Buffer for a wah...which one and why?

[Nocaster Cat]

Scratch building a wah and would like to add a buffer. I know FoxRox makes a great one but was wondering if people had opinions about other buffers (ther are so many!) and if there was a better choice. Thanks!

[pinkjimiphoton]

my opinion as a total fuzzaholic is don't waste the time. NONE of them work the way people claim they do, including the foxrock one (i built one of them, too).

your best bet? add a "passive buffer"...a 50k (or so) pot between the output of the effect and the footswitch. done deal. then you can tweak the resistance a little to make it play nice with fuzzes etc after it. and it doesn't change your tone, and it stops the lie about buffers dead in their tracks.

buffers CAN be great..used right and in the right places. in my experience, this isn't one of them.

i am sure you will get differing opinions, but i tried 20 different buffer circuits in my wah, and none worked as well as a simple resistance.

[Nocaster Cat]

Your best bet? add a "passive buffer"...a 50k (or so) pot between the output of the effect and the footswitch. Done deal. Then you can tweak the resistance a little to make it play nice with fuzzes etc after it. and it doesn't change your tone, and it stops the lie about buffers dead in their tracks.

Please forgive my naiveté, but would that essentially be putting a volume control on the wah?

[pinkjimiphoton]

yep. sorta.  wire it as a gain pot. connect to pins 1&2, and have pin 3 go to the switch.  it'll let ya dial in enough resistance to get the wah and dirt to play nice together.

[CodeMonk]

I used the output buffer from a Clyde McCoy.
Wasn't perfect, but was definitely an improvement.

[krister]

On my CryBaby I added the buffer that RG Keen suggested at GeoFx. This made the CryBaby stop sucking tone when you set it to bypass. Works great.

[pinkjimiphoton]

that's a different kind of buffer on rg's site...that's more of a unity gain isolation buffer, what we're talking about is a buffer to make a wah and fuzz play nice i think.

either way, tried 'em. built so many, i still have a bunch of little daughter boards in a junk drawer. the resistance did the same thing. and it's not perfect, either.