Premier Rock Forum

what does any1 know about the interfax harmonic percolator pedal? sounds wise or whatever...

It's a distortion pedal.

It has two sliding pots. One for volume and the other for drive (or something similar)

It uses two transistors. One NPN and one PNP. One of them is an old style germanium transistor. But it gets it's clipping from diodes just like a lot of other distortion pedals.

It's built on a single, roughly 2 x 3" pc board.

It doens't sound as cool as you think it would just by itself.

If you're looking for that "Steve Albini" sound, you'll need more than just the harmonic percolator.

It's pretty up in the air on exactly which transistors are used. Most schematics of copies that people have made either have the wrong transistor or aren't really the same pedal. The guy who made it made sure to mask exactly which transistor it was that he used. (I'm talking mosly about the germainum transistor) The other one is a basic silicon transistor that's easy to find.

It seems to sound/work best in insane/way-over-the-top applications.

For use as an everyday distortion pedal it's probably not going to beat out something like the Hot Cake.

Nonetheless, it's a cool pedal, very difficult to find used, worth some money if you do, and plus, of course, Steve uses it. Right?

Hunh? What's that? Oh. I'm fired? Oh. Shit. Should have seen that one coming.

I had one in my "rig" till 2001, the TS-808 won. If all my guitars had single coil pickups, it'd be a different story, I'm sure.

Originally made 10 Min. from my house in Milwaukee in the early-mid '70's by Ed Giese, R.I.P.

A fuzz that would emphasize even order harmonics-

Gave (sold?) one to Steve, heard on the European Rapeman tour, and I don't know what else-

Sold my last one to a guy in Italy for way too much money, but not as much as I've seen them go for lately.

A great box, deserves the hype...

Killer Repros were available from my pal, Chuckcollins on eBay, he may be retired now, eMail him, what the heck...He makes a neat Theremin, too. Cheap.


GrrrKKKHHggrrr*SWAK*...Grrr...

...beauty...

Bear VS. Harmonic pecolator....Da WINNER, Harmonic Percolator!



Jay

I've got one. It sounds sort of like a barking dog. I use it in tandem with an Expandora (the ZZ Top stomp box) on occasion.

I've never opened mine up, but apparently one of the methods used to mask the transistors was to smear epoxy or somesuch over the circuit boards. This might be urban legend.

For me, it's sort of a secret weapon, for when I want it to go just a little further. It's my "eleven".

i sent off an email to my guitar-gear-genius friend asking about the percolator. here's part of his response

"it's most definitely a one trick pony. great for that collapsing end of the world sound. there's a schematic drawn by alfonso hermida (an effects guru) somewhere out there; use that one if you want to get an exact copy."

so assuming he's right, which i generally am comfortable doing, then here ya go. DIY!

and as was already mentioned, my guy also brought up the germanium thing. "the ge trannies used are regular 1n404a which are low gain early germanium (ge). you will need both ge diodes and transistors (silicon won't work the same way) to get the real deal but you can come close with the adapted schematics attached".

i can't attach the mod versions he emailed me, but again, here's the hermida schematic.

enjoy!

I forget the URL, but there is a site that sells clones of this pedal. I think they sell for around $200.

sorry, when I hit this link from here it goes to the wrong page.When I enter the address in the browser address thing it goes where it's supposed to. Anyway, that's the address.

Just use this link and contact Chuck through eBay, maybe he'll make more...
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V ... ce=-1&rd=1

The Theremins are cool, got one for my birthday...

Jay

[quote="burun"]I use it in tandem with an Expandora (the ZZ Top stomp box) on occasion.


uh oh. don't want to burst any bubbles, but, on the condition of anonymity, a good friend who hunts down gear for billy gibbons very often swears that he has never used the expandora live EVER, that his pedal is an on stage dummy, plugged in to nothin'. apparently billy has a long history of endorsing crap he doesn't use (see: rackmount solid state marshall amps, charvel basses [???], and more.....). remember the miller lite tour featuring zz top? you operate on that level, people throw money at you for all kinds of reasons........

that said, maybe that expandora kicks ass. dunno. just a head's up.

mc