WAH pictures- diy , modded & etc.

[davent]

Tales of Wah

Started with the basic Cry Baby circuit added a Whipple, an IC input buffer,  an AMZ Mosfet Booster on the output,  Geofex Mosfet polarity protection, six position cap switch and trimmers for vocal trim,  bass trim and mid trim.





New jacks and battery clip. Note sides of enclosure.



The rest of this fun time was outlined in another thread some time ago but a quick recap.

Cap switch hole...  too big!



OK fixed that, feeling good!



Installed new dpdt footswitch for true bypass... no improvement in tone sucking!






Closer inspection of the enclosure.



Only so much you can do with JB Weld.

The End
dave

[John Lyons]

That wah enclosure is nuts Dave.
I can only imagine the frustration there...

[Liquitone]

This wah is what got me started repairing,modding and building pedals. it has been broken for about 90% of its 16 years of excistence.
I have rebuilt it so many times that the only original part is the enclosure.
after every rebuild it started failing withing 2 weeks. the latest build pictured here though has been working for half a year now.
It sounds really nice after the fuzz with guitar volume backed.although i still have problems getting it to work properly with my germanium fuzz->wah->vibe->fulldrive 2 (on this low gain setting it loses volume).
the added buffer doesnt help with that.

one 3 position rotary to select off/on/on with outputbuffer, the led on the side indicates power on.
one 4 position rotary switch to select between sweep caps.

2 bc109b transistors with hfe around 400. the red fasel i had in it turned out to be microphonic,
it picked up every thump,click and movement of the enclosure, and also it would oscilate like mad,. especially on the bassier sweep cap settings
I changed it with a standard inductor with is either from the original vox or my crybaby, I can't remember. no more microphonics, still a little bit of oscilation

My experience so far with Wah's is that although its quite a simple circuit it's also one of the most difficult to get working properly and sound right.

[metalero30]

gain, mid, bass, vocal, red fasel, true by pass and leds mods

[joegagan]

those wahs look like they are floating on a beam of blue light. love it !

[joegagan]

the dual gang boomerang failed, the pot got mechanically stiff within about 10 minutes of testing. the new version has an offset gear to try and spread out the sweep a little , i made a nylon spring loaded guide for the gear. a lot of the boomerang hardware has been replaced.

pot is a hotpotz2 with a 47k resistor from middle to ground. gear was made from a gored out/cut stock dunlop round gear but placed on a fabbed insert made of plastic, bonded to the shaft.  beginning of video shows the custom mechanism.

i like the way it sounds ( and reacts to the foot) , but i haven't compared it to a real boomerang with stock 25k pot yet. the foot feel is really smooth. i used to dislike the dearmond/boomer casing but i now realize it was because sometimes the gears were worn out and weird. or misaligned or something.

[sewage666]

This was my third wah mod, made at the request of one of my guitar players to match the previous two I and the other guitar player were using.

I also built the AMZ boost, placed after the wah circuit. The boost is permanently on 10, with overall output controlled by a pot to ground.



GCB-95 was the basis, body to be stripped and repainted.




I added a switch to the voicing resistor, and used a pot with a pull-switch for the output signal and to change the bass and gain of another resistor in the circuit. Added a 3PDT footswitch for true-bypass and LED indicator. Added the re-issued red fasel inductor.



After repaint and decals added...





A few more LEDs than necessary... 

[Gila_Crisis]

pot is a hotpotz2 with a 47k resistor from middle to ground.
i like the way it sounds ( and reacts to the foot) , but i haven't compared it to a real boomerang with stock 25k pot yet. the foot feel is really smooth.

I tryed this on my boomerangized vox, but i went back to the 33k res form lug 1 to ground. with your method the "action" of the pedal is a lot smoother but for my taste it lost all the funk!

[joegagan]

gila, i think i know what you mean. when you say 'lost the funk' i interpret this as not as much quacky treble. i revoiced the wah again last night, will put up a second sound clip for comparison. i think if i turn the amp down a little it will come across a little better.

[joegagan]

sewage, i  like that red wah. i see in the one photo you did very thorough metalwork to prep. looks like you did two of them

cool looking wah with the red paint and all those symbols.

[Gila_Crisis]

gila, i think i know what you mean. when you say 'lost the funk' i interpret this as not as much quacky treble. i revoiced the wah again last night, will put up a second sound clip for comparison. i think if i turn the amp down a little it will come across a little better.

the up and down position sound the same, but the transition from down to up became too smooth

[Govmnt_Lacky]

I can't imagine how long it took you to remove ALL of that coating that well 

Sanding paint that well is hard enough but, to get through all of the paint (or powder coat  ) on the Dunlop enclosures is madness!!

[Leston Braun]

I've posted these in the pictures-thread last year, but here goes:





Empty shell from smallbear, basic wah circuit with output buffer + 4-throw rotary to switch voicing.

Stripping the black paint was fairly easy with Nitromors, by the way.

[Fishface]

What's the internal toggle switch for?

[kaycee]

An old volume pedal enclosure. Doug Hammond's modded Crybaby on vero - input/output buffers, plus a couple of the ideas from RG Keen's wah article, gain boost on toggle switch and rotary caps switch for sweep.





I'd only put a couple of sweep caps on a switch if I did it again, most seslctions aren't much use.

Wah Bender: Colorsound Wah with added silicon Tonebender fuzz - one of those huge Colorsound cases! This one is out there in the world somewhere.

[Leston Braun]

What's the internal toggle switch for?

To switch the direction around, heel becomes the treble end.

[MrTonesNZ]

Joe, that's a badass wah shell you've made there... there's something really cool about the rusty body, oxidized chrome, and orange paint on the vox treadle
Old, banged up, and most importantly, used/loved wahs have a hell of a lot more mojo than "professionally" "distressed" guitars

I also like the gearless mechanism in Pigyboy's wah... is that DIY?

It's the same on those big steel expression pedals by boss. Concidering buiding a wah into mine since i never use it...

[arawn]

Vocal mod, true bypass, removed the buffer, increased the gain, Led, And I made the Knob for the vocal mod

[Earthscum]

Figured I'd share my Wah project...


By earthscum at 2011-04-05


By earthscum at 2011-04-03


By earthscum at 2011-04-03

I have a DOD FX 17 that I need to un-mod so I can re-mod it right. Converted to 2nd order lowpass from the crap-sounding bandpass. Now I decided I'm gonna make it switchable, and make the high pass section of the "bandpass" mode adjustable, probably just rotary switch with caps, or a pot to change the current to the OTA to reduce the sweep. Hope to get to it within the month... I screwed up the "5V" out, lol. Now I want to tap into my Nurse Quacky with the treadle, but I have to fix the DOD first.

[Fishface]

What's the internal toggle switch for?

To switch the direction around, heel becomes the treble end.

Hmm - interesting