For this specific project my interest in the percolator design started with its introduction to me by a friend. We had a goal of building a small strip board run of about ten or so pedals to raise money for a couple diy arts/music spaces here in Halifax. I normally build/design and repair synthesizer stuff, analog modular circuits and various digital hybrid circuits. I have an understanding of transistors but not a deep knowledge of guitar pedals, ie. my use of say a 2n3904 is mostly making exponential converter designs in vcos, or stacked ladder filters etc.
When we made the percolators we tried to be fairly true to the original component selection and it was an interesting introduction to the guitar pedal world and its specific relationship to electrical engineering. More than many other fields it seems to be rife with many strange vagaries and physiological tics from esoteric component selection all the way to how thick a or thin a wire is. Every musician has a complex psychoacoustic relationship to their instrument and the sound they produce together. A guitars imperfect nature is an amazing exemplar of this experience. It is a sensitive and poorly conceptualized device, it reacts widely to small changes in the signal chain, subtle playing techniques, different electrical outlets, whatever you can think of. This also means there is always a “problem” to be solved with guitar, always something not sounding right or some other horizon of sound to reach. Often it manifests as compulsive and endless tinkering, different pedal arrangements, different strings, changing pickups, different amps, different cables, rewiring the guitar, etc etc etc.
I have found through this process that pedal design/building is very similar to playing the guitar itself in that there seems to be a lot of variables that impart something onto the sound. Its easy to get a bit lost in the weeds and in the end many aspects of the finished device feel slightly pointless, or maybe reconstitution of familiar territory? A good example is this actual pedal in question: The resultant sound character of the 222222 is very percolator esq but I am also comfortable stating that its a bit over engineered for a result that isn’t necessarily wildly different than another percolator style pedal. But this seems to be a somewhat normal process in the world of pedal building. Each design becomes a combination of technical analysis, physical testing/implementation and historical research project specific to the the individual and physical situation and for better or worse I am very happy with the results.