Looking for a nice throaty wah?

[joegagan]

thanks, saw your add on yoututbe too, thanks for that.

coming soon to turretboard.org and diyguitarist.com, two slightly different takes on the amazing 67 boomerang by maestro. it is not your average crybaby based wah.

[jkokura]

Boy I wish I could make a wah sing like that! That's really quite pretty Joe. I've always used it more as a utility tool really. Actually, my wah almost never goes gigging with me anymore. It hasn't had a permenant place on my board in perhaps 5 years.

I've got two wahs. A modded Vox V847 that I true Bypassed and did a couple small mods. I also have a fairly stock Crybaby from recent years. It's remarkable how similar they sound, considering the Vox is highly modded and has no input buffer...

I REALLY liked the tone of the Thomas Organ Crybaby a lot Joe. Is it easy to build one, cause I would happily start using Wah more if I had tone like that out of one...

Jacob

[joegagan]

i like to start with regular 70s thomas wahs. i would say that 9 out of ten will have the rectangle brown tdk inductor ( most measure around 18 ohm, other batches measure 144 ohm, which is a weird discrepency). some of the tdks can actually sound great. some stock TO crybabies are perfect stock, about 90% of them need tweaking to be really great.

i prefer no input buffer, like the real vintage wahs; medium gain transistors.  never played with testing different cap types. not too into the normal mods everyone does, i focus more on the inductor working well with waht's there.

another controversy is the warble, or pop in the low mid or mid, some people think it sounds like distortion, i think it is the one great feature that sets inductor based wahs a world apart from all the other filter type devices, twin T opamp filter, etc.

everlast''s song "what it's like" has a wonderful example of the warble i refer to ( listen for the electric guitar fills):

[maysink]

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v311/joegagan/wah/?action=view&current=DSCF5415.mp4

Thanks AGAIN Joe!

[stecykmi]

hmm, so if I socket the big electrolytic cap in the filter, and play around with the value, eventually i'll stumble on the idea value?

what determines that value? is it related to the resistance of the inductor?

[joegagan]

hi. yeah, best way is like in the video where you can sweep the wah through its range while the tester is hooked up. even in the video you can hear what the various values do to the emphasis and sweep. i keep a  p90 equipped guitar chained like a dog to the bench, lead pickup full on so i can strum and listen...

[joegagan]

new video. mystery wah. modded. a few clues in the vid.

[JeffdaMaori]

Cool stuff!!! Any more clues on what makes this work and what you did on the inside?
You seem to be the 'wah guru'....
Still waiting for the 'mojo wah ' project to drop here.... (background noise: shuffling feet, idle...)...

Cheers for demos!

[joegagan]

it is a set of mods to a circuit i traced recently - the early 70s dearmond 1800 wa-wa.

the 1800 seems like it might be 'borrowed' from the boomerang,  ( el rad inductor, + dearmond provided the enclosures for maestro  - hmmm).

dearmond designed better biasing on q2 than the boomerang, and huge (2.2) caps  on the pot. my mods are to sweeten it up and widen the range a little.

like the boomerang, a 25k or 30k pot is essential to the tone. larger value pots with limiting resistors get close, but still have too steep a ramp to correctly mimic the feel of the correct pot.

[ch1naski]

Just saw this thread. Joe, you're a monster with that wah. Apt title for it, too.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

[jeffaroo]

good lord ! in the first video that boy needs to sit down and have another beer !

[ch1naski]

Super puke wah.....I gotta get one of mine to sound like that.

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[fuzzymuff]

Has anyone tried out Electro Harmonix Talking Wah pedal?  Sounds a bit like that puke wah.

[jimilee]

Damn Joe,you the man! I love my white dunlop Bass wah,but I bet you can make it do so much more. The EHX wah looks like a bad I dea and doesn't have the full range of wah the others have. It's end position is still too midrangy and what stops it from turning off if you go too far foward?

[joegagan]

thanks guys.

ya, i need to resurrect that concept and put the dual wah into one shell. i haven't figured out the best actuation tho. would like to retain the ability to use one or the other independent as well.

i would like to try one of the EH wahs, it seems pretty cool. i always like new technology applied to pedals. someone told me the actuator inside is the same technology as the thing inside an ipad that detects position.