Calling the Crybaby experts! Dating a crybaby

[ManuelGv]

Hey! I've just bought a Dunlop Crybaby for 30 bucks, but when I opened it up to see the guts I find that they were almost the same that Thomas Organ's ones had: a stack of dimes "03" inductor  and the pot says "AB 024-005318-03 8284 TYPE EJ extra life Mexico"...pedal's serial number is CB003784 and it's stamped instead of printed (maybe the 3784 made?) I would like to know the date it was made and if it's considered vintage or something like that.
You can see photos here:

http://imgur.com/lUlfdWU
http://imgur.com/woWpp8z
http://imgur.com/nzrS4YN
http://imgur.com/16GOeEE

[~arph]

We can only see the photos if we become members there.

[Brisance]

use imgur.com, best image host there is currently

[ManuelGv]

I'm sorry my bad! They're in imgur now 

[GGBB]

I dated a crybaby once. It didn't last long - I couldn't take all the whining.

(Sorry - couldn't resist.  )

[ManuelGv]

LOL
It is an obligated reply 

[joegagan]

that is RIGHT after dunlop bought the company. the first two things they changed were, make a new logo plate  2. make a new bottom silkscreen. on yours, there are some caps and other things on the board that aren't same as thomas, but that's minor.

they apparently got a lot of SOD inductors , shells etc with the purchase of the crybaby name - or maybe they continued to buy the SODs from the same supplier for a while. these have the same pcbs as thomas wahs.

sometime around 83 or 84 they switched the PCB to a header and term clip arrangement. i think the pcb manufacturer stayed the same for a while after that. the SOD inductors carried on for a year or two after the term clip change. then they switched to the worst inductor ever put in a crybaby. a little capacitor looking thing with correct mH but with resistances from 100 ohm up to 200 ohm, the darkest period of all for the crybaby brand. dunlop almost ruined it.

that glossy textured splatter finish on the shell is typical of thomas wahs of the late 70s early 80s era. i would assume the shells were bought already finished, or again they just left the previous supplier in place for a while.

the pots were unchanged for a little while. pretty soon after 82 or 83 they had them stamped ' dunlop' and 'hotpotz1', but all other specs stayed the same.

from 82 to ?  they still used a pin on the wah gear, down by the bushing since the shaft was shorter than the gear it was the only place to put it. at some point they just started gluing the gears on with polyurethane glue. this was done at time of building the wahs as you will sometimes a pool of the glue on the underside of the treadle directly under the gear end.

this short shaft and bushing continued until 92/93 when sam macrae probably put his foot down and insisted on a proper long shaft with a D/ groove for C clip and longer bushing as well.  the hotpotz1 was phased out for use in the wah by around 98 with the smaller black bodied plastic element hotpotz2 appearing around 94. hotpotz1 and 2 were used simultaneously for a while, with the last of the hotpotz1s being made for service packs ( blister packs ) up until 2000.

all hotpotz1s were made at the mexico clarostat factory, they had bought AB sometime around this time. some say clarostat, some say allen bradley but there is not one shred of difference.

the date code for your pot indicates 34th week of 82 , assuming you misread the 3 as an 8. i have never seen a number higher than 5 in this space. ( 52 weeks in a year) they were using pots quickly in this era as in all eras for crybaby - in other words the wah was made within a month or two of the pot being made. yours is a late 82.

the CB serial number was the earliest prefix. AA followed, but later in the 80s.
i don't know if 3784 was sequential, but it seems reasonable to think it might have been. i sold one nearly identical to yours and with a very similar # back in 2013 or so. it sounded excellent, totally stock.

yours is somewhat rare in that it has the earliest set of features in a dunlop wah. but still quite common, and no one is thinking of these as collectible yet.

a friend just bought a BRAND new 1978 crybaby, the box was stamped ' assembled in mexico', but it says it nowhere on the wah itself. i wonder if the assembly place was near clarostat's facility or   -- hmmm - could clarostat  have been the contract mfgr for thomas at that time?

the whirlpool appliance corp was the owner of thomas international when dunlop bought the crybaby portion. i do not know if any organs were in production at that time.

30$ was a gREAT deal for that wah. i bet it sounds awesome. if the pot isn't scratchy i'll be a son of a bitch.

[vigilante397]

Figuring out the age of an old pedal can be tricky, but when I saw that it was a wah and joegagan was involved I wasn't worried