Hydra Delay kit

This pedal definitely sounds great. The 4 heads and age setting allow for a wide variety of sounds, from slapback to wide echoes and even some reverb-y sounds.

This is a fairly complex build, so Id recommend building a 3 or 4 pedals first (this was my 3rd pedal, after a HardOne boost and a Ross compressor). On top of the FV-1, there are numerous controls (5 potentiometers, 4 SPST switches, 1 3PDT switch), and a reasonably large amount of components.

Soldering the FV-1 went fine, although it took me some time to get it lined up. I had never done SMD soldering before, so I looked up online tutorials for soldering this particular chip, which I definitely recommend. Be sure to check everything got soldered correctly using a multimeter before moving on to the rest of the board.

I gave 4 stars instead of 5 because the documentation from PedalPCB was a bit lacking (but everything was great on the Musikding side!). The drill template ended up a little off, which I discovered while designing a decal* in Inkscape making sure everything would line up. The 4 head switches need to be a little further away from the middle 2 potentiometers. Id recommend putting everything at scale in Inkscape or something to make sure things will line up correctly.

All in all, I think I should have gone for a simpler PT2399-based delay like the Bluelay or Aion Vector as my first DIY delay pedal. Id say this build is for more advanced builders or people looking specifically for an Echorec-style delay (similar to the Dawner Prince Boonar). The increased feature set comes with an increased build complexity.

(*I ended up not using the decal because my laser printer wouldnt do thick decal paper printing. I used solvent ink (StazOn) and some alphabet stamps found at a local creative arts store to stamp labels on the pre-painted enclosure — this worked GREAT. No clear coat required as the solvent ink melts with the paint for a very durable result. I quite like the typewriter look as well. Will definitely reuse this technique in the future!)

To whom it may be of interest, I also tried various mods found on the PedalPCB forums, which ended up making the build much longer than it could have been (it took me ~3 full days, Id expect it could be done in 6-8 hours in the base version). Id recommend sticking with the base version, and considering the Would recommend mods below if you feel like it.

Would-recommend mods:
1) Replace the 10k log pot for the Mix control with a 10k lin pot. This way, we get an increasing amount of delay until 1-2 oclock, then the dry/wet ratio decreases until a 100% wet setting, instead of having the dry/wet ratio decrease earlier in the pot range. Definitely recommend this mod.
2) Add the Clock Module (sold separately on Musikding). This is cheap and fairly easy, and allows displacing the range of speed values (slower or faster), e.g. to allow longer delays. Just dont solder the 15p capacitor and 35kHz crystal like I did, because the clock module is meant to replace them (see: PedalPCB docs on the Clock Module).

Would NOT recommend these mods:
3) Add a momentary SPDT footswitch that shorts lugs 2 and 3 of the Swell pot, to allow momentary self-oscillation. Sadly this only works when only heads 2 and 4 are engaged. Plus, I get a pop sound whenever the footswitch gets engaged or disengaged, even with a 50k trimpot on one of the footswitch lugs, so for now this is fairly unusable.
4) Add an Electra-type overdrive circuit to the feedback path to allow self-oscillation for any head combination and limitation of the maximum volume of feedback while adding some grit to echoes. Sounded interesting, I went for the Je Taime circuit sold on Musikding, but I did the mistake of soldering components on a protoboard instead of going for the full kit with PCB, and failed at making the circuit work correctly. Also, room inside the 125B enclosure would have been lacking, I think.

Florimond M., 11.10.2023