Whammy footswitch for next / previous effect. finally i have one :)

[N2h2]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum and i used to mod all my amps / guitars / stompbox.
The last thing i get without mods was my Whammy-4.
I was long time dreaming about getting mine, but since 5 years, this stompbox is almost impossible to buy in france and i had to go to london to find one.
When i finally get one i was soo much disapointed to see that there are absolutly no way to select an FX while playing, exept if you want tou spend much more money to also buy a midi footswitch.
I don't care about midi keyboard because as I'm playing Shreed/fusion/tharsh metal, I obviously don't have the time to loose a hand, even for a second to change FX.
After searching info about moding this pedals on many websites, i realised that many modders are not ready to share theire mods. (exept if you give them 50$ )
So i decided to open it and try to do somthing to find a solution...

Now about Whammy-4:

The most incredible thing on this pedal is the fact you cannot switch preset while playing if you don't have midi keyboard/pedalboard because without it you have to select your FX BEFORE starting to play...
I just wanted to be able to switch to previous/next effect WHILE I AM PLAYING, so after long analysis of my pedal, i finally found a solution.

If you open your Whammy-4 and look at the back of the FX knob selector you can see that it is made as a potentiometer: (where i soldered white/blue/red wire)

.


-When you turn the knob clockwise to select next FX it conect  points with white wire and blue wire together and disconnect it immediatly.
-When you turn the knob counter-clockwise to select previous FX it conect points with white, blue and red wire all together and disconnect it immediatly.

So if you want to switch to next FX: connect and disconnect immediately points with white wire and blue wire, and, if you want to switch to previous FX: connect and disconnect immediately points with white, red and blue wire...

Now if you ant to make a box with 2 footswitches (one for previous effect, the other one for next effect) just solder 3 wire as i did (first and second pictures) and connect it to switches (hugly diagram below )



switch "2" is exacly the same as the stock switch in whammy-4 (the one for activating/disactivating FX) when you push it, it connect white and blue wire, and the connexion is lost when you stop push it.
switch "1" is like switch 2 but with 2 separate tape. when you push it, it connect white and blue wire. so if you want to connect both white/blue and White/red, just solder a jumper between first and second bottom pin, when you release it, all connexion are lost.

Just respect the wiring colors and all should work fine.
Now, you maw want to use a jack plug, as it, you should be able to unplug swithces when you want.
The way you will solder red/blue wire on female jack doesn't matter, BUT alway connect the white wire to the part of femal jack plug used to be ground on other diagrams because the pin I soldered with white wire is connected to ground!

follow this schem:



Ok It's not a big mod, but it really improved my way of playing because now i'm able to use more than 1 FX during the same song. moreover, it cost me only 3 euros to build it (without the box enclosure cost for moment)

Now i'm not really confortable with english langage, so if someone could at least giving the name of the 2 switches, i would really thank him

(ps: sorry for ugly schems and bad english but it's not my motherlanguage, i just wanted to help those like me are bored to get a such expensive pedal without the most important option: effect switching without stoping playing :/ )

[bassk81976]

jack 1 is a spdt (Single Pole Double Throw), i believe, and jack 2 is a spst (Single Pole Single Throw)

i don't have a whammy (i do want one really bad), but this was very informative to read, very well done

[N2h2]

You mean switch, not jack . But that's it... Thank you for help. 

If you guys think that kinds of mods can be usefull, I may post all mod i did on my gear (amp, stompbox, guitar) ...

[karlthunderaxe]

that sounds awesome!
i would definitely be interested in hearing about some of your other mods

[bangerang101]

Nice, I did this on my whammy a while ago too but just drilled a hole in the original casing, and just used one momentary switch to switch (clockwise) the setting that I want. If your interested in doing that, just wire the blue and white wire (in the above diagram) to the two lugs on a momentary switch. They have various styles and sizes of these at radioshack that work well for switching w/ your foot, too.

[Gila_Crisis]

really nice and good to know!!!!

btw on my whammy I went for a more cheaper mod to switch thru the presets, this:

[MarkB]

Mine is a Whammy II... allows you to select settings with your feet and even pick 2 settings to switch between.   Not sure why they stopped doing it that way.