Fulltone Clyde Pot vs. Dunlop Hot Potz I

[dadude]

I might have got a bad apple but I was A/B'ing the Fulltone Clyde pot up against the Dunlop Hot Potz I. I recently did a  mod for someone. I took a VOX 847 and modded it to exact Clyde McCoy specs. I even put NOS Mullard tropical fish caps in for the .22uf's.
I put a Fulltone halo inductor in it and It really upped the tone by like %50 from the stock inductor. So I'm smiling   , Then I'm thinking that when I put this Fulltone pot in it it's going to be crazy good. Well it was like the wah died and went to wah-wah heaven.
Rocking it through the range it went from muddy to a lame treble. So I'm thinking maybe I hooked it up wrong, maybe a cold solder point. No nothing wrong. So I put the stock Hot Potz I back in it, Holy cow! (as Harry Carey would say) It was like night and day. I was in the studio with Jimi recording Voodoo Chile.  So I'm thinking somethings up. I put the Clyde pot back in and the same lame thing. So I know that this pot is not up to the job. But why?
I went through the channels trying to get Fulltone's techs to email with the answer but they never emailed me back. So I'm going crazy to find out why.
I went under the hoods on both and found the Hot Potz I to be a better made pot. All and all you can tell it would out last the Clyde pot by a couple of decades. The Hot Potz I I had was made in Mexico. The Clyde pot looked like some of the stuff I get from Taiwan. But this was an older VOX 847 reissue, I can't say if the new Hot Potz I is made the same way.
Then I checked the taper up on my MM. They have the exact same taper. They both start there ohms reading (1 ohm) at a little less than half a turn.
But I think what made the circuit really come alive with the Hot Potz I compared to the Clyde pot was the Clyde pots max ohm reading was about 93 ohms. The Hot Potz I came in at 114.5 ohms.  
This my opinion. I tend to like a more vocal (Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton) wah. I like smooth high trebles and an almost filtered low bass, not muddy. It can also be that I got a bad pot from Fulltone. But I can say that the internals of the Clyde pot are plastic and don't look to be made to last very long especially in a wah-wah. The Hot Potz I that I had internals were metal and looked to be made to last a very long time.
I would stick with the stock Hot Potz I and save yourself the cash.
But in Fulltone's favor, that halo inductor of theirs rocks! With the circuit modded to exact Clyde McCoy specs, taking out the stock inductor and putting in the Fulltone was like night and day.

[STOMPmole]

I've been using a RogerMayer modded wah for years with a 100k Taiwanese Alpha pot that I superglued a gear to.  On a whim, I thought "hey I must be missing out on something" and bought the Fulltone pot.  Simply put...the Fulltone pot sucked the life out of my wah.  It made it dull and lifeless and the taper was way too gradual.

The Taiwanese pot will go back in as soon as I have time...

[Fret Wire]

Most of the Hot potz I (Clarostat) I've measured have run about 114k-120k, and most of the Hot Potz II I've checked run around 90k-100k. I've never had any bad luck with the Fulltone's (95-100k) I've tried. Keep at them, and get your money back if you're dissatisfied.

[dadude]

That's funny I'm not the only one. I have read reviews on here stating the otherwise.
I also had another heads up. A couple of months ago I had a guy want me to mod a Fulltone Clyde wah to a Fulltone Clyde Deluxe. Not to disrespect Fulltone but I had to gut just about all the parts minus the inductor and the DPDT switch to mod it to Clyde McCoy specs.
But What I'm getting at is Fulltone talks about the way their wah is made it has a greater range throughout the sweep.
"The Fulltone "Clyde" uses our own custom-made 14 ga. welded steel pedal with nylon pivot points and much more travel than the conventional Vox-style ones that everyone uses."
I wanted to see how much more travel it had. So I measured it up against a VOX wah. I don't remember the exact measurements but I do remember that if you remove the single rubber stopper piece that stops the VOX wah when it is rocked back you get the exact same travel as the Fulltone housing. Maybe back in the day Mike Fuller liked his VOX wahs like this and wanted to have his housings do this.
What I was thinking is with the Hot Potz I in a VOX with the rubber stopper removed you could get greater travel than both a Fulltone and a standard VOX as the Hot Potz I one goes up to 114-120 ohms (it goes up to 11 LOL).
But I'm a believer that these old effects are like instruments in an of themselves. Although they may be easier to learn than a guitar or the drums they are still instruments. If you take a violin and make it bigger it's not a violin anymore. If you change a Clyde McCoy to sound different it is not a Clyde McCoy anymore.

(by the way the Hot Potz 1 I had was a Clarostat, made in Mexico, 100k - ohm, 9509, Type EJ, Extra Life)

[Fret Wire]

That's funny I'm not the only one. I have read reviews on here stating the otherwise.

Like I said, I've had good results with the Fulltone's. Other's have too. I don't know about the anyone else's bad luck with them, I didn't do their soldering for them. Any replacement pot has to be adjusted when installed, to get the best results. Like op-amps or other components, what works good for one person may not work, or be noticeable for another.

Your gonna find that the pot's taper has more effect than it's value. If your interested in high value pots, there is also a Hot Potz 470k that Dunlop uses for one of the JH wahs. Antique Electronics sells it.

[dadude]

I know what your talking about when you need to tweak parts in a circuit to make a pedal sound good. It looked as though Fulltone does that to make their Clyde sound close to a VOX Clyde McCoy. Their values are different than the original McCoy. If you are using different parts you have to. Check out fuzz centrals Axis Wah. On this VOX Clyde McCoy mod I used the original type parts.  I probably could tweak the circuit to make it sound great with the Fulltone pot. But then it would not have the original type parts.  As far as adjusting a pot in a wah, the adjustment is the rack gear to the pot gear. Every player has their sweet spot "Q" point in the wah range. There just was no sweet spot on the pot I had. It was just nothing or muddy in the original circuit. And I can tell you, when I A/B this pedal to anybody they can tell right off the bat which sounds good (I have since I wrote the above topic). As far as putting a 470k pot in. The original Clyde circuit has 100k pot. The Hot Potz I is 100k pot. The Fulltone is a 100k pot. They vary from their resistance one from the other but their tolerance allows this. And a 10k plus or minus is a small difference, 370k is a big difference in this circuit. Their taper was the same. I'm thinking it's a combination of several things on this one.  I have another Fulltone pot coming this week, as my client wants this pot in their wah. I'll give you a heads up on how it turns out in this circuit next week.

[STOMPmole]

Fret Wire,

I'm aware of how to properly adjust a wah gear and I'm confident that I'm fully capable of soldering a potentiometer without destroying it or mixing up wires (as I would hope anyone would be that is frequenting this forum and building DIY effects).

The Fulltone pot just doesn't work well in my wah, and for my particular taste/style of wah playing.  Before I installed the Fulltone pot my wah had a really nice, quick, sweep that was centered in the middle of the pedals throw.  After installing the Fulltone the sweep was spread across the entire range of the pedals travel and took much more effort to make a pronounced 'wah'...it was far less controllable.  Maybe it's just a psych thing (although I don't know why it would be because I was expecting the Fulltone to sound BETTER not worse) but to my ears it also sounded more dull and muted.

I'm sure some people like the Fulltone pots...I just have had better results with my cheapie 100k alpha pot and a hot-glued gear.

[Fret Wire]

We probably misunderstood each other. I see what you're talking about  with the last posts. A pot has a set taper and value, and basically works or doesn't. Sometimes when failing, they are intermittant, but that's easily checked with a DMM.

That's why I always suggest adjusting the pot first, before any voicing mods are done. It will affect any mods done if the pot is replaced or adjusted after. dadude: you mentioned customer, that's where it gets tricky. If they are just replacing a bad pot, and like their sound, its probably better to go with the same pot they had. If they want some kind of improvement or read that they need so and so's pot, that's where you have to educate them.

The Hot Potz I is rated at 100k, but I've measured over 25 of them and they always run closer to 120k. No big difference. Even though the Hot Potz I, Hot Potz II, and Fulltone are rated the same (100k log), their exact tapers are different enough to affect the sweep. And Stompmole, you're right, one pot's exact taper may not match your style or the voicings already done.

If you plot out a pot's taper, you can see what it's going to do to your sweep. That's why the standard pot adjustment method is only basic. Use a DMM also.

Now you can measure the pot's total taper, as well as the useable portion of it's taper when installed and adjusted. If you try different brands of pots, and install them the same way, you'll see that the heel to toe sweep lands on a different part of the taper with each brand. That's where using a DMM helps alot.

[dadude]

Sorry, I was responding to Fret Wire about the rack gear adjustment.

I have never used a standard alfa 100k pot in a wah circuit before. I have pulled both apart and checked under the hoods. I might put a alfa pot in as a fast replacement until I could get a heavy duty pot. Depending on how the player has their rack gear set my concern would be if they were up on stage having a screaming jam and just smashed through the pot killing it DOA. They have metal stoppers indented into the shell to keep them from going through full rotation. On normal pots these are small (the Fulltone's are small as well.), on heavy duty pots these are two, three times the size to prevent you from smashing through. You have a lot of pounds per square inch going into that wah from you foot. Long term, even on the short could be a headache.

[Fret Wire]

You set maximum travel with the toe all the way down, switch activated. That way the pot's mechanical stop (full rotation) does not come into play.

BTW, most log pots made today are not true log. They are "straight line" log taper. They are basically two straight tapers joined to make a log. Cheaper to make that way. That is one of the reasons different brands of pots will make your sweep sound different.

[kusi]

hi guys!

little question: what happens with the wah-sound, if i use a 200k Pot?

thanks

kusi

[Ge_Whiz]

As I recall from an earlier post, If you have a problem with a Fulltone product, the cause is your ears... :twisted:

[romdos]

I have a cry baby that had a scratchy pot, so I though I would "upgrade" to the Fulltone pot.  I had read that it was SOO much better than the HotPotz.
So now the tone is totally gone and the wah sweep got smaller, and I even got volume changes when going from treble to bass.  So I have a Hot Potz on order to replace the Fulltone

[dadude]

Take that Hot Potz cover off (Hot Potz I). Spray some contact spray on the contacts and move it back and forth. Then take a q-tip and mop up the mud. Spray one more time and mop up again, then put the cover back on and let it dry out. Next time you use the wah after breaking it in a few times all the scratch will be gone!

[STOMPmole]

romdos, your description of the "Fulltone" pot sound matches my experience EXACTLY!

[Ed G.]

First off, I want to say I mostly agree with the observations of the Fulltone/Hot Potz I wah pots.

I have a Thomas Organ Crybaby (TDK inductor, 5117 transistors) and just built a GGG mod-wah. The mod-wah has a stock dunlop inductor I scavenged from the original wah's circuit and it had a hot potz II.

That pot just sucked. At the treble end of the sweep, the sound dropped out completely. Maybe it was defective.

Well, I scavenged a Hot Potz I from another wah, an old Crybaby 535. I tried it and it was a lot better. I had a Fulltone pot in the Thomas wah, which replaced the original Clarostat pot. I noticed that the Hot Potz I is marked "clarostat" so maybe that is what they reissued.

The Thomas wah is a good bit brighter than the mod-wah. Maybe it's the 5117 transistors, or maybe it's the TDK inductor. I've got BC109C transistors in the mod-wah and I plan to eventually get a good inductor.

Well, I was never crazy about the Thomas wah after I changed the pot. I never paid much attention to it, I just dealt with it. So nowo I figured, why not try swapping out the pots?

Well, putting the Hot Potz I in the Thomas Organ wah brought it back to "normal" and it seemed to be a big improvement. It made the wah sound like it had more "Q" and it has a more abrupt change from bass to treble.

However, I kind of like the Fulltone in the mod-wah, but I'm not totally sold on it. The mod-wah has naturally more "Q" than the Thomas Organ wah, so the smoothing effect is not a bad one, but I kind of like the effect of the fast change.

You know that Grand Funk Railroad song, "I'm Your Captain" (I think that's what it's called) where the bass is doing his thing and the guitar plays two chords with a fast-footed wah? It sounds like that.

Or maybe the most famous wah song ever, the theme to "Shaft"... Now, I don't expect it to happen, but if Isaac Hayes comes calling me for a gig, I would want the Hot Potz I/Clarostat.

But for other things, especially with wah going into distortion, where you try to lock onto that fundamental resonant frequency, stuff like Soundgarden, I would want the Fulltone pot. A few years ago I was in a cover band and we played that Fuel song "Bad Day" and the guitar lead has wah into distortion. The Fulltone pot worked well for that.

So, maybe the thing would be to use the Hot Potz I on a wah, with a switchable "taper smoothing" resistor across the pot for versatility?

[jaysg]

Hi there...new guy for this forum    .  In the 70's I replaced a scratchy Vox pot with a linear one.   I didn't know any better.  The odd thing is that I bought a Hot Potz 1 and have completely failed to make friends with it.  I'm happier with a linear 100k.  Does that mean that the sweep is wider, or narrower?  

btw, I had the Fulltone pot on my wish list until I read this thread.  Thanks for saving me some disappointment.  Whew.

[Ed G.]

Hmm, I don't know. If you don't like the Hot Potz I then you might like the Fulltone.
To me, the Hot Potz has the 70's vibe going on, the "wacka wacka" Shaft/porn soundtrack thing going on.

[EdJ]

I rebuilt my crybaby wha to Fuzzcentral`s clyde mcoy wha and it changed completely for the better;think Shaft.I never liked the original crybaby`s sound so i am thinking there must be something wrong in the original transistors(fuzzcentral uses bc109`s)I left the original Fasel inductor in it although it is a little different from the ones i have seen on the internet;it is white and is mounted on it`s side.
A while ago the original pot got scratchy and i just recently replaced it with a Hotpotz 2 and i am still happy with it. The pot measured just below 100k but this can also be due to my meter.The thing i don`t like about the hot potz 2 is that it is not smoothly turning,i mean you actually feel the pot rotating with little humps.What i also disliked is the way one is supposed to solder wires on those little thingies on the back of the pot,maybe that`s just me but i like the things on for instance Alpha pots much better.But the sound is definively o.k.
Just my 2 cents,Ed