This is a report on my build of the PPCB Pharmacist. I built this pedal as a Christmas present for my girlfriend, who’s a huge Beatles fan. It’s a nice overdrive.

Inspiration

I was thinking about what bird would best fit the Beatles. Of course there’s Blackbird, Blue Jay Way, And Your Bird Can Sing. I had other plans for blackbird-related pedals, and the other songs are not among my top Beatles songs. But I love Norwegian Wood. I thought it would be funny to do a Penguin pedal, for a bird that can’t fly. As I mentioned, my girlfriend is a fan of the Beatles, and likes music equipment, and is the bigger birder of the two of us. So it was win/win/win. Only thing is that she doesn’t really play much, so the pedal has not gotten a lot of use.

Funny story. When I was 26 or 27 I started thinking that there’s a lot of boring/repetitive Halloween costumes, and I got the bright idea of doing a “double costume” to be more unique. Basically combining two costumes to give one that nobody would ever have seen before. I chose “a penguin dressed as a space shuttle” - I think because of the colors and it just seemed funny to imagine a penguin that really wanted to go out for Halloween as a space shuttle. I bought a penguin outfit online and made a space-shuttle harness that fit over my shoulders with a cardboard shuttle. At the end of the night, I was talking to someone and he said “So is your costume two birds that can’t fly?” and I was really mad I didn’t think of that myself. So I think the penguin/“hasn’t flown” connection was on my mind for a few years. I still think this was my favorite halloween costume. Unfortunately, this was also the costume where I realized that I didn’t want to wear a bulky costume all night, especially on the NYC subway.

The penguins here are AI-generated, which is one reason they look a bit different from my normal bird art. The AI really did a poor job with the jackets, which I mostly redrew and recolored by hand to match the Sgt Peppers jackets. Similarly, I had to touch up a lot of glitchy penguin outlines, remove penguin hats and hair, and reposition the penguins. I’ve included the original image as a reference. But I’m very happy with the end result, even if the penguins are little more on the cartoony side. I went with a Tayda yellow background since my gf has a Yellow Submarine tattoo.

The Build

I built this a while back, so i can’t recall the details of the built itself. It’s pretty clean build with the big line of resistors. Always satisfying to go down the line and solder them. It’s a nice board, but I do wish the end result was in a portrait orientation.

I’ve found that most of the larger PPCB boards appear more intimidating than they actually are - in fact I think they’re easier than some of the denser regular-sized boards. Same goes for two-layer boards, although this is only a single layer. As long as there’s no mojo parts I’m happy.

The Pedal

It’s a nice overdrive pedal. The boost switch is a fun addition that I think adds a lot of utility, since it’s easy to completely switch sounds just tapping a foot. I can hear the Beatles tones a bit, but in the end I don’t think this would kick top overdrives off my board. But this has gotten me thinking that a boost switch on a smaller overdrive in a 125B form factor could be a real winner, at least for a bedroom pedalboard where it’s feasible to have two footswitches in such close proximity.

Firsts

• 🎁 First gift pedal for the girlfriend.

Build rating: 5/5 ⭐

Pedal rating: 4/5⭐