I need help with my version of a pulse wah.

[haveyouseenhim]

Since I have no real EE knowledge i tend to take circuits and frankenstein/ tinker till I get what i want. I like the sound of the Colorsound inductorless wah and I wanted to make it a pulse wah. So I had the idea of using the magnavibe's LFO into a ldr on the wah's pot to get that effect. My question is with the pic attached did I properly eliminate the signal path on the magnavibe? And is there a way I could make a mix control so I can put this in a wah shell and control the wet/dry mix with the rocker?

[haveyouseenhim]

bump.....anyone?   i tested today and it sounds awesome. i just want to optimize it.

[nocentelli]

I can't see the attached picture on my phone, but if it's working that's good news. Have you got the magnavibe's depth control in place? To do a proper wet/dry control, you could probably use a simple FET buffer/splitter circuit.

[haveyouseenhim]

could you point me in the right direction on how to do that?

[nocentelli]

http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/blocksfragments/BuffNBlend.gif

Something like this?

[deadastronaut]

 ^

this is a great lfo, from slow to fast nicely...its from the lightwah....(the wah i used was a morley) ..i messed around with the colorsound too , but i found it broke up too much on clean stuff for me....just my 2p. ...

anyway..

sorry haven't a schematic at the mo , but hey its pretty easy to breadboard..and you can have the ''other'' led on your pedals box too.. for uber coolness


http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/chickpea/LFOBITCH.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

as for using your rocker for ''blending'', you might want to put a switch in there so you can switch from blend-auto  to a straight wah......no idea how at the mo.........just thinking aloud....

[nocentelli]

Rob , I really like that LFO you used for the pulse side of the lightwah, nice and simple with a good range of speed. The problem I had with the pulsewah part of the lightwah was the depth control: Because it works by raising or lowering the brightness of the LED attached to the LDR, I found that low depth settings gave a very dark sound, like a wah pulled right back and just being nudged rhythmically forward a tiny bit. This is how a the magnavibe/wah mash-up depth control would work. Doing away with the magnavibe depth pot and instead mixing the "full depth" sound with dry signal using a wet/dry blend control might be great. I'm going to try this!

[haveyouseenhim]

http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/blocksfragments/BuffNBlend.gif

thanks. ill try that. hopefully i can make the unit small enough to fit nicely, although there's plenty of room in a wah box.

^

this is a great lfo, from slow to fast nicely...its from the lightwah....(the wah i used was a morley) ..i messed around with the colorsound too , but i found it broke up too much on clean stuff for me....just my 2p. ...

anyway..

sorry haven't a schematic at the mo , but hey its pretty easy to breadboard..and you can have the ''other'' led on your pedals box too.. for uber coolness


http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/chickpea/LFOBITCH.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

as for using your rocker for ''blending'', you might want to put a switch in there so you can switch from blend-auto  to a straight wah......no idea how at the mo.........just thinking aloud....

thanks. i planned on that. it's going to switch between regular and pulse, a peak pot, a external volume pot, and speed pot. i did notice that the colorsound compresses a bit but i like it nonetheless

[nocentelli]

...it's going to switch between regular and pulse, a peak pot, a external volume pot, and speed pot.

Woah, you're going to have to post that layout!

[haveyouseenhim]

i would need someone else to make it. i have zero experience with making layouts. i could make a crude representation with ms paint to help


edit    the peak is the depth on the lfo. speed is speed (dur  lol). volume is the trimpot on the colorsound that ill just replace with a panel mount pot. and the mix will be controlled with the rocker

edit 2      is there a parts list on the gallery page?...i cant seem to find one

[haveyouseenhim]

Ok, so I downloaded the layout maker and I combined the wah and the Magnavibe's lfo. now I'm at a bump in the road. I'm having a lot of trouble translating the mix control into vero. Would anyone like to take a few minutes to do this for me?

http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/blocksfragments/BuffNBlend.gif

[haveyouseenhim]

if anyone wants to help with the mix pm me with your email and ill send the diy file (if thats how that works)

[nocentelli]

no problem, email me the diy file to the email listed on my profile and i'll have a go.

[haveyouseenhim]

sent

[nocentelli]

Cool, I got it open. After a quick glance, I just thought of a couple of things:

1) The vero looks pretty good, but you've got the switch adding the LDR for the pulse wah in parallel with the standard wah pot. Have you tried this, and does it work well? I would have thought the position of the wah pot will affect the depth of the pulsewah sweep, but that might be handy -  I'll look to switch between them completely, unless the parallel thing works well.

2) The wet/dry mix buffer section will be useful for the pulsewah, but I'm not sure it would be that useful for straight pedal-wah mode: I was thinking of having it so the mode switch routes to either straight into the wah input (i.e. no buffer or depth control) or into the buffer+pulsewah with the depth control active. Do you want the wet/dry mix control to work on the straight pedal wah mode?

I've got sole charge of my 5-year old this afternoon, but if i can get her watching a Barbie movie, I should get a a chance to get the layout done.

[edit - what FETs have you got? Or are you ordering the parts anyway?]

[nocentelli]

OK, this is a very rough first pass: I'll have a good look over it again, and you probably should too if you intend to build it exactly as it is.



1) LDR/pedal wah switch needs to be a DPDT

2) The whole pedal is buffered input with a wet/dry blend

It's possible to have the wet/dry blend only on the pulsewah mode, but would be even more complex; It's also possible to do this, and have the wah pot control mix in pulse mode, and control the sweep in pedal mode: However, it would require a different more complex switching arrangement, and the limited travel of the pedal-controlled pot would mean you couldn't access the entire range of the mix control.

I'm quite fired up at the idea of doing a wah now Mammoth have started doing those coloured enclosures, so I'll probably be having a go a something like this myself very soon. Incidentally, kindafuzzy over at "the other place" has redesigned the magnavibe LFO so it's got a slightly wider speed range - Search for the "ten cent trem" - It's just a couple of cap and resistor value changes, and uses a bigger pot. I'm also tempted to do this, but using the "lightwah" LFO, which definitely goes much slower. I'll post anything I come up with in this thread.

[haveyouseenhim]

Cool, I got it open. After a quick glance, I just thought of a couple of things:

1) The vero looks pretty good, but you've got the switch adding the LDR for the pulse wah in parallel with the standard wah pot. Have you tried this, and does it work well? I would have thought the position of the wah pot will affect the depth of the pulsewah sweep, but that might be handy -  I'll look to switch between them completely, unless the parallel thing works well.


[edit - what FETs have you got? Or are you ordering the parts anyway?]

I have tried the ldr in parrallell with the wah pot and when the ldr is active the wah pot acts as a bandwith control.

i have some mpf 102. lucky for me radioshack has em. and i have some way off spec j201s from polida on ebay(its taking lots of self control to not poop in the envelope and return to sender) and a strip of 2n7000s

EDIT   im having trouble wrapping my head around how im going to wire a switch to make the rocker pot switch between mix and wah. so i can control the wah in wah mode and control the mix in pulse mode with one pot

[haveyouseenhim]

Build progress:










I'll finish the off board wiring tomorrow.

[haveyouseenhim]

I finished the wiring it up and all i get is clean tone. I've been tinkering and cant get any change. I'm stumped. The lfo works, but that's about as far as i get.

[deadastronaut]

audio probe time....trace it through...



have you drawn a schematic of it?.....its too hard for my eyes to read vero...