Simon the Magpie is a larger than life character that straddles the line between madcap modder and genius designer, and the Happy Little Accident V2.0 is probably his only almost “serious” pedal (as in, “a pedal with an acceptable number of controls that doesn’t look absolutely bonkers) – although its manual comes folded in the shape of a paper boat.
This is a compact pedal that can do a lot of things, from boost at a lower level to crazy synth fuzz tones when cranked up. The manual describes the controls in a very imaginative yet vague way, and some of them are not as straightforward as your regular 3-knob pedal:
A stands for “accident” and seems to control the amount of fuzz, while V is volume. The tiny L knob does something “synthy” to it that interacts with the Hole in the center, as in… if you stick your finger in that hole you get some variations in tone. If you need more, you can find the control descriptions from the builder under the video.
Like for any other Simon the Magpie devices, you can only “get” them by playing with them.
Magpie Pedals Happy Little Accident V2.0, Builders’ Notes
Hello.
A little accident happend! Fortunately it was a happy one 🙂
There are three controls and a big hole on this pedal:V – Is your VOLUME control. With a fair amount of boost.
A – Is the ACCIDENT control, all the way to the left you monitor yourself in the real world, all the way to
the right your totally lost in the ether. Any mix of those two is possibly.L – This is your LITTLE help in the ether, it helps you fine tune your experience between the radio waves.
This control also screams a lot when you are not playing anything. But Max it completely and it will play
out, or tap your finger in the hole to silence it faster.HOLE – There is as you’ve probably noticed a big happy hole on this pedal. It’s there so you can access
part of the circuit on the inside. Stick your finger in there and gently touch the circuit to make your pedal
go completely bonkers. Together with the L knob you now basically have a touch controlled synthesizer.Very avant garde!
The pedal is feed trough a 9V (2.1 mm) DC center negative power jack.
