Using old wah shells

[MikeH]

I already have a vol and a wah pedal, but my friend gave me a couple of non-working wahs he had, and I'm trying to think of what other effect would be of use with a foot controller.  Anyone have any suggestions?

I remember the dunlop rotovibe, which was a wah/vibrato kind of thing, which makes me think perhaps a tremolo with the speed controlled by the foot pedal.

[Mark Hammer]

The list is endless.

Don't think about "volume pedals" in a monolithic way.  For instance wouldn't you love to be able to set up one volume pedal (preferably one with a nice stiff action that could remain partially %^&*ed) dedicated specifically to fading in a wet delay signal to a mixer?

Panning is a wonderful thing for morphing between two distinctive sounds.

What about foot control over duty-cycle using a square-wave sound shaper of some sort?

Like I said, endless.

[mdh]

If I had some wah shells laying around, I'd be tempted to put a phaser in one and use the treadle to control the rate. I often find that I'd like to change the rate while playing. You might also look at some of Tim Escobedo's circuits, he has some wah and wah/anti-wah things that might be interesting.

p.s. Can you introduce me to your friend? No one gives me spare wah shells 

[birt]

a delay with the time on the rocker, a lot of fun

[squidsquad]

One fun thing I did...ran the ins & outs to my reverb tank into a mosfet boost & volume pedal. Could go from dry to VERY wet w/control.  Cool for *call & response* phrasing outa one ax.

[tcobretti]

Any pedal can be mounted in a wah shell.  I posted a thread a while ago about an ampeg scrambler build that I mounded in a volume pedal shell.  The rocking action rocked between fuzz/no fuzz.  You can find it in the archives if you search.  I recently built an easyvibe and mounted it in an old crybaby shell.  Rocking it changes the rate of the vibe.  You could build a simple ring mod (thing modulator, maybe?) and control the pitch of the modulation with the rocker.

You could also just build an expression pedal, and mod your other pedals to where they can be controlled with an expression pedal.

[mcasey1]

Here is something that might make many of you gasp.  I am going to order a wah enclosure and house my ...vintage... Phase 90 in it.  Organ players get to use ramping with their leslies to add a certain movement to their playing.  Having a phaser in a wah shell with the foot rocker to act as a speed control will help add some of that cool push/pull dynamic.  I hope.

[mcasey1]

Double posted.

[jonathan perez]

Here is something that might make many of you gasp.  I am going to order a wah enclosure and house my ...vintage... Phase 90 in it.  Organ players get to use ramping with their leslies to add a certain movement to their playing.  Having a phaser in a wah shell with the foot rocker to act as a speed control will help add some of that cool push/pull dynamic.  I hope.

i did that...twice...the only problem, sort of, is when turning it off, the speed shoots up. 

[sfr]

i did that...twice...the only problem, sort of, is when turning it off, the speed shoots up. 

Make the bypass switch an external box.  Perhaps using electronic switching, perhaps just using a "bypass box".   Could even leave the switch inside as well, and have two options for turning it on/off. (or at least make bringing along another dongle a prerequisite for using the effect.)

[mcasey1]

Shouldnt be much of a problem for me, I dont think I will mind.

[Lachlan C.]

A possible idea: instead of controlling the speed of a tremolo with rocker, control the depth. This avoids the issue of the turn on speed either being maximum or minimum (due to engaging the stomp switch). It would probably work best if the toe down position was minimum depth so that when you rock back the treadle you fade in the tremolo. Could be quite cool to 'tremolo up' specific phrases...

Lach

[MikeH]

I got the tremolo idea from when I saw radiohead play "bones" on the Bends tour.  The guitar player (I think it was Johnny Greenwood) was down on his knees and he'd strike a chord and slowy roll the tremolo from fast to slow.  It would be a little easier to do with your foot though.

[petemoore]

Having a phaser in a wah shell with the foot rocker to act as a speed control will help add some of that cool push/pull dynamic.  I hope.[
  My Ph90 I have the 'loose feel' knob placed and tapered so a foottwist allows speed up/and down.
  The EZ Vibe has a 3'' 'Ziptie Knob' protruding over the edge of the front, a sweep of the foot across it turns the 'tight feel' knob a little bit or alot...I trained my goodfoot to be able to set that knob up.
  The SS has it's speed pot in it's Wah Shell, with the 'ernie ball Volume pedal' 'spring/string/pulley' method of potshaft control...The spring is weak enough that tapping the toe down [to allow a small amount of time for the pot to turn 'x' amount...it's shaft resistance slowing the turn of the 'pullspring'], so I can push toe down, then lightly bring heel to where the pot moved to during the time the spring had to turn it...stepped fine adjustment....it takes the pot about 1.2 seconds to go from toe up [slowest] to toe down [fastest], giving me the choice of heeling down just before turning on to avoid the fast pulse start, or just slowly press toe down to get a bot of 'this phaser just turned on and is going crazy'...
  Sort of a happy accident that happened to the SS Speed controlling.

[Mark Hammer]

A possible idea: instead of controlling the speed of a tremolo with rocker, control the depth. This avoids the issue of the turn on speed either being maximum or minimum (due to engaging the stomp switch). It would probably work best if the toe down position was minimum depth so that when you rock back the treadle you fade in the tremolo. Could be quite cool to 'tremolo up' specific phrases...

Lach

Indeed, the now legendary Boss VB-2 Vibrato pedal (and yes, I know vibrato and tremolo aren't the same thing) was distinctive in having a ramp up speed for the modulation, such that it could mimic (well, more closely mimic) the way that the human voice introduces pitch instability as notes are held.  Being able to gradually introduce either depth of tremolo, vibrato, Univibing, chorus, flanging, or phasing by means of a footpedal can accomplish something similar.

Ever plucked a rubber band or stretched string, then suddenly pulled it tighter as it vibrated?  Wild sound, eh?  You can do the same thing by using a footpedal to adjust the pitch of the modulating frequency on a ring modulator.  Pluck a note then suddenly raise the modulation frequency.  To the extent that the LFO can be set to audio frequency range on any modulation pedal (see the list provided in the preceding paragraph), you can use the footpedal to raise the LFO rate from something lower to something higher in the same way.

[MikeH]

Ever plucked a rubber band or stretched string, then suddenly pulled it tighter as it vibrated?  Wild sound, eh?  You can do the same thing by using a footpedal to adjust the pitch of the modulating frequency on a ring modulator.  Pluck a note then suddenly raise the modulation frequency.  To the extent that the LFO can be set to audio frequency range on any modulation pedal (see the list provided in the preceding paragraph), you can use the footpedal to raise the LFO rate from something lower to something higher in the same way.

Well, I know what I'm doing with the first one.

[runmikeyrun]

It's tough to get pots with a long threaded shaft to fit crybaby shells.  Maybe other ones use standard pots, i dunno.  A place by me sells the long threaded ones but they're like $12!  Needless to say i don't buy many.

I put an uglyface in one of mine.  When i roll off the bass' volume and it becomes an oscillator i can control the frequency with the foot pedal.  Makes for some awesome bomb drops 

I tried a TSA but it didn't do much, it just made things quieter when i manipulated the pot.

Atari punk console might be cool too, if you get a dual gang pot and wire them backwards from one another so as one goes up the other goes down.

Flangers and delays would be neat, something like an AD-9/PT-80 would be cool, you could put the delay time pot on the control, throw it into feedback, and then control the feedback frequency with the foot pedal.  Same thing with the flanger, wire it up to the speed or depth.  You could even rig up a paddle switch to switch the pot between one or the other to change things on the fly.



There are a lot of options.  Basically any pedal that you like turning a certain knob can be utilized.  Mounting and adjusting the switch is easy and there is plenty of room on the sides of the shell to drill holes to mount other controls, especially if you convert to micro pots and micro switches.  I have lot of a couple pedals like this, fun, and people ask a lot of questions about them (as well as my other pedals) after shows.  If you mount an LED though, mount it on the foot pedal somewhere.  I mounted mine at the bottom edge of the shell and it's hard to see.

[Cliff Schecht]

The list is endless.

Don't think about "volume pedals" in a monolithic way.  For instance wouldn't you love to be able to set up one volume pedal (preferably one with a nice stiff action that could remain partially %^&*ed) dedicated specifically to fading in a wet delay signal to a mixer?

Panning is a wonderful thing for morphing between two distinctive sounds.

What about foot control over duty-cycle using a square-wave sound shaper of some sort?

Like I said, endless.

I'm not sure if I already told you about this, but I have your Chaos design in a wah with the tone control mounted to the rocker. It's really cool when you are doing a solo and mixing in and out different flavors of distortion.