzz face clone it gets glitchy and weird. Yet the opposite with the percolator. Can anyone shed any light on this?

I couldn't even begin to explain what's going on electronically, except to say that the Harmonic Percolator circuit is weird. Seriously weird.

In my experience, it has strange interactions with other pedals.

Yeah I know right. It is backwards in every way. It is the bastard son of a bastard son kind of pedal. Seems like a bit of an inbreed. Something that should not be, but is. In a good way.

In an awesome way. I love it.

I really love it with both the Harmonics and Balance full out, but then I have to run another gain pedal after it to reduce the volume.

I run mine almost maxed. The balance just backed off a little bit and there is a sweet spot on the harmonics that seem to vary slightly every time I turn it on. Otherwise it has a lot of white noise. Adjust until it disappears. Usually only a cunt hairs difference. Possibly due to dirty power in this old house.

I've had two, and neither one oscillated. Do they do that? Maybe you have an extra weird / broken one?

My Collins hp doesn't oscillate or make weird noises either. It does do interesting things when stacking with other pedals but no crazy stuff?

I have the Fredric Effects one and had one built by a guy here (nbabmf) a few years ago, and they both behaved like you describe, UG.

I had an Officer Bukowski HP for a long time and it never oscillated. Always wanted to try one that did oscillate. Might have something to do with the bias of the transistors

kosta wrote:I've had two, and neither one oscillated. Do they do that? Maybe you have an extra weird / broken one?

From what I've heard there is a few different schematics floating about. The oscillations occur with the original circuits. The version Steve Albini uses has the weird oscillations. CBC pedals builds them to the version considered to be the original schematic. Though I don't really know. Mine could be a bit dodgy. But I love the sounds I can squeeze out of it.

I was just taking it that "oscillations" was Australian for "feedback".

Chankgeez wrote:I was just taking it that "oscillations" was Australian for "feedback".

That would make sense, my hp is a feedback generating aplenty.

Uncle Grandfather wrote:

Chankgeez wrote:I was just taking it that "oscillations" was Australian for "feedback".

That would make sense, my hp is a feedback generating aplenty.

Could be. Like Nigel Tuffnel I'm always confused.

Not confused at all - it's why I had a starve function built into my Test Pattern from Hell from the getgo.

With a little starve, some of the insanity subsides and it becomes sedate and usable at settings.

Not that I necessarily desire tons of that, but it adds a seperate thing that wouldn't be present otherwise.

Been playing around with it today. And I wasn't confused for once. It was oscillation and not feedback. It does feedback though. The oscillation varies with adjustment to the volume and tone controls and depending on the setting of the balance and harmonics controls. Still not sure if it was a production fault or meant to be like this. But I like it a lot so it really doesn't matter. Thanks all for the replies.