Colorsound Wah inductors etc

[John Lyons]

Anyone have any thoughts on the general sound of the CS inductors?
I have one on the bench here that I want to juice up and thought maybe someone had an opinion on them.
This models is the small cylindrical black plastic model with a small hole.

http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/schematics/colorsoundwah.gif

I have a couple yellow fasels that I can try out but I'd like to keep the original if I can.
Curious that there is no parallel inductor resistor in this design.

john

[drewl]

I'm no expert, but I rebuilt a few Colorsounds from the 60's that were damaged in Hurricane Katrina!
They sounded really good, kinda different, but a good wah sound.

[John Lyons]

The one I have here is ok but kind of weak. Sort of a volume swell with a little wah in there.
I pulled the cap off the inductor but it measured 4.9uf so it seems fine.
Since there is no "Q" parallel resistor across the inductor I'm not sure how to voice it other than fooling with the 1K5 or making the .01 caps a little larger to flesh it out some. Assuming the inductor is working as it should...
I guess I'll have to play with some things...  Thanks drewl.

[Exactopposite]

Im curious about that too. I would bet that teese knows  a bit about the colorsound wah. No telling how much he would or wouldn't be willing to share about it if he does know.

I just got the idea (like 10 minutes ago) to build a board based on the orginal colorsound wah to put in my reissue colorsound housing. I don't think one of the wah boards from GGG will fit  because of the positioning of the battery holder in there tho.   I'll probably need some help making a board that will fit if someone around here is good with that sort of thing.

As far as the sound, there is a video on youtube comparing an old colorsound with a thomas organ crybaby. I guess from that you can some idea of how it should sound.

[drewl]

I wish I could remember more, at the time I was just "fixing broken stuff".....not into the vintage vibe.
I remember they didn't sound like any of the Vox or Thomas wahs I have.
Does it have the square plastic pot?
The battery ground was on the output as opposed to the more common input jack?
They had these funky caps with the leads going right up the side of the dialectric which were coming apart, that I had to replace.
Maybe they're a problem with yours?

[John Lyons]

The wah works and sounds pretty good. I was just looking to get it to be more vocal with a deeper wah.
I upped the 1k5 to almost 4K and upper the input cap to .1 and that helped.
Since there is no parallel resistor across the inductor I'm not sure how to change the Q and get more of a resonant tone.
I tried a 100K pot across the inductor but it didn't get close to the sound I was looking for.
Maybe I need a larger pot since right now there is no resistance there.

Any ideas on how to raise the Q or deepen the effect?

[Exactopposite]

i haven't played one of the originals, but i thought the colorsound was known to be a very vocal wah. something might still be amiss.

maybe try another inductor in it and see how it responds

[John Lyons]

I think I might do that. I was thinking that may be the case.
The inductor in this one looks like it has been fooled with as the shell and leads of it are hot glued down to the board.

john