Fender fuzz wah.

[Electromancer Effects]

The wah alone level can be changed by tweaking R22 R23.

R22      R23
680k      15k        (normal values)
820k      18k        +1.4dB
1M        22k      +2.7dB
(R23 sets the gain and R22 sets the bias voltage on Q5's to be what is was initially.)

How the hell do I quote just one passage? When I press quote it puts the whole damn thing down here. lol at myself.

I'm gonna go forward presuming that you meant r24 instead of r23 as that is 680r and r24 is15k.

[ElectricDruid]

How the hell do I quote just one passage? When I press quote it puts the whole damn thing down here.

You can either highlight the bit you want to quote and then press "Quote selected text" (which only appears if you have something selected). Or you manually stick quote tags around something.

[Rob Strand]

The wah alone level can be changed by tweaking R22 R23.

R22      R23
680k      15k        (normal values)
820k      18k        +1.4dB
1M        22k      +2.7dB
(R23 sets the gain and R22 sets the bias voltage on Q5's to be what is was initially.)

How the hell do I quote just one passage? When I press quote it puts the whole damn thing down here. lol at myself.

I'm gonna go forward presuming that you meant r24 instead of r23 as that is 680r and r24 is15k.

Sorry, I meant R22 (680k) and R24 (15k)

R22      R24
680k      15k        (normal values)
820k      18k        +1.4dB
1M        22k      +2.7dB
(R24 sets the gain and R22 sets the bias voltage on Q5's to be what is was initially.)



FYI:
The text quoting has some weird behaviours.  If you select an entire paragraph the "quote selected text" button disappears!!!  However if you leave off the first or last letter in the paragraph in the selection the button appears.

[Electromancer Effects]

The wah alone level can be changed by tweaking R22 R23.

R22      R23
680k      15k        (normal values)
820k      18k        +1.4dB
1M        22k      +2.7dB
(R23 sets the gain and R22 sets the bias voltage on Q5's to be what is was initially.)

How the hell do I quote just one passage? When I press quote it puts the whole damn thing down here. lol at myself.

I'm gonna go forward presuming that you meant r24 instead of r23 as that is 680r and r24 is15k.

Sorry, I meant R22 (680k) and R24 (15k)

R22      R24
680k      15k        (normal values)
820k      18k        +1.4dB
1M        22k      +2.7dB
(R24 sets the gain and R22 sets the bias voltage on Q5's to be what is was initially.)



FYI:
The text quoting has some weird behaviours.  If you select an entire paragraph the "quote selected text" button disappears!!!  However if you leave off the first or last letter in the paragraph in the selection the button appears.

No need to apologize. I worked it out. I ended up throwing some sockets in there to test things out and it's working beautifully. At least as far as I can tell with its guts hanging out and working the wah with one hand while I pluck with the other. lol. I ended up going up to 1m5 and 33k but that seems to be pretty good.

Do you think these units always had these volume issues?

Anyway. I can't thank you enough for your help. I think I'll learn a lot here. Now time to pull the sockets and put these resistors in for real so I can step on this thing!

[GibsonGM]

Sound clips or it never happened, 'Mancer.... 

[Rob Strand]

No need to apologize. I worked it out. I ended up throwing some sockets in there to test things out and it's working beautifully. At least as far as I can tell with its guts hanging out and working the wah with one hand while I pluck with the other. lol. I ended up going up to 1m5 and 33k but that seems to be pretty good.

Do you think these units always had these volume issues?

Anyway. I can't thank you enough for your help. I think I'll learn a lot here. Now time to pull the sockets and put these resistors in for real so I can step on this thing

You did well.   I'm glad it worked out (and it wasn't some weird fault).

I'm pretty sure the wah level is low.   You can hear it to some degree in the videos I posted although not as much in the Re-issue.    The circuit analysis shows it to be a little marginal.

The stock wah gain is roughly the right ball-park when driven by a low impedance source *but* when you plug a guitar/guitar pu directly into the wah's low input impedance the circuit loads down the signal.  It's quite a strong effect.  I mentioned it earlier but after your post I checked just how much it is.   Your hand tweaked 1.5M and 33k look pretty good when we factor in that loading/signal drop.   The bandwidth/Q of the Fender wah isn't quite the same as a Crybaby so the perceived level isn't matched by just matching the peaks in the wah response - that's where you hand/ear tweaking is better.
[FWIW: I checked the perceived loudness of the Fender Wah with pickup loading and the more common Crybaby Wah and your 33k gain tweak is about as close as you can get to the same perceived level!]

One problem with this type of loading is if you preceded the wah with a low output impedance pedal the wah level would give the appearance of increasing.   You can't win unless you mod the wah to have a higher input impedance.   For a wah, especially a fuzz wah, the way you have it set-up now is probably best.

[PRR]

How the hell do I quote just one passage? When I press quote it puts the whole damn thing down here.

You can even quote the whole damn thing and then use your DELETE key as needed.

But thanks for asking. Lately there has been an excessive number of excessive quotes.

[Rob Strand]

I have gone back through this forum and I'm pretty sure I've read just about everything about this pedal and I've seen posts with similar complaints but not a whole lot in terms of solutions, so I'm throwing this up here to say hi and ask if anyone has any tips that I may have missed. Thanks.

After a bit of digging I found a good copy of the schematic.   Unfortunately at the end of the thread.

The inductor is 800 turns tapped to 700 turns, of #36 wire; so pretty sure it's a P26 pot core.



That means the level could be a tad lower than my second level post with 700 turns.   So it's possible a 39k collector resistor might be closer to Crybaby Wah levels - I'll admit at this point it's splitting hairs.

Another thing I found is some specs for what looks like the reissue.  It seems the printed impedance specs don't agree with the schematic for the original.  Also there's a switch on the bottom.   Which leads to the questions: Is the re-issue different? and does that explain the level differences on the reissue?

[Electromancer Effects]

[/quote]
Where's the fun in that?

Perfect timing! Haha.

[Mark Hammer]

Is that one of those things that goes side to side as well as forward and back?  Or am I confusing it with a volume-and-tone pedal?

It's funny.  Back at the dawn of such things, the default was fuzz-into-wah, and NEVER wah-into-fuzz.  They were hard wired that way.

Here's a schematic for a later-issue Fender Fuzz-Wah, that I expect will sound quite different.

[Rob Strand]

Where's the fun in that?

I've paid more than my dues deciphering schematics over the years.  My old eyes need a break 

s that one of those things that goes side to side as well as forward and back?  Or am I confusing it with a volume-and-tone pedal?

It's funny.  Back at the dawn of such things, the default was fuzz-into-wah, and NEVER wah-into-fuzz.  They were hard wired that way.

Here's a schematic for a later-issue Fender Fuzz-Wah, that I expect will sound quite different

The one in this thread is the earlier "Version 1" (1968 to 1973), which has the silver footswitches on each side.  It has the side to side pedal.  It's the only one with an inductor.

The one you posted is "Version 2".   The wah and fuzz are different and it uses an opamp.   It has the three thumb controls on the top edge.

I've discovered the Re-issue, which looks like V1, actually has a different circuit to V1.
- the fuzz circuit looks like V1
- the wah circuit used an opamp, perhaps similar to V2, not sure.  No inductor.
- it has a switch on the bottom for wah->fuzz and fuzz->wah
- it has a trimpot control accessible from the bottom to set the fuzz level.
  (that explains some of the level differences on the re-issue).
- from what I can make out the distortion blends between clean and fuzz like V2, but not 100% sure.