Wah Enclosure for Super Tone Control

[replaceablehead]

I've seen a few other forum members do this, putting a Craig Anderton Super Tone Control into some sort of wah enclosure.

I'm loving this pedal and I like the idea of having it instead of a wah.

Has anyone got any thoughts on a wah, or expression pedal that could be modified. It would need to be able to take the double gang pot and have room for the circuit and other controls.

[Mark Hammer]

The tricky part might be assuring that the gear mechanism fits over the pot shaft securely, and that there be adequate space for the body of the pot.  Since most wah pots tend to be larger, the collar is generally larger, and the space where the collar slides in is larger.  You'll need  to use some sort of locking washer/s to make sure the pot doesn't roll around.  As well, the collar needs to be long enough to accommodate all of that.

Lastly, it is standard practice to avoid having the rack and pinion mechanism rotate the pot shaft all the way to one end of rotation or the other, lest the pot be damaged.  So you need to start out by centering the pot on the gear so that you're using only about the middle 60% of rotation.  Once you have that figured out, you can bump the gear mechanism over a tooth or two in either direction to cover the sweep range you want.

Note that, while toe down in lowpass mode "opens up" the sound by letting more top-end through,  if I remember correctly, that same position also results in the thinnest sound in highpass mode, as the mids and bass are cut.  Some may wish to install a contact-flip toggle, that reverses which outside pot lug (in each half) goes to ground or hot.

[replaceablehead]

I was hoping someone out there had built one with a current production foot pedal, or wah shell.

I was thinking something like this might work.
shorturl.at/coEHW

[replaceablehead]

I've had an idea.

Just have the expression pedal in a separate enclosure and plug it into the enclosure housing the STC via some kind of 6 pin connector.

So what I'm thinking of doing is tearing down on of my old crybabys and removing the plastic gear off the pot and putting it on a double gang pot.

Which leads to the question, can those plastic crybaby gears be put on a regular pot shaft? It looks like they're a D-shaft pot with a circlip, anyone know if ahead of time if this is going to work, or do I need to just suck it and see.

[Mark Hammer]

Although your idea of remotely sweeping the STC is theoretically sound, just remember that the pots adjusting filter frequency are carrying audio, so you'd want to make sure any connecting wires are not picking up any stray signals.

Alternatively, you simply replace the pair of tuning resistances with vactrols, and use the footswept pot to adjust LED intensity.

[replaceablehead]

Yeah good point.

I've cracked open the Crybaby, looks to me like it should take a double gang pot without any mods, and if needs be the space could be enlarged with a dremel, but I don't think that will be needed.

yeah, looks good, not exactly sure how that circlip is holding the gear on the pot, but the shaft looks to be normal diameter, so I think it's all very doable.

Now I just need to find a suitable 6 core wire and plug arrangement.

[MrStab]

they're really plasticky and nasty, but FWIW, the Bespeco volume pedals are designed to work with more-standard 6/6.3mm pots than the Crybaby ones. not much to lose if you pick one up for a few pennies.