Wah with Germanium transistor?

[maxiclick]

Any info or experience with Germanium and wah ?
If I read the geo article correctly only one of the 2 transistors make a tone difference. hmm? Any body experiment with this? good? bad? no difference?

[jjanssen1]

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=germanium+wah&rlz=1C9BKJA_enAU595AU595&oq=germanium+wah&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome-mobile&espv=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en-US

[drolo]

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=germanium+wah&rlz=1C9BKJA_enAU595AU595&oq=germanium+wah&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome-mobile&espv=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en-US

I guess maxiclick was looking for opinions of madbean users in particular rather than being told (rather rudely) that he had better be googling for info elsewhere ...
He did mention that he read about wahs on Geofex so that would indicate that the internet and search engines may not be novelty to him.

Back to the original topic, no idea :-) My gut says it should not make that much of a difference in a circuit like this. If you ever get to build a wah, socket the transistors and give it a try.
Don't forget to let us know the results ;-)

[lars]

Yes! You can use germanium transistors in the vintage Clyde McCoy circuit, and they sound fantastic. I recently replaced the guts of my Vox V845 with parts I sourced from an old Thomas Organ. The transistors are Texas Instruments NPN germanium "5086". They only measured around 125Hfe, but work great. You can see a gutshot in the amp building forum (scroll to the bottom):
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=18128.0

[deafbutpicky]

For Q1 it might be interesting if you like it a little dirty and mess with it's gain (Re), for Q2 I wouldn't
bother, it's a buffer essentially and not worth the risk of extra noise thru leakage and the like.

[lars]

Actually I've found the lower-gain germaniums to be less noisy than the very high gain silicon transistors that are usually put in wah circuits. MPSA18s are especially hissy. Q2 does affect the sound if you put in a transistor under 200Hfe, by taking away some of the sharpness and clarity of the peaks. It's very subtle though. My suggestion is to use as low gain transistors as you can, while still maintaining unity gain, in order to get a pleasant, noise-free wah. I doubt the original McCoys were running 500+Hfe trannys in them. In fact, I have some of the exact transistor types that were used in some of the wah circuits manufactured by Thomas (yellow dot), and none of them have been higher than 225Hfe.