Thomas Organ Wah inductors

[yeeshkul]

Guys has anyone tried 80-5048-7 50mH inductors from Thomas Organ site for RCM wah?
http://www.organservice.com/thomas/thomas.htm

[R.G.]

50mH is 1/10 of the usual value for inductor style wahs. They tend to be 400-600mH. You'd need ten  50mH inductors to get there.

[yeeshkul]

R.G. i am sorry 80-5048-7 is 500mH i made a mistake. They have the presumed "Jimmy Page" type of 250mH as well. I've red the Geoffrey Teese Interview on analogman's site (http://www.analogman.com/kraft.htm) and got tempted . I was just thinking about ordering one .

[Dai H.]

apparently they bought up the last remaining Thomas Organ stock including wah inductors and some years ago, that site became known and people started buying their inductors to try. Last I remember they may have run out and started supplying something else but I may be misremembering and I've never bought any myself. (Again, according to memory) the ones they were selling were not the TDK rectangular cube kind but round inductors.

[yeeshkul]

Just got the answer ... they are sold out 

[Dai H.]

well... it has been some time (years) since those were "discovered". (When those were discussed) Geoffrey Teese also apparently had some of the same inductors and was offering at a (slightly lower?) price also as I recall.

[Paul Marossy]

Do they per chance have any 250mH inductors?

[Dai H.]

there is one listed:

80-5044-7

INDUCTOR, 250mH  #44

8.00

would it be for one of the wah projects on your site?

[Paul Marossy]

there is one listed:

80-5044-7

INDUCTOR, 250mH  #44

8.00

would it be for one of the wah projects on your site?

Yeah, for my Vox Grey Wah clone. 

[Dai H.]

assuming you try one, I'm sure fans of your DIY articles (me'self incl.) would be interested in the results. FWIW, my Roger Mayer 9090A kit inductor came with a tap(which I think lowers the L). This was supposedly (according to the lit. incl.) to re-create a "Chinese wah" effect that Jimi liked. It did sound thinner to me. 

[Paul Marossy]

OK, if I get my hands on one to test out, I'll let everyone know the results. 

[Dai H.]

 

[Dai H.]

FWIW, I bought an LCR meter and was able to take a reading from the Roger Mayer kit inductor:

424.3mH (about 130 ohms DCR, for some reason my DVM reads half of this) full winding

309.2mH (about 78 ohms) tap

(this is just conjecture, but) perhaps Jimi was able to try some of the older versions (of Vox wah) with the 250mH? (Or, were 500mH inductors made to such poor tolerances that some came out that low?)

[Paul Marossy]

Your guess is as good as anyone elses. Who might know the likely answer to this question is Geoffery Teese.

[Dai H.]

RM might know more about the particulars in regards to the thin wah sound, but regardless it'd be interesting to hear what Geoffrey thinks about that 250mH inductor and early version Vox wahs.

[Paul Marossy]

Yeah, maybe so. I thought that Roger Mayer tweaked his Fuzz Faces, though. Did he mess with his wah pedals, too?!

[Dai H.]

I think he has said he did in interviews. Something about making sure they were full range, so who knows if that means he just did basic things like making sure the gear, rubber stoppers, felt pad, etc. gave a good adjustment range or some special circuit tweaks (perhaps some smoke and mirrors there about special tricks, magic mojo, etc. that only he knew to invent and implement which in reality were conventional and practical solutions from the standpoint of an electronics engineer). One thing I wonder is if RM perhaps buffered the wah out to work better with his fuzz pedals and amp. Jimi's wah and fuzz seemed to work quite well together listening to some of his boots with wah fuzz and univibe.

[Paul Marossy]

I suppose anything is possible. Your point does make me wonder if maybe he had some kind of buffer in his wah pedal, though...

[Dai H.]

even with my Marshall 50W guinea pig amp (wired up basically as a 1987 cct.) I've had problems getting that same crappy sounding, poorly functioning interaction as with running the wah output into a fuzz, so I just kind of wondering if RM may have come up with using a buffer just out of practical necessity. I was previously going to point out the Vox Stereo Fuzz Wah which looks like it has a buffer, but after searching for the date it came out, it appears to be a bit too late ('72?). Maybe it can be taken as an example of engineers coming up with an obvious solution to help the output function better (not crap out depending on what is being driven after the wah). Also, check out this youtube vid of a guy demo'ing his Vox Stereo Fuzz Wah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgNMCVdnWGo&feature=related

(I haven't quite sorted out my thoughts on the relation/interaction with the Fuzz Wah and may be missing something with the sequence of the effects--maybe wah then fuzz?--I'll have to look at the schematic again.)

[Dai H.]

FWIW, I bought an LCR meter and was able to take a reading from the Roger Mayer kit inductor:

424.3mH (about 130 ohms DCR, for some reason my DVM reads half of this) full winding

309.2mH (about 78 ohms) tap

(this is just conjecture, but) perhaps Jimi was able to try some of the older versions (of Vox wah) with the 250mH? (Or, were 500mH inductors made to such poor tolerances that some came out that low?)

edit:

apparently I had my new fancypants LCR meter set on the wrong mode when reading the DCR. With the R set for series mode, the readings agree with my DVM (about 62ohms for the 424mH reading and about 54ohms for the 309mH reading). I have a bit of data to compare to since someone a while ago was nice enough to take some inductor readings from a couple of his vintage wahs and his one Halo-equipped wah reading was given as 83ohms and 470mH, two Fasels were about half the DCR and a bit above 500mH (38ohms 562mH, 35ohms 542mH), one apparently "stack of dimes" 43 ohms 443mH, one more recent V847 17ohms 556mH. (One of mine from a GCB-95, 55ohms 603.6mH.)