new idea, or maybe not?

[Barcode80]

i was thinking about building a pedal that is basically a "stuck wah." the idea, in a nutshell, is to produce a pedal that duplicates the growly sound of a wah in the full heel position. think "money for nothing." i would like to do this without an inductor if possible.

so i know there is an inductorless wah on here somewhere. would it be as simple as replacing the wah pot with a resistor of the same value as the bottom of the pot rotation?

i was also thinking about combining it with a ts808 in one box.

any ideas? thoughts? comments?

[black mariah]

RG DID IT! RG DID IT!

Okay, maybe not, but it seems like he's done everything already. 

[fixr1984]

There is This. You could just use a regular pot to control it.
Kind of a set it and forget it thing. I made one a while ago, pretty decent, I only
had it unboxed so trying to control it and play was hard to do, but If you
wanted to dial in the sound you were looking for and leave it there, then this
might be what you are looking for.

[MKB]

Maybe a parametric EQ pedal?  There should be some of those around.  Boss also made a similar pedal called a Spectrum in years past.

[Barcode80]

yeah, i have a wah already, but it is the bad horsie so i can't set it and leave it so i can get that growl because it springs back to off if you pick up your foot  so a set-it-and-leave-it is exactly what i'm looking for. i'll let you know if this is what i need.

[John Lyons]

I've done just this a couple times.

Just build a colorsound inductorless wah and put it in the same box as the tube screamer, put in stwo footswitches, one for the tubescreamer bypass and one for the Wah bypass.

I like the distortion first and the wah second but you can experiment.

There are some diagrams of two in one boxes in the gallery as well as at GGG in the bypass diagrams.
I just use a 50K panel mount pot for the wah frequency, you will want to vary the frequency...trust me.
Different songs and styles work better with different settings, low gain amounts as well.

If you replace the 33K to ground resistor on the Colosound wah schematic you get a reonance/Q type control which is nice to vary the amount of quack you get out of it. Set it high and you get a self oscillation sound that can be fun. Sometimes taking it up to the point of oscillation and just a tad less is a great sound.

If you search the forum here you will come across the schamtic. it's super simple too!

John

[Nasse]

http://www.smallbearelec.com/Projects/WMouse/WMouse.html

[Phorhas]

I belive that Dunlop had this sort of a gizmo a few years back - basically an MXR style box with three (IIRC) knobs to control the Q, the frequency and gain

[RLBJR65]

There is This. You could just use a regular pot to control it.
Kind of a set it and forget it thing. I made one a while ago, pretty decent, I only
had it unboxed so trying to control it and play was hard to do, but If you
wanted to dial in the sound you were looking for and leave it there, then this
might be what you are looking for.[/qoute]

I had some fun playing with Tim's Ghost dance wah. http://www.geocities.com/tpe123/folkurban/fuzz/ghostdance.gif
Same deal, just use a regular pot, you can set it wherever you like.
Also instead of the 220K's try 100K's and a 100K to 500K dual gang pot wired in series with them. That way you can also adjust the notch.
All kinds of tones available.

[Barcode80]

steve's mouse pedal isn't exactly what i'm looking for, since it uses an inductor. I think i will try this two ways, see which one i prefer and sell the other:

1) buy a populated crybaby board and replace the pot with a similarly tapered regular pot, then drop into a box. yes, it uses an inductor, but i know already what it sounds like and don't have to wire an inductor (i know DIDDLY about inductors )

2) take basicaudio's advice. though i think since currently on the pedalboard the wah is before the tubescreamer, so i think i want it situated that way in the box.

[amz-fx]

I think many of the Morley wahs are inductorless and they have schematics on their web site.

http://www.morleypedals.com/downloads.html

regards, Jack

[Barcode80]

okay, built the colorsound inductorless wah. i'm pretty sure the circuit/layout are fine, because i'm getting something and the pot is changing the signal, but all i get is a faint signal and a bunch of crackling. it sounds similar to descriptions i've seen in other posts about having to hammer strings to get signal, so i'm going to do some searching/debugging and i'll get back with you guys on results.

[Barcode80]

there is a spot that calls for a 5.7M on the layout, all i had was a 4.7M. I think this might be the cause. what do you guys think? now that i think about it, that's not even BALLPARK in tolerance range.

i used the vero layout linked above.

could that be the problem? it certainly sounds like a misbias, and the only other sub i made was i put 190k resistors in place of the 180k's. again, all i had. slightly outside the tolerance of the parts, but i don't think that would have been enough to so severely affect the sound.

let me know what you guys think

[Ge_Whiz]

I was going to suggest Tim Escobedo's Idiot Wah, as it has the advantage of simplicity with the 'resonance' switch. I built it with an external pot to tune it, as there are opportunities to tweak for a 'half-%^&*ed' wah sound, as used by Clapton, Mick Ronson and others.

[Barcode80]

okay, i'm going to build the idiotwah, but since i've already built the colorsound wah, and i really need your help in debugging it. anyone got an answer about the resistors i mentioned?

[Barcode80]

what's the deal, no one answers this thread? anyway, i built the idiot wah. what a nice little circuit! sounds good, and will get boxed, but how can i tweak it to get more growl? i'm looking for full-heel-down %^&*ed wah sound, and at the bottom range of the pot the idiot wah just gets real muffled. i know it is working properly, because if i sweep the pot while strumming, it does the wah. but at the bottom of the swing, it begins to get muffled. i used a 100k pot which i know is why a lot of the bottom of the pot is unuseable. i will either change it to a 50k or combine it with a 100k resistor to save me having to de/resolder much. does the resistor go across the outside lugs of the pot?

any mods for this one to get closer to what i want? also, as far as i can tell the resonance switch does nearly nothing. i think i'll leave it off while boxed.

either way i'm boxing it because it still sounds great, i'm just trying to get it to sound meaner. think about the intro to "money for nothing." when my morley is at full-heel-down, it is a dead ringer. just trying to get that in a box pedal. i am about to pick up an old crybaby for 25 bucks, maybe i can just dump the circuitry into a fixed box with a pot, then use the shell for something cool

thoughts! please!

[Jaicen_solo]

You can definitely use the guts of the crybaby for that purposes you've mentioned. Dunlop did indeed sell exactly that, the used the guts of the crybaby in a hammond box, but it cost almost as much as a real wah. Needless to say, didn't sell a lot

I think if your wah is getting muffled at low ranges, it might help to increase the resonance of the circuit, though I'd probably just build two and put them in series, I don't think you'd be abe to get much more gain out of that circuit without it becoming an oscillator.

[Mark Hammer]

Alternatively, producers have been using parametric equalizers tuned to specific frequencies for years now.  Heck, for that matter, you can even add wah to guitar in post production by working the centre-frequency knob on a parametric.  It's a VERY old trick.

[Jaicen_solo]

Yeah, it's one of the first tricks I learned at least Sounds good when you double track the guitars and have different center freq's for left and right.
I don't suppose you've considered building a twin-T dual opamp filter? That way you can get a 12db slope over a very wide range. It's similar to what the Morley does, so it must work?

[Ge_Whiz]

what's the deal, no one answers this thread? anyway, i built the idiot wah. what a nice little circuit! sounds good, and will get boxed, but how can i tweak it to get more growl? i'm looking for full-heel-down %^&*ed wah sound, and at the bottom range of the pot the idiot wah just gets real muffled. i know it is working properly, because if i sweep the pot while strumming, it does the wah. but at the bottom of the swing, it begins to get muffled. i used a 100k pot which i know is why a lot of the bottom of the pot is unuseable. i will either change it to a 50k or combine it with a 100k resistor to save me having to de/resolder much. does the resistor go across the outside lugs of the pot?

any mods for this one to get closer to what i want? also, as far as i can tell the resonance switch does nearly nothing. i think i'll leave it off while boxed.
thoughts! please!

Three thoughts:

1. Sometimes when nobody answers, it means that we don't have any answers.
2. My Idiot Wah isn't muffled at the low end.
3. I had to tame the resonance control on mine as it was too aggressive. What Darlington did you use?