WAH pictures- diy , modded & etc.

[Focalized]

Another in a Vox pedal. Kept the pot. Good sound. The pedal itself has about a centimeter more sweep to it than my Crybaby pedals. Is that a normal difference? The after market enclosures have that wider sweep, too.

[tommycataus]

Thanks Joe, been building pedals for about a year now and this Clyde McCoy Wah in an old Colorsound enclosure was my first attempt. As of this weekend I'm finally happy with the sound! Your pot and inductor are just great. Sorry for the bad quality...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFZx56c0PLc

[joegagan]

focalized,  i never noticed the dunlop made vox having wider throw, will have to check it out.

the silver pot in your newest build is a hotpotz2 inside the groovy silver sleeve. it does not need a wide throw as the r range is covered in less than 70-80% of the standard 90s type crybaby throw. i have been selling hotpotz2s with a larger 16t gear to slow this ramp down a little, it is cool.


that said, your latest build looks AWESOME. love the dark perf, very cool looking caps , super neat wiring, etc - a really nice build.\


tommy, that wah sounds great  - glad  jiah could hook you up. love the colorsound enclosures.

[joegagan]

work in progress from last year. modded musonic, with rack gear moved to topside. need to get back to this one.

[duck_arse]

that inductor looks like a loaf of bread. what is it exactly?

[joegagan]

Ha thanks, that was a proto inductor for company ( rhymes w mealy), i potted it in a mold, then ground the logo off the top. It has  an old toroid in it from a phone network imepedence matching part.

[amptramp]

Imagine my surprise when I got a new-in-box Dunlop Cry Baby Classic with Fasel inductor at a garage sale last Saturday for $10 because it didn't work.  I expected to see the standard two-transistor circuit inside.  Next surprise: the internals looked like this:



I should have seen the included spec card that said 1 megohm input impedance.  Apparently Dunlop has addressed one of the problems with the original.  Here is another shot of it:



The DPDT switch was not switching and was in permanent bypass more, so I got another one and soldered wires to it and wired it to the switch PCB.  Here is a picture of the unit, the new switch and heh, heh, heh - the next project, called "Here Come the Fuzz" just above the switch.  So why does a fuzz need eight controls?  Because it is the last fuzz anyone would ever need and will be the subject of another thread once it is done.



BTW I intend to sell it back to the guy I bought it from for a profit.  How much do you think I should charge (in addition to the $10 I already spent on it)?  It listed for $120, he bought it for $60, so there is some headroom there.  Of course, I have the option of keeping it...

[joegagan]

how did the wah sound to you? i have not liked those when i play them. i sell a quality replacement pot on ebay with the little harness attached.

my latest:

[tommycataus]

Oh my, that looks amazing Joe!

[duck_arse]

you need to find a hobby, joe, too much time on your hands ........

[joegagan]

ha,, thanks guys. my job is making wah parts. my hobby is making jewelry disguised as wah pedals.

[duck_arse]

so, the purple vox: necklace, broach or ring?

[joegagan]

necklace for a very heavy black lady named tanisha.

[Luke51411]

Here is my entry into wah builds. I like sto keep things simple so I only have 3 external pots and 3 switches this is derived from a boomerang schematic. I started by making the wah pot remote via vactrol and once I had done that I just had to put an lfo in there as well
It has control for Q, sweep range, and wah/volume which  brings me to the lfo. The lfo has controls for wave shape and depth, the wah pot is on a switch and in lfo mode it controls the speed of the lfo.
The effects this pedal can do are Wah, LFO controlled Wah (would that be considered auto-wah or is there another name for it since auto-wah seems to typically be referring to an envelope filter?), Volume, and Tremolo! The guts are kind of a mess but not as bad as I thought they would be

[wildebelor]

Just a little something I cooked up!

[joegagan]

luke ,that is a nice combo - seems like you are saying it all works, tell us more! yes, auto-wah is thought of as env filter unfortunately. auto-cycling wah?

wilde, that looks sweet! did you do the paint?

[wildebelor]

Joe - Yeah I did it all, just wanted to see what I could do to a wah in between my builds and on a budget. I think it turned out pretty fantastic. Sounds a million bucks too!

[amptramp]

I sold the wah pedal that I bought last month back to its original owner for cost plus a nice profit.  Now he has a wah that he can use and I have money I can use.  Win-win for everyone.  See my post on July 17 for pictures.

[Luke51411]

Joe- everything works and sounds pretty good. This project was built in a GCB-80 high gain volume pedal shell (High Gain really... I would have expected something called high gain to be a boost but it is just a 500k pot) You can get a nice range of sounds with the lfo between changing the Q, depth, and to a lesser extent wave shape. I used the lfo from grind customs http://www.grindcustomsfx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=391
It works pretty well though I substituted a 500k pot for the wave shape switch and it doesn't make a whole lot of noticeable difference other than at the extreme ends. The tremolo sounds pretty good, it can be a bit dark but not in a bad way, just a different flavor of tremolo. It is interesting having the foot pedal also control the lfo rate. You can create some nice speed swell effects. I used a tayda ldr with a 33k parallel resistor to get a more desirable sweep. I used 2 bright white leds to better facilitate switching/use of the foot control as lfo rate pot. The biggest issue I had with this build was the emitter resistor on Q1, with the stock value of 120 ohm (if I remember correctly) I was getting a lot of distortion most of the way through the sweep. I swapped in several different transistors to varying effect but all with undesirable distortion. I have that resistor socketed now and am using a 220 ohm with pretty good effect. As of right now I have settled on S9013 transistors for q1 and q2 as they seemed to sound decent and have the least distortion. I didn't have much available as far as lower gain transistors. I'm very happy with the final result especially being my first major wah build.

[joegagan]

cool - nice report!
depending on which boomerang schematic you used , i might suggest a couple of corrections. the R off Bq1 to inductor should be 1k , not 4.7k. the factory schem for BG1 showed 4.7k but in at least 3 '67 vintage units, 1k was observed , never the 4.7k. 4.7k sounds pretty bad to me. ( 1k was the official R in the subsequent BG2 by the way)
the R between Q2 C and B should be 820k, not 620k as some of the online schems show.

couple boomer changes that i like:
you can get very fine control of distort/gain/ mids/ lows etc by balancing using 2 trims: change the input R to a 100k trim; put a 500 ohm trim at Q1 e to gd. by balancing back and forth between these, you can dial in for individual tones, guitars etc etc. the two go together like candy and childrens

the 1.5m at Q1 c to ind. is super high, not sure why they did this. the similar dearmond 1800 uses a 270K in this location. i settle on 470k for my faux boomer since that sounds great - nice wide Q + the dunlop donor gcb95 boards have that value already installed in that spot.
faux boomer soundsample: