My Scratch Built Wah - Pics

[tatems]

Well I finally decided to make my own wah pedal which i  have been dreaming about for so long  . Confronted with the problem of controlling the wah, i decided to use a slide pot which seemed to be the the easiest to mount. After hearing that the coloursound inductorless wah sounded good I decided to make it seeing that i couldn't afford an inductor.

Here is a pic of the slide pot and how the sweep is controlled




I used wood for the shell because it was cheap and rather strong. The only problem in this design is sheilding, but as this is a low gain circuit, noise is not really a problem. For the treadle, i decided to use some plywood i had lying around. As you can see in the picture below, i used small brackets which are attached to the base of the pedal and the bottom of the treadle. I then used a bolt with a nylon nut at each end to secure them together.

Here is a picture of the guts and the brackets




One problem i was faced with was trying to mount the jacks in the wood which is 2cm thick. Fortunatley Jaycar had the solution with mounting cups in which the jacks sit whilst the cup is secured to the wood. This can be seen in the photos below.




After I had finished building it all i decided to give it a lick of paint as well as putting some sandpaper ontop of the wah.

Here are some pics of the end product






All in all, even is it does look like a brick it sounds good and serves its purpose well (and was cheap) 
The only things left to do now is to attach some feet and put a little sign on the front.

Cheers
Tatems

[casey]

Now that's diy!  good job.  sound clips?

[tatems]

I'll see how it goes, i might be able to get some up soon 

Cheers
Tatems

[Hal]

::shakes head;: thats so cool :-D

how does the pot assembly work...is it strong?

[rody82]

Wow! How much time did it take to build?
I was thinking about building a DIY wah, but the main problem was getting that pot here (i live in hungary).  
Nice idea to use a slide pot. (hard to get that either... ) Wondering if it would widthstand the mechanical abuse.

[Marcos - Munky]

Hey, nice box. I have a DIY wah enclosure that a friend made for me, but didn't built anything inside of it yet. When I build something in it I will post pics too.

[Mark Hammer]

My first impression was "Nice camera.  Why does he have to make a wah out of wood? Maybe because all the money went to the camera."

While the idea is good, and the implementation downright heroic (sort of reminds me of stuff people invent on a desert island), you're going to have to keep an eye out for the pot.  If rotary pots are amenable to scratchiness unless "overdesigned", slider pots are even worse since they generally tend not to have as rigid a structure to keep the wiper on the straight and narrow.  It may lend a new meaning to the phrase "scratch built"!

The shaft of a rotary pot is held steady by the threaded collet of the pot chassis.  In contrast, the part of the slider pot you push is not nearly as steadied and often damn near free-standing (especially on less expensive pots).  You're going to need to develop/machine something that will keep the plunger on a very straight linear path or else all that constant "micro-wobbling" and lateral stress is going to shorten the lifespan of the pot.  Part of that is going to need to be an opening on the chassis under the treadle that plays a stronger role in "guiding" the downward movement of the connecting bracket, while not pinching it too hard.

If its any consolation, mechanical wahs don't HAVE to be rack and pinion gear-based.  Some of those old Shin-Ei/Companion/Jax fuzz-wahs had a sort of plunger similar in concept to what you use, except that they used rotary pots.  I fixed one for a guy last year and was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.

[petemoore]

  Looks like you got her working !!! COOL !!!
  Doing up wah cases is a challenge.
  That's the other thing I forgot to re-mention Mark...a plunger type standard pot rotator...
  Looks like one of the old 'plunge drive screwdrivers' [think barberpole], a tube with symmetrically opposing slots [one per side] that go down AnD around the sides of the tube, and a plunger that is a T shape, the top of the T fitting the two slots...PUSH=TWIST plunger for pots...
  Now this particular item would probably be very inexpensive to have extruded from plastic, once the startup costs evened out..and..being as there Is no other alternative except 'string pot turners' and slidepots, make your own Wah gear [someone here was it Paul actuall DID that]...anyway someone interested enough could probably find a market for the ones not personally used, to offset the startup costs...hintS hintB.
  I used a slider the other day for a Speed control of LFO on EZVIbe...it's not in the signal path so won't 'scritch'...so far it is controlling well...and can be replaced...
  I used a Ziptie, which grabs the wipers slider right next to the body of the potcase, this reduces markedly the 'torqueing' because it's close to the 'axis' of where twisting motion would happen. Being only 1 ziptie [the pot is a 'freewheeler'] the tie will bend at bottom [won't overpush the wiper] and I restricted the toe up using a 'dowel rod through heel stop method'...quick/accurate.
  IF one had a drill press, and figured out a 'twist jig' to control the 'twist slots' cutting of say a ball point pen tube, the better part of a twistplunger assembly could be completed PDQuickly. All that would be left is securing the T Plunger or *twisttube to the pot and pedal, the T Plunger...take a little thinking, I could come up with something for that...two pieces of thick solid core copper fitted and soldered to a T shape..IMO This is the way to try getting a pot to turn 'next time'.
  It's better than trying IMO to make a gear/pinion at home, which is about rediculous...effort to result wise....kudos to whoever it actually was that did one up,  I considered, and re-though ... and chose *not to try making a DIY gear assembly.
  I'm going to try making a plunger and DIY plunger tube cutter without a drill press...probably just mount the drill and make a wood jig to bring the cutting end to alignment of the center of the a BP pen's tube.

[Paul Marossy]

There's a lot more than one way to skin a cat, huh? Do you have any problems with hum or anything? Did you shield the inside of the enclosure? My second DIY wah had a plastic shell and I shielded the inside to prevent hum because inductors are rather sensitive to EMI...

[petemoore]

  No shielding, no inductor .. Colorsound Wah.

[Paul Marossy]

  No shielding, no inductor .. Colorsound Wah.

Sweet. 

[tatems]

Firstly thanks for your comments 

Secondly here is the soundclip as promised
http://aronnelson.com/userfiles/Coloursound%20Inductorless%20Wah.mp3

::shakes head;: thats so cool :-D

how does the pot assembly work...is it strong?

The pot assembly works by moving the wire wire which is conected to the top of the treadle and to the tab on the slide pot. It allows me to control the sweep of the wah. In regards to how strong it is, it is quite strong and has a solid feel. However i put a stopper on the bottom to stop me from pushing back too far.

In regards to sheilding, there isn't any hum but i might sheild it later on. 

Cheers
Tatems

[jmusser]

I'm just curious as to what's inside the black tape that the heavy wire is wrapped around that goes to the slide switch?

[Peter Snowberg]

GREAT JOB!!!!! 

That's serious DIY in action!

[Pete-Galati]

I'm impressed!

Sounds pretty good too.

I dug up the housing for my '70s era Cry Baby recently, that I'd destroyed years ago trying to turn it into a volume pedal.  So I've been slowly looking around for wah schematics to put that thing back together.  I guess I eventually threw away the electronics for some dumb reason.  So I won't be trying to scratch build a wah, which I'm pretty sure that I couldn't do.

Someone in another recent thread was looking for Joe Gagan schematics, so I followed the link that someone gave to http://www.ampage.org/cgi-bin/sounds/index.cgi which towards the top of the page has an interesting wah schematic.  A "shin-ei_wahschem-mgi.gif".  So I might use that, or try to addopt the design and use other transistors.  Joe's description of it's sound sounds like it'd be cool.

Where did the Coloursound schematic come from?  I thought all wahs used an inductor coil.

Pete

[tatems]

I'm just curious as to what's inside the black tape that the heavy wire is wrapped around that goes to the slide switch?

Smaller wire is beneath the black tape with a larger piece placed vertical making it stronger, the black tape is there just to cover it up.

Where did the Coloursound schematic come from? I thought all wahs used an inductor coil.

http://diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/viewtopic.php?t=25279

Heres the link to the schematic and the reason why this wah doesn't need an inductor is because it is a twin-t circuit. For a more indepth look into all this, go to GEO's Technology of Wah Pedals. Heres the link

http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/wahpedl/wahped.htm#twintee

Cheers
Tatems 

[Paul Marossy]

Where did the Coloursound schematic come from?  I thought all wahs used an inductor coil.

I have one at my website, and there was one including in an earlier post, which in fact is where I first heard about it. It uses a "Twin-T" filter to accomplish a wah sound.

here is the soundclip as promised

Sounds like it works very well. That's what counts. 

[joegagan]

that is a cool project you did, make sure you wear Doc Martens when you wah it so the shoes match!

Pete, yes that shin ei is a nice wah but I have since found that a lot of the tone attributes relate to the transformer style inductor that shin ei used. Unfortunately the currently avaialable small transformer from Radio Shack (you know, the little Bobtavia part #) does not sound good like that in my tests tho.

The shin ei is similar to a crybaby but is missing a few parts near the inductor if I recall. I built a clone of it recently using a scrap shin ei tranny style inductor , the results were very sweet. I nice mellow sweep for funk and cool rhythm parts. It works well with heavy fuzz before it as well.

If you are building a mccoy style or crybaby , check out my 'sweet 'mod  - it  adds a nice harmonic richness to the entire sweep. It has adjustable high end content but surprisingly the real benefit is the richness added in the low end tone of the wah.
http://photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/?action=view&current=crybaby_sch1.jpg

Also, I had a set of mods to the twin T mentioned in this thread:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/?action=view&current=freeper.gif

[kugua]

very cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[Pete-Galati]

that is a cool project you did, make sure you wear Doc Martens when you wah it so the shoes match!

Pete, yes that shin ei is a nice wah but I have since found that a lot of the tone attributes relate to the transformer style inductor that shin ei used. Unfortunately the currently avaialable small transformer from Radio Shack (you know, the little Bobtavia part #) does not sound good like that in my tests tho.

The shin ei is similar to a crybaby but is missing a few parts near the inductor if I recall. I built a clone of it recently using a scrap shin ei tranny style inductor , the results were very sweet. I nice mellow sweep for funk and cool rhythm parts. It works well with heavy fuzz before it as well.

If you are building a mccoy style or crybaby , check out my 'sweet 'mod  - it  adds a nice harmonic richness to the entire sweep. It has adjustable high end content but surprisingly the real benefit is the richness added in the low end tone of the wah.
http://photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/?action=view&current=crybaby_sch1.jpg

Also, I had a set of mods to the twin T mentioned in this thread:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/?action=view&current=freeper.gif

Thanks Joe.  My wah schematic collection is growing now!

I've still got several of your schematics from a few years back, and I kind of planning to do something based on your EasyFace when I rebuild my Dunlop FuzzFace.  That whole silicon for the first transistor, and germanium for the second.

Is that a Dunlop case that you built your EasyFace into in these pictures?:

http://photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/?action=view&current=234-3413_IMG.jpg

Pete