Freagin Awesome!

[jmusser]

It was a great evening of building and marrying sounds. I built Tim's Punch-In-The-Face to start with. Basically there is no "Face" sound to it. It could easily be called "Captain Crunch". It has fair sustain, and enough botton end in it's adjustments to sound like a bass on the E & A strings. The magic for this circuit is the "Trauma" control. When you roll the tone all the way down on the guitar, set on neck PU, Gain control rolled down, and the "Trauma" in the sweet spot, you get splattery hard attack fuzz, and a slight bit of up octave. OK, here's the cool part. I decided to have my son work the "Gargle" contol on the Gargletron by hand. Well, that's the way it's supposed to work! I built it right to start with, it will just have to be put in foot pedal. It sounds pretty good by it's self that way, but run the Punch-In-The-Face in front of it, adjusted the way I described above, and Wow! Whugh Whugh, just like "It's My Life". You won't sound any better through a Talk Box! These two will never be separated, they will be put in the same box together. The "Punch-In-The-Face" is easy, and I perfed it, and done all the off board wiring in my fixture in less than 2 hours. It will give saturated fuzz too, but I have pedals that are much better for that. This one has some major crunch, and that's it's best attribute. With it added to the Gargletron, it makes that pedal growl and vocalize in a way you just have to experience. It way exceeded my expectations! Oh BTW, how do you build a foot pedal that works a pot?

[Peter Snowberg]

That sounds very cool. Thanks for the report.

Oh BTW, how do you build a foot pedal that works a pot?

Get a volume pedal, or become a wizard with a DIY metal shop like Puretube has.

I love Ernie Ball volumes because they're just solid and smooth with the construction and the actuation. They work well as light dimmers too.

Colin recently posted about cheap volume pedals if I recall correctly. Try a search for cheap AND volume AND pedals and you may find something.

[RDV]

The "Rogue" volume or wah pedals at Musician's Friend are a fairly cheap way to go.

RDV

[puretube]

those cheap ones were: BESPECO

[David]

those cheap ones were: BESPECO

I'll second the Bespeco!  You should be able to snag on on e-Bay.  Trust me:  PRIME stuff for modding!

Why do you think I have one?   :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:

[Doug_H]

xc;lkjg

[Doug_H]

a;lkj

[Nasse]

Do I smell a very cool project :shock:

What would be more interesting than a talking wah :roll:

[jmusser]

I figured this type of thing already existed somewhere, but I've just never looked into it. It is going to be cool to say the least, because driving it with that fuzz set to hard attack made the whole thing a different animal. I had fought with this thing  to start with figuring I'd done something wrong because it wouldn't do thiss by its self. I believe Mark Hammer brought it to my attention that it might be designed to work as a rocker. After my son and I tried it the first time, I knew that all was right with the world. After that, I had the Punch-In-the Face, sitting in the same fixture, and my son asked "can you hook those together"? So we did, and it sounded pretty good, Then I got to screwing around with the controls to get the hard attack fuzz that Tim refered to on the drawing until I got that going. Then, I called my son back in, and we started trying to time the attack with him spinning the pot, and before you know it, we had it yelping and growling like a pit bull. Growwwlll, Wowwlll, Rolll, Groww! I've never been around a talk box, and to my knowledge that's the only thing that does that type of tone, but I figured there had to be a talking type pedal out there somewhere. I'm absolutely thrilled with the tone it's getting with these two together. I know I could make a foot rocker from scratch, but I'm not sure what mechanism rolls the pot back and forth. I've never owned a wah, and don't know how that part works.

[jmusser]

I've been looking around the magic web, and saw a couple designs for homemade rocker pedals. I have a chunk of aluminum channel at home that I think would work well for it. I believe I could come up with a way to work it. I like the one guys design where it works like scissors and the pot is glued to a tab, but I would like to try a slightly different approach along that same line that's more rugged. I'm sure this has been tackled by better men then me, and I can fail just as quick as they can. The main thing is to make it simple enough where about anyone can do it, and not use anything that can't be easily fabricated or bought. I will look again on Ebay for cheap wahs. There seems to be several. It just seems kind of weird that unless you gut out a wah and put your own guts in it, that you pretty much have to forget making a foot rocker. After I've been at this awhile, I may conceed that it's the only way too, but I'm wonderfully ignorant about the whole thing now. Whether I roll my own or put these guts in a used wah, this will be a great pedal!