Archive for the “Wah” Category

I tried to not have a wah pedal on my board, but I couldn’t do it. I need wah. Maybe not in the way that I need air, but still. I traded one of my FV-500H pedals for an original crybaby. I wasn’t using the expression pedal enough to justify keeping it. I don’t use loops or pitch shifting or anything, so it’s kinda unnecessary.

The Crybaby is not a great wah, but I’m going to pull the guts out of it and drop in an Area 51 replacement board.

I think that the Voodoo Lab Wahzoo is going to be my next wah pedal. It has several effects built-in: vintage wah, auto wah, and step wah. The step wah is kinda like the ZVEX Ooh Wah, except that you can adjust the speed on the fly via the treadle or with an optional tap tempo pedal. It’s inductorless, which means that it won’t hum when placed next to a power supply.

Rather than rattle off all the details, I’ll let you check out this video from ProGuitarShop.

I recorded a really quick one-take demo of the RMC3 wah on the “smooth and sweet” setting. I’m pretty sure that this is the setting for the Wizard wah. I like it a lot, but I still need to tweak it a little. The volume is set a little too high, so it’s adding a little too much gain. That’s fine for lead work, but not so much for rhythm. The problem is that you can’t just back off the volume on the wah. The controls are very interactive, so if you back off the volume you also have to adjust the Q (unless you want the “wah wah” to sound like “woh woh” or “wih wih”).

Anyway, enough chatter. Here’s the clip. I used the Les Paul into the wah into my Stulce. You should be able to tell when I step on the io.

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I have a couple of new toys in the mail: a Line 6 DL4 and a Teese RMC3 wah. I’ve already mentioned the DL4, but I haven’t really said anything about the wah.

I have owned a couple of Teese wahs in the past – the Wheels of Fire and the Picture wah, but I sold them to fund the purchase of other gear. Several months ago I decided to try my hand at building a wah rather than paying someone else to do it for me. The results were less than satisfactory. I mean, it was decent, but I could never quite recreate what the Picture wah could do for me.

The RMC3 is pretty much the flagship of the Teese line. It has several internal controls that can be adjusted to sound like any of the other wahs. I’m pretty excited to get it and start fooling around with it. Of course, I will be sure to post my findings here and record some clips and stuff.

Here’s a new clip of the wah that I just built. Once again, I used my Les Paul through the amp simulator in GarageBand (on the Liverpool Clean setting) with my pedalboard in front. At first it’s totally clean, then I add the wah to do some funky whacka-chicka rhythm stuff. At about the 1:00 mark, I switch to a lead tone (Maury’s io super-distortion) with delay. I set up the basic tone, then introduce the wah.

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I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m not really objective at this point – I’m too close to it. What do you think? I’m not necessarily looking for a pat on the back, I’m looking for a critique – not of my playing, but of the wah. Is it too bassy? Trebly? Is the sweep too abrupt? Anything you may have to add would be appreciated. I used this layout which is based on the Vox 847, but I changed a lot of the values, so it doesn’t really sound the same anymore.

UPDATE:
I changed the capacitor going into the wiper which, according to Geoffrey Teese, is supposed to replicate the sound of the ICAR taper present on vintage wah pedals. It sounds a lot better now, but I think that the heel down position may be a little too bass heavy. Maybe it’s too “vocal” in that it sounds more like “whoa” instead of “wah.” I don’t know – check it out for yourself.

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ANOTHER UPDATE:
As I mentioned in my last update, the heel down position was still too bassy, so I changed the frequency cap back to .01. It sounds more balanced and the sweep is much smoother now. Check it out. [Sorry about the length of these clips, I just kinda get going and forget to stop.]

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YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
I lowered the Q resistor to 68K and raised the mids/saturation resistor to 2K. I still want to try a .44 cap at the wiper, but I don’t have any caps that add up to that value right now, so it can wait. Let me know what you think of this one…

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Here’s a quick update on the effects post from yesterday. I rewired the fuzz and cleaned things up. I had the ground wires flipped and made some other mistakes. Here’s a new shot.

I also got the “whipple” inductor in for the wah pedal. It’s supposed to be a clone of the halo inductors used in the old Italian wahs. Anyway, I soldered it in, adjusted the pot and was ready to go. It was a little too loud and harsh, so I swapped the MPSA18 transistor in Q1 for a lower gain 2N2222 – big improvement. I still need to tweak it, but it already sounds way better than the old crybaby.

Over the last few days, I have been working on a couple of projects. I’m rebuilding my wah using a PCB from General Guitar Gadgets, and I’m building a fuzz using a PCB that Maury designed for his fuzz aka “The Peach.”

I ran into several roadblocks in building the fuzz. I bought some carbon composition resistors, which are substantially bigger than metal film resistors. Maury designed his board to be tiny (since he puts them in small enclosures) and the resistors that I ordered wouldn’t quite fit. Fortunately, I had enough metal film resistors lying around to complete the job. I also managed to order an obsolete part from Mouser, so I had to make a trip to Radio Shack to get a trim pot. The one that they had didn’t quite fit on the board, so I had to rig it a little bit. I’ve put it all together (pretty much), but I’m still having some trouble with the sound. The fuzz sounds really choked or something. I’m sure that it has something to do with the bias, and it’s probably because that trim pot is messed up.

The wah went together a little better, but it’s still not finished. The inductor hasn’t gotten here yet, so once it comes in I should be able to solder it in place, adjust the pot and start quacking. I socketed several of the capacitors so I won’t have to desolder anything if I want to experiment.

Here are some pictures:

Here’s the fuzz. I’m not finished wiring this one up. I haven’t wired up the LED or DC jack yet (I haven’t even drilled the hole yet), but neither one of those is necessary to test the circuit. The wiring is still pretty unkempt, but I’ll shorten those wires before I consider it finished.

Here’s the wah. The wires are still pretty long, but I’m not sure how much cleaning up I’m willing to do. I’ve seen some really well-organized wiring jobs, and this is not one of those. I’ll probably use some wire ties and shorten a couple of wires, but that’s about it.

You can see where the inductor is going to go when it finally gets here. Hopefully I’ll just be able to solder it in and play without having to do any serious troubleshooting, but we’ll see…

I just did a couple of little tweaks to my wah pedal that really fattened things up.

Vocal Mod – I replaced the stock 33k resistor with a 68k. I’m not sure exactly what this does, but it made the “wah” sound a little more vocal.

Sweep Range – This was the big one. I replaced the .01µF capacitor with .022µF. If I understand it correctly the larger value capacitor allows more bass into the circuit, making the output fatter and less nasal.

I almost screwed up my wah doing the sweep range mod. When I desoldered the old capacitor and pulled it out, I think I pulled off one of the solder pads. This left nothing on the PCB for the solder to stick to. I ended up following the trace and soldering the leg of the capacitor to the next component in the circuit. I wasn’t sure that it was going to work, but I fired it up and it sounded great.

There are a few more little tweaks that I may try, but I think I’m pretty much done with it for the time being.

I got a used crybaby wah a couple of weeks ago, and I noticed right away that it colored my tone even when it was not switched on. Mechanical true bypass uses a DPDT (double pole double throw) or 3PDT (triple pole double throw) switch to ensure that the original signal is unaltered unless the effect is engaged.

When I ordered the parts for my tremolo, I picked up a new switch from Small Bear Electronics. Part of the order showed up yesterday did this mod last night. It was a little more involved than I anticipated, but it wasn’t too hard. I had to cut a trace on the PCB and resolder all the connections to the switch.

I’m pretty sure that it sounds better in bypass mode now. It’s hard to tell without a true A-B comparison, but it seems like the tone was a lot darker and muddier before. The actual tone of the wah is still pretty harsh, so I need to look into doing some of those other mods. If I have the right resistor/capacitor values I’ll probably do some of the mods pretty soon. I’ll probably to the vocal mod and the sweep range mod to make it a little less trebly and more smooth.

Here’s an updated shot of my pedals at the moment.

Dunlop Crybaby – this is going to get a true bypass mod this week. It made my tone noticeably darker even when it was turned off. Not acceptable.

PEWaves Tuner – I like this tuner. As I’ve mentioned, it works just like the Korg DT-10, but it’s more accurate. It locks onto pitch really quickly, it shows up fairly well under stage lighting, and it only costs $50.

GGG ITS8 – I’m pretty happy with this one so far. It’s the best tube screamer I’ve ever played, and it’s way more versatile. I’m not done fooling with it yet. I’m going to put it in a smaller enclosure soon. I think I’m going to use this one for lower gain tones.

RAILhead Effects io – I already talked about this one in my last post. NOTE: this is not what the actual pedal will look like. This one is an unpainted prototype. The actual paint job is very cool.

RAILhead Effects PURE – This is just an excellent clean boost.

Boss DD-20 – It seems like everyone uses one of these. It’s just a dependable, powerful delay that gets even better when you add an external tap tempo.

Still to come: my DIY tremolo pedal, Paul Cochrane’s Timmy overdrive, and my next DIY after the tremolo will probably be a Univibe clone.