So many wah inductors

[paulyy]

I'm looking at getting an inductor for a few wahs a have. Ones a late 90's usa vox and the other is a late 90's crybaby. Both have the same inductor. Black with a green dot. I think they sound pretty good but just want to see whats else is out there. I'm not that impressed with the red and yellow fassels. Not that they dont sound good but in my opinion I think the inductors in my wah sound the same as the red fassel. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same thing. I've check smallbear and ebay. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

P.S. Any ideas on a good pot for a wah? Thanks.

Paul

[Paul Marossy]

My advice is to try tweaking other parts of the circuit, the results will be far more noticeable than just changing the inductor. The only thing the inductor does is make it a resonant circuit. There really isn't any magic in tht inductor IMO. I know, others would argue that there is, but I just don't hear it.

For a CryBaby type wah, I think the Dunlop Hot Potz II is really the best value. It lasts a very very long time. Once again, I am not one who is a big pot wah fanatic. The specific taper on it doesn't bother me, I adapt to whatever is in there quite easily.

[paulyy]

Lol. I guess I should have said both wahs were already modified. The only thing that wasn't touched was the inductor and the pot. I've tweaked everything you can tweak. I even replaced the 4.7uf electro cap with a 4uf electro cap just like the old ones. I wanted to try to run two inductors in series at the same time. I hear it gives you a fuller sound. Thanks for the replie Paul.

[joegagan]

adding inductance does two things. if you can find a 100mh inductor (much more common than 500 mh or higher) that is 10 ohms, also pretty common, if put in series with the green dot dunlop it raises the 620mh or so of the inductor to  720, and the resistance gets you closer to the sweet spot of 35 to 50 ohm. ( the green dots are consistently 18 ohm ) you end up with 720mh/28 ohm.

second thing is it lowers the resonant peak without messing with the sweep cap, but i have a theory that the time effect of two inductors is adding to the texture of the sound. i have been joining inductors for long time, and the results are usually good to great. is it possible that a fatter tone is available simply because there is more copper involved in the making of the sweep? hmmm. 

if you look up a schematic for the colorsound inductor type wah came with 1.5 H inductor stock, you will see slight component differences to the regular CB circ. there are reports- I believe stu castledine has measured vintage units all over the map inductance-wise, as low as 800 something. it is said that the engineers tuned the circuit for the higher value inductor. my point is, the parts value differences are not very far off regular crybaby values, this tells us how delicate the parts are in dialing in the filter.

one more note on adding inductance, this video shows the simplest demonstration of what happens when you change one thing only. the wah on the left ( says vox!) a regular 70s thomas CB, the inductor was raised to 985 mh and 28 ohms. the one on the right is a late model that was voiced the same way using two inductors in series.  you can hear it makes the wah bassier.

[joegagan]

the one on the right is for sale in our store 

[Ronan]

Its not that hard to wind your own inductor, get an old electric motor (I used one out of an old sewing machine), put a makeshift crank handle on one end and mount the bobbin on the other end, and feed enamelled copper wire from its spool onto the bobbin by hand as you count the turns, then fit the bobbin into the potcore halves. The potcores, bobbins and wire are not expensive. You could experiment with different numbers of turns and different gauges of wire. It was around 470 turns of 0.125mm wire for the colorsound "replica" I did, sounded fine.

[paulyy]

@  joegagan = Your wahs sound great. I'm not sure what I'm trying to do. I just want to see what its all about. My wah pedals have been modded to the point where trying differrent inductors is the only thing I haven't done yet. Thanks for the info and the wah video.

@ Ronan = I thought about winding my own but not sure if I want to go that route. I wind custom pickups so winding an inductor shouldn't be an issue for me. I could probably use 42 gauge plain enamel to wind my own but I think they use 38 gauge. Not sure about that. But I wonder if I wind one really low. Would it sound cleaner? or over wound one. Would it sound more over driven? I know that when winding pickups, I can get that clean or that extra burn depending on how many winds chose to do. Hmmm, I wonder..

[petemoore]

  Wind it to a high count, see how that works compared to a partial unwinds [wastes a bit of wire but you get an idea of what overwound and wound or underwound might sound like. Unwind a ways, cut/de-insulate, reconnect the inductor with reduced # of windings.

[Paul Marossy]

one more note on adding inductance, this video shows the simplest demonstration of what happens when you change one thing only. the wah on the left ( says vox!) a regular 70s thomas CB, the inductor was raised to 985 mh and 28 ohms. the one on the right is a late model that was voiced the same way using two inductors in series.  you can hear it makes the wah bassier.

That's one thing I haven't tried messing with. I should give a bigger and/or series inductors a try just for kicks.

[joegagan]

paul, don't let anything derail your latest venture into stick-like instruments!

one other thing to note about the above video. another possible argument for vintage vs newer componentry.

the wah marked 'vox' on the left ( i will call this wah #1) is a 70s thomas wah, stock except for the inductor mod, as stated. the one on the right is a modded wah i did for a customer trying to duplicate wah#1 using a modern dunlop. i added the series inductance to match, bypassed the buffer and changed the two trans to lower gain units.
the sound was almost identical, frequency -wise, but nowhere near as sweet sounding. i added numerous tricks to try and sweeten up the later one, the result is what you hear in the video. still not as sweet. i could not force the modern components to sound as good as the vintage unit. some things i did not change, which are telling are the .22 caps and the 1.5k resistor or inductor parallel resistor. did not replace any of the modern resistors with carbon .


george blekas thinks there is some magic in those old foil caps that thomas used. i tend to think he is onto something.

as marc alfs has said, the  carbon comps might be doing something as well.
and, as fuller of fulltone was quoted saying in one of the stompbox books, when he tried to do a classic wah using precise modern components it was missing the magic, he had to go back to some less precise older components to get the tone right.

in the end, i had to give my customer the vox on the left in a different case, i had to concede that i was not able to match the tone of #1. BTW, he has reported loving this wah in his fleet of high end wahs.

[Paul Marossy]

paul, don't let anything derail your latest venture into stick-like instruments!

Ha ha, you don't have to worry about that. I'm still learning how to play my latest creation. Need to practice it more, though. There's only so much time in a day darn it!

[paulyy]

  Wind it to a high count, see how that works compared to a partial unwinds [wastes a bit of wire but you get an idea of what overwound and wound or underwound might sound like. Unwind a ways, cut/de-insulate, reconnect the inductor with reduced # of windings.

Thats one way of doing it. Maybe I'll try that one day.

[Paul Marossy]

Or make up a few of them with different numbers of windings, put them on a daughter board and connect them to a rotary switch. Then you can A-B-C them and see if there really is much of a difference. I think you're going to notice 500mH vs. 1H but I am not convinced that the number of windings will be anything but very subtle. Change the number of windings and you change the inductance.

Maybe you could mess with different wire gages and the number of windings, too.