Problems With BYOC Classic Compressor and a Clyde McCoy Wah Clone

[Major Sparky]

I'm having a similar problem with both of these effects.  When I'm using the wah pedal I'm getting a crackling/popping sound in the middle of the pedals sweep.  With the classic compressor I get a small pop when I turn the sustain knob around 3 or 4 o'clock, also the sustain knob doesn't seem to be adding much compression at all. There's no difference in sound until I turn the knob past 2 o'clock.

At first I though that the pots were just dirty/scratchy, but I cleaned them and it hasn't had any effect.  I went back over all of my solder joints on the classic compressor and it's still acting the same way.  I haven't done this yet with the wah pedal.


I used this schematic for the wah pedal, http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/mccoy.php  and here's the instructions for the classic compressor, http://www.buildyourownclone.com/2knobcompressorinstructions.pdf

Besides these problems the pedals work fine.  LED lights up on the compressor and the level knob works well.  The wah does just what it's supposed to.

Any insight?

[frankie5fingers]

I can't speak to the pop, however, there are a couple of ways of rewiring the 3PDT the reduces/eliminates the pop.  IME, the "scratching" noise in the wah was Q1 saturating and and clipping.  I upped the value of the emitter resitor that cleared it up.  In my case I socketed that resistor position.  I used 1% tolerance, but bought a few values in 1%, 2% and 5%.  I experimented with a few and found that a 2% tolerance unit about 50% higher than the original cured the scratching completely.