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Introduction
Thank you for purchasing the Electronic Audio Experiments Dude Incredible. This manual
is an in-depth guide for properly understanding and enjoying your pedal. Below is the story
of this design to provide some insight and context. If you would like to skip forward to how
the pedal works, begin reading at the Operation section on the next page.
The Dude Incredible is an homage to the guitar tones of Steve Albini, known for his work
in the bands Shellac and Big Black as well as his engineering work at Electrical Audio.
It consists of two pedals in one. First is a take on the Interfax
™
Harmonic Percolator,
a hybrid silicon/germanium fuzz known for a pronounced even harmonic response and a
thick, heavily compressed character. Second is a stripped-down version of the Intersound
™
Instrument Voice Preamplifier (IVP), which contains a unique transformer-loaded “Tube
Voice” overdrive circuit. Together, the IVP and Percolator have produced some of the most
iconic guitar sounds in noise rock: jangly rhythm tones, ear-piercing treble chords, and
endless walls of howling feedback.
The Dude Incredible actually began as a one-off Percolator variant with a James type
EQ (kudos to whoever ended up with that wacky prototype), but when I began laying out
the circuit board to make more I thought, “F*** it, let’s cram a mini IVP in here.” As it
happens the first batch, released in 2017
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, was the first time the IVP was adapted into a
pedal format in any fashion. We did a couple more batches after that, but the Germanium
transistors were always difficult to source and test. Our relatively limited supply of good
parts was then largely consumed by the Halberd V1, which also used a Ge transistor, so we
decided to focus on the IVP side and release the Surveyor. That worked out great for a while,
but as EAE grew, I realized we could take another stab at sourcing and testing percolator-
friendly Ge transistors. This year we updated the Dude Incredible design to match our
updated lineup of pedals and give it the wider release it deserves.
While updating the design I rolled in all the improvements from the Surveyor V2, includ-
ing soft switching, heavy-duty power supply protection, and a Hi/Lo toggle for expanded gain
range. For the percolator side, we added a diode toggle and made some tweaks based on a
particularly good-sounding (read: extra nasty) original unit that our technician Miranda
brought in. The twist: hers actually had a diode installed backwards, giving it an extra
loud, extra asymmetrical clipping waveform
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. We used that as inspiration for one of the
clipping modes in the V2.
We are extremely proud of the Dude Incredible and hope it serves you well for many
years. Thanks for reading!
- John Snyder, EAE
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In fact, the first batch was released as a 30-unit exclusive for the ‘Aluminum Axes’ Facebook group. Truly,
it was a simpler time!
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This origin story is remarkably similar to the cult classic Kowloon Walled Bunny/KWB+, where a similar
diode error on a Distortion Plus circuit dramatically changed the sound for the better.
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