Waffle wah.

[Jargo]

jake,thanks so much. yeah, i still own about half of them. every once in a while someone comes by our store and falls in love with one of 'em and takes one home. with players, we love to do side by side comparos, the differences become apparent very quickly.

i have about 6 boomerangs, most are in line for restore/repair.

parapedal.

wilson has the freak wah, which is based on the parapedal. sounds very close to the originals as far as i can tell. in burgerman's demo vid (    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uneGh0c5j1s&feature=g-all-u&context=G2f93b59FAAAAAAAAAAA       ), i could see he was using a pot that looks identical to the  mr.supercrybaby dunlop pot. i wonder if he is getting his pots through someone selling dunlop repair parts? i think those are 100k dualgangs. wilson has been known to sub in higher value pots for lower in the past ( wilson rippah Q based on boomerang but using an icar taper  180k propot in place of the 25K). owned a rippah Q, it sounded great ( after i replaced the scratchy pot) but the build quality and parts were so- so. almost all chinese parts, incl enclosure. i think all chinese pots are crap, they get scratchy in no time (dunlop mccoy reissue,  roc pot, propot, etc etc).  hotpotz2 are the only pots that really hold up. george blekas of pedalworks agrees.

BTW, all of the late model dunlops with cheap chinese pots are scratchy. they messed up when they got away from the hotpotz2.

thanks for checking out my vids! believe it or not, i have bought and sold a bunch of wahs that i didn't even make videos of! i only make vids of the ones that i think are historic, modded by me, or unique.

my two holy grail wahs are:

-67 maestro boomerang BG1, no one knows how many exist but i think it is way less than 100.
http://www.diyguitarist.com/DIYStompboxes/Boomerang3.htm

- teese rmc3 , made in 96, second or third year, but in the vox case, supposedly the last one made in a non-teese encolsure. sounds better and quite different from rmc3s of just 6 years later.

It's not an mk1 but at this price it can't possibly be that bad...($189)


http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-GIBSON-MAESTRO-BOOMER-2-WAH-GUITAR-PEDAL-/140678676488?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item20c11a4008

[joegagan]

yes, that is an average price for that boomer 2. looks good but i am pretty sure that is a replacement pot. having the correct pot in these is very important to getting the true boomerang sound and feel.

[Jargo]

Ah, good to know!  thank you

[joegagan]

in the 15 or so boomerangs i have worked on, only 5 or so had the original pot. out of these, only one wasn't scratchy.

[claytushaywood]

Oh hellz yeah.

http://soundcloud.com/jakefuzz/wah-new

You can actually drive the transistors to get a little grit with heavy pick attack (220R emitter resistor) and it sounds epic, little volume boost.

So is the 220R emitter the reason your clean wah sound is gritty?  It sounds like your twin is totally clean, and the grit is coming from the wah by itself?  or is it a volume boost causing the twin to get a little dirty?  anyways...I lovvveeee what you have discovered here (holy grail) as many others have said, I'm not normally a wah fan, but this is gonna make me a wah fanatic. 


So, I do want the possibility to get a totally clean wah, would throwing the emitter resistor on a switch with the stock value give me your gritty sound along with clean?  or is it something elses contributing to the non pure clean tone?

[eldanko]

Jake can probably answer your question better, but I will add that in addition to the emitter resistor value, the transistors you use might have an effect on the perceived headroom as well.  I ended up with a little more dirt when I switched to the 2N2925s.

[JakeFuzz]

Oh hellz yeah.

http://soundcloud.com/jakefuzz/wah-new

You can actually drive the transistors to get a little grit with heavy pick attack (220R emitter resistor) and it sounds epic, little volume boost.

So is the 220R emitter the reason your clean wah sound is gritty?  It sounds like your twin is totally clean, and the grit is coming from the wah by itself?  or is it a volume boost causing the twin to get a little dirty?  anyways...I lovvveeee what you have discovered here (holy grail) as many others have said, I'm not normally a wah fan, but this is gonna make me a wah fanatic. 


So, I do want the possibility to get a totally clean wah, would throwing the emitter resistor on a switch with the stock value give me your gritty sound along with clean?  or is it something elses contributing to the non pure clean tone?

I think it is a combination of both. I have a Fender Twin Reverb so you can't really drive the front end of it like a lot of other amplifiers. When you hit it with a large volume signal it gets sort of spikey. I think most of the distortion is coming from the transistors in the wah though. The 220R moves the transistor closer to saturation where it is clipping off the tops of the guitars wave form. I think your best bet is putting a switch on that resistor (you may get a pop) to get that slightly gritty tone when you lean into the strings.

[etheridge]

I like the idea of off loading the way to ring simultaneously but I have to agree that it does sound a little weird.  The 1M should be a good alternative though you would be far better at it with something a little more powerful.  Been playing with something similar, but a lot more toned, or at least how the sound appears to me.  But nevertheless will be better with a lot more tweaking done to this side.