Nurse Quacky for lead?

[bancika]

Is Nurse Quacky (or any similar pedal available for building) good enough for lead sounds. Think Satriani, Vai, etc?
Thanks!

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Absolutely! Especially if Satriani, Vai etc are playing thru it!!

[bancika]

Actually none of them are using autowah, satch uses crybaby and vai uses crybaby and bad horsie.
My question is can Nurse q (or similar) sound anything like that
Does anyone have samples of it. All I could find were some rhytm played clean.
Tnx

[Mark Hammer]

Yes, but it depends on what you think a lead should consist of.  For instance, the decay time of the sweep may be too slow for the series of notes you have planned?  When the filter sweeps upward, the sound is momentarily thin.  Given how often people complain about the lack of bottom in this pedal or that, I have to ask you, how important is retaining bottom to what you consider your best solo to be?

Personally, I don't have any problem using such pedals for solo purposes, but I understand they don't mesh with everyone's style, and may not mesh with yours  It's cheap and easy enough to build, though, so I suggest you throw one together and let your ears and fingers tell you.

One recommendation I will make is to stick a 500k pot and 47k resistor in series with each other and place them in parallel with the 22uf cap to ground.  Making that parallel resistance lower will decrease the time it takes for the filter to "reset".  Having a shorter overall sweep cycle can be more compatible with those solos where one tries to stuff in more notes.  It also tends to sound a little more "synth-ey" to my ears since the sweep is mapped onto a single note at a time rather than a series of notes.

[bancika]

can you post a clip with lead playing please
which one of autowahs do you recommend, nurse quacky, doctor q or mxr envelope filter?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Nothing to stop anyone putting an envelope follower in series (or, more promisingly, in parallel) with a wah!

[Mark Hammer]

can you post a clip with lead playing please
which one of autowahs do you recommend, nurse quacky, doctor q or mxr envelope filter?

Can't post a clip myself, but the MXR is a better pedal for leads in my opinion.  The Dr Q and Nurse Quacky will sound virtually identical.  the difference between the latter 2 is simply which op-amp you can successfully use for the envelope follower.  The filter itself will sound identical.

A person CAN place a wah and envelope-controlled filter in series but they won't sound all that great I suspect.  If placed in series, the wah will rob the signal of much of the amplitude needed to cause a sweep (if wah-> autowah) or the autowah will "gut" the sound and make it hard to complement with the wah (if autowah -> wah).  Parallel is more likely to be successful at producing something interesting.

[bancika]

Damn, and I just made PCB for nursie

[Mark Hammer]

We're not talking a day and night difference here.  It IS possible to make the Q/Quack design more lead friendly, but all things considered you will have to accommodate ANY envelope-controlled filter more than you would think in order to use it productively.

That is another way of saying thatthe difference between the Nurse Quacky and any other pedal of that category is not as big as the difference between how you play now and how you will need to play to get any of these pedals to work optimally.  So, it is not a foolish or wasted move on your part.  The Nursie will be a faster build, less of a headache to get working, and once you master the basics, THEN you can put together whatever pedal you want and know in advance what to change/mod to get the sound you're after.