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So I've been a sideman for this gal (great piano player) for off-and-on gigs over the past few months, and a problem cropped up with the wah.
The wah (no-frills Dunlop Crybaby) worked fine, it just gave an unwanted overall boost when kicked in and made it hard for me to just funk away in the background while the keys or bass took a solo.
I was thinking of coming in here and asking for a mod to drop the effect output side of the wah (affecting it only when the wah is ON) like what resistor can you use to replace "R43" or whatever cap or resistor on the schematic to cut the effect output.
Then Saturday night I'm sitting there watching the new Twilight Zone (Forrest Whitaker) when it hit me: Screw it, there's gotta be a way to just install a pot on the side so I can adjust the effect output wherever I want while leaving bypass mode unaffected.
So I did it. The hardest part was drilling a big enough hole in the side of it to put a pot shaft through it. (The metal is relatively soft but is about 5/16" thick.) Must have used about 8 drill bits in gradually increasing sizes and took almost an hour.
The electronic part was pretty easy. I just slapped a 500k mini-pot in the hole and worked on the assumption that since the chassis was grounded, just tightening the pot up against the chassis would ground the pot exterior. (This assumption proved correct.)
I then went through the process of elimnation on which wire connected to the stomp switch would be the one that would affect only the ON side of the effect. I got the bypass side on the first try (the pot only affected the output in bypass mode) but then hit paydirt on the 2nd try. Bypass mode is now completely unaffected by the pot while wah-mode is. BINGO! It even looks like it came out of the factory this way.
It seems to balance best at about a third of the way up (the equivalent of 3 or 4 on your volume or tone knobs). That's a lot lower than I thought it would be, but who cares, it WORKS. The nice thing about the mini-pot is that it has a stiff feel -- undesirable for on your guitar but great for this application because it's less likely to move around while you're playing.
***
I had made another mod on this wah previously, which was to superglue a big disk capacitor to the "ceiling" of the bottom of the pedal directly above the on/bypass switch so that if I pushed the pedal all the way flat, it would switch the wah in and out. (Crazy that it was originally set up so you had to reach down with your hand to switch it in or out.)
The wah (no-frills Dunlop Crybaby) worked fine, it just gave an unwanted overall boost when kicked in and made it hard for me to just funk away in the background while the keys or bass took a solo.
I was thinking of coming in here and asking for a mod to drop the effect output side of the wah (affecting it only when the wah is ON) like what resistor can you use to replace "R43" or whatever cap or resistor on the schematic to cut the effect output.
Then Saturday night I'm sitting there watching the new Twilight Zone (Forrest Whitaker) when it hit me: Screw it, there's gotta be a way to just install a pot on the side so I can adjust the effect output wherever I want while leaving bypass mode unaffected.
So I did it. The hardest part was drilling a big enough hole in the side of it to put a pot shaft through it. (The metal is relatively soft but is about 5/16" thick.) Must have used about 8 drill bits in gradually increasing sizes and took almost an hour.
The electronic part was pretty easy. I just slapped a 500k mini-pot in the hole and worked on the assumption that since the chassis was grounded, just tightening the pot up against the chassis would ground the pot exterior. (This assumption proved correct.)
I then went through the process of elimnation on which wire connected to the stomp switch would be the one that would affect only the ON side of the effect. I got the bypass side on the first try (the pot only affected the output in bypass mode) but then hit paydirt on the 2nd try. Bypass mode is now completely unaffected by the pot while wah-mode is. BINGO! It even looks like it came out of the factory this way.
It seems to balance best at about a third of the way up (the equivalent of 3 or 4 on your volume or tone knobs). That's a lot lower than I thought it would be, but who cares, it WORKS. The nice thing about the mini-pot is that it has a stiff feel -- undesirable for on your guitar but great for this application because it's less likely to move around while you're playing.
***
I had made another mod on this wah previously, which was to superglue a big disk capacitor to the "ceiling" of the bottom of the pedal directly above the on/bypass switch so that if I pushed the pedal all the way flat, it would switch the wah in and out. (Crazy that it was originally set up so you had to reach down with your hand to switch it in or out.)