Anybody ever mod a snarling dogs wah?

[bpalatt]

I have a super bawl whino-wah which i just picked up.  It's got a bunch of interesting tones available, especially after i swapped in a fulltone pot, but its noisy as hell.  It produces a tremendous amount of white noise, especially toward the top of the sweep.  Has anyone done any work on these things?  Ever written or gotten a schematic on them?  Is this a common wah problem with a simple solution, or am I going to have to start experimenting?  any help would be much appreciated.
thank you,
bp

[Ansil]

try rotating the pot back a little so you have more low end sweep. tht is where these pedals shine anyway.

[Paul Marossy]

Does it use transistors? An opamp? It's probably cheap transistors or an opamp with poor noise specs. If those check out ok, then maybe you could try lowering the gain of the circuit some, if there is any room to lower it.

[bpalatt]

Well, the transistors look cheap, but I don't really know.  I am apologizing in advance for my uninformed terminology.  They are the little black plastic semicylinders.  Q1 and Q2 say:
ST.
9014C
Q 9C

while Q3 says:
K30A
Y 2F

I did some internet searches and all I could find is that I think they are Korean made.  How do I find out what type of transistors they are to check the noise specs?  There are also 5 blue and black little can type capacitors and about 10 green coated ones.  The can caps say +\- 20%, is that acceptable for audio capacitors?  What sort of transistors, capacitors, and resistors does someone like Teese put in his wah pedals?  Does simply upgrading all the parts seem like a good idea?  If so, what should I use instead?
thanks.

[bpalatt]

I did some searching on this site and found that most people are upgrading the transistors in their crybabies to BC108B's or 2n2222A's.  Would anyone happen to know if those upgrades are compatible with my wah?  Are they all selected for better noise and gain, or would I have to do that myself anyway?  Also, people discussed "tropical fish" capacitors.  Is there a brand name or capacitor type for these things?  I know I have a lot of questions, but I really would appreciate any help anyone could offer.  thanks for all the suggestions so far.

[guitaristz]

Hey, did you ever change out upgrading these transistors? A bud just dropped one off and I might do this...thankas.

[pinkjimiphoton]

i wouldn't change the transistors unless its malfunctioning,  they don't have all that much to do with the tone of the circuit. if they're noisy or not working, first check the peripherals associated with them to be sure yer getting ballpark readings on ebc of each. if not, check the caps and resistors. the caps, check for dc leakage, resistors, unsolder one side and meter to see how close they are. 10% tolerance is probably fine.