Reverse Wah Effect - buffer issue

[bettsaj]

I won't go into the whys and wherefores of the reverse wah effect, we should all know the history of this, Gilmour etc etc. but I have an issue that hopefully some techies might be able to find a solution to.

My guitar rig is quite substantial, a stereo rack with a switching system. My wah is a modified Area 51 conversion in a Dunlop enclosure. I wired a toggle switch to the enclosure so I could switch the inputs and outputs around for producing the seagull effects in Echoes (I play in a Floyd tribute). This all works fine when I plug the guitar straight into the wah, and then into maybe some other effects then into the amp. No problem, i can switch between wah or seagull effect at the flick of a switch.

Now onto my problem..... i had better explain the signal path...

The guitar is plugged into a Voodoo Labs GCX switcher (this is a buffered input), I then have various effects in loops 1 thru 6. The output of loop 6 goes to the input of my Wah, the output of the wah goes to the input of loop 7, I then have a boost pedal in the a send/return of loop 7, the output of loop 7 goes to my JMP1 pre-amp, and the signal from the pre-amp then returns to loop 8 input. I then have a TC G-Force in the send/return of loop 8 before the output of loop 8 goes to my power amp.

When I switch the seagull effect on i get nothing. I think it's a buffer issue, I read somewhere ages ago that the seagull wah effect doesn't like a buffered signal. This is why it only works in wahs with no input buffers on them. I suspect it's the buffer in the GCX that's causing the issue, but is there a way around this? would a line driver help??

In this video is a short sequence of a pedal similar to the one that Pete Cornish made for Steve McElroy of the Aussie Floyd... There's a line driver in this pedal, so I suspect what he's done is basically built a wah circuit into a box with a line driver.... but would this circumvent any buffers in Steves guitar rig??