an enveloppe follower as an add-on to a CryBaby Wah...

[P-L]

Hi!

       I'm a  newbie with electronics and effects building, but I have lots of ideas and I would like to realize some of them, just like all of you I suppose! Recently, I've built my first project, the Mod-Able Wah from General Guitar Gadgets. It works great so far and led me to another idea for a friend of mine who plays vintage keyboards like the clavinet. He uses a CryBaby Wah normally and he doesn't like to rock the pedal all the time. Of course, he tried enveloppe filters, but he prefers the sound of his wah. Now my idea is to add some kind of external enveloppe follower to the CryBaby that would bypass the pot when needed. Maybe an external stombox (because space may be an issue) that would plug into the wah (via a stereo jack I guess) and, when unplugged, would return the wah to it's stock circuit. Am I crazy or is it possible?

                                Thank you for your time!

                                                                     P-L

[Sanford]

Hey!!!

I really can't answer you question, but I got a doubt that you can help me.
I'm making a list of components required to that Mod-Able Wah Wah but an informations is missing. The values of inductors.
I'll build the 1st board, with rotary switch inductor selector.
Another question: can u send me pictures of your built pedal? I don't know how to build it.


Thanks!!!!!

[Seljer]

Go read the The Technology of Wah Pedals on www.geofex.com and look at the section on remotely controllable wahs and the wah pedal retrofit
Rip out the envelop detector section out of some other circuit (I think I'd probably take it out of the mutron because its setup for an LDR) and use it to implement it into the method from above

you might want to put a small buffer at start of the circuit, before the signal goes into the regular wah circuit and off into the envelope detector part.

use a DPDT switch to choose between the regular pot and the envelope filter version (only 2 of the lugs are changed, one is always connected to ground)

[Mark Hammer]

Among many of the commercial products that haveincorporated automatic and footswept wah over the years, generally the tendency is to do it the other way around.  That is, use a swept filter circuit that depends on a single varying resistance, rather than a voltage divider like a Cry-Baby type wah.  That way, you can simply sub a pot for an LDR or an LDR for a pot to go from auto-wah to wah-wah and back.

And just so you know, a Dr Q / Dr Quack / Nurse Quacky doesn't make a half-bad wah-wah if you sub a pot for the transistor that ties to ground.  The Mutron doesn't make a half-bad wah-wah if you replace the envelope detector signal with a straight DC voltage that alters the brightness of the LEDs in the dual optoisolator.