Wah Wah - Cry Me A River
For many years I had an old Cry Baby Wah. It was an el-cheapo base model. Imagine how surprised I was to open it up and find a "red fasel" inducter in the wah wah. It was not supposed to have a red fasel, but it did. Woohoo!
Anyway, because I love to tinker with electroincs, I modified the Cry Baby Wah Wah circuits to change the tone, added true by-pass, removed the buffer components and added an LED. The best part was the LED. Do you know how much it SUCKS to not be able to "SEE" if your wah pedal is on? If you don't, listen up. It sucks a lot.
I loved that modded Cry Baby Wah Wah. Then, one day it died. The input and output jacks in the plastic casings wore out. Damn it. I loved that pedal. Well, I did not feel like tinkering with the Cry Baby anymore, so I tossed its dead carcass in the trash.
Meanwhile, a guitarist who played in a band I was in back in Raleigh North Carolina USA used a stock VOX 847-A and I liked the sound he got out of his wah wah. So, when I headed out to buy a new wah wah, I decided to get the VOX 847-A.
Guess what? The blasted VOX 847-A does not have an LED either. Damn it . So, out came the wire cutters, soldering gun, silver solder and drill. In order to add an LED, first I needed to take out the original foot switch and replace it with a true-pass capable switch. I wired it up to include an LED, but I did not remove the buffer on this wah wah pedal because it sounded great with the buffer.
After a couple of years, I came to like the VOX 847-A (with mods) more than my old modded Cry Baby Wah.
Heading into year three, the VOX wah wah started to make a lot of scratchy noise. I had some canned air so I blew away whatever was in the wah potentiometer (dust and whatever) That fixed it for one rehearsal session and the scratch was back. Bummer, the dust particles had ruined the pot. Damn Damn Double Damn.
I went online and researched replacement pots for VOX 847-A wah pedeals. There were a lot. I mean a freaking lot. Freaking zillions.
I settled for a Dunlop CryBaby Hot Potz II, 100k. The Hot Potz II is a sealed pot (no dust gets into this pot). The pot is usually around $35 US, but I found one for $25 (including shipping). The Hot Potz II fit perfectly. Of course, I had to do some mods to wire it up because the original pot in the VOX 847-A is soldered directly to a small circuit board, while the Hot Potz II has posts to solder wires to. So, I pulled out my little cutters and clipped the leads on the original pot, leaving some of the original leads on the circuit board. Why you ask? Well, I don't like using solder suckers and I don't like to bypass circuit boards that are already in place. I needed something to solder wires to on the circuit board, and leaving a little of the original pot leads in place provided the surfaces needed. Next, I ran the wires to the Hot Potz II posts and soldered that end.
.
After I finished the mod work, I plugged in the VOX wah and gave it the acid test. Hot Damn! The wah was "SMOOTH." The VOX wah was smoother than the it was with the original pot. The first acid test revealed that the rocker arm and the gear on the pot were a little out of whack because I wasn't getting enough treble in the toe-down position of the wah pedeal. Fixing that was easy. I just loosened the rocker arm and turned the gear a little to change the position of the pot in the toe-down position.
So, I can say that the Dunlop CryBaby HotPotz II pot makes a VOX 847-A wah pedal sound "much' different than the wah sounded with the original pot used by VOX. It was not just different, but MUCH better, MUCH smoother and clearer, with a wider sweet spot.
Enjoy The Music!
Jimmy Haggard
Anyway, because I love to tinker with electroincs, I modified the Cry Baby Wah Wah circuits to change the tone, added true by-pass, removed the buffer components and added an LED. The best part was the LED. Do you know how much it SUCKS to not be able to "SEE" if your wah pedal is on? If you don't, listen up. It sucks a lot.
I loved that modded Cry Baby Wah Wah. Then, one day it died. The input and output jacks in the plastic casings wore out. Damn it. I loved that pedal. Well, I did not feel like tinkering with the Cry Baby anymore, so I tossed its dead carcass in the trash.
Meanwhile, a guitarist who played in a band I was in back in Raleigh North Carolina USA used a stock VOX 847-A and I liked the sound he got out of his wah wah. So, when I headed out to buy a new wah wah, I decided to get the VOX 847-A.
Guess what? The blasted VOX 847-A does not have an LED either. Damn it . So, out came the wire cutters, soldering gun, silver solder and drill. In order to add an LED, first I needed to take out the original foot switch and replace it with a true-pass capable switch. I wired it up to include an LED, but I did not remove the buffer on this wah wah pedal because it sounded great with the buffer.
After a couple of years, I came to like the VOX 847-A (with mods) more than my old modded Cry Baby Wah.
Heading into year three, the VOX wah wah started to make a lot of scratchy noise. I had some canned air so I blew away whatever was in the wah potentiometer (dust and whatever) That fixed it for one rehearsal session and the scratch was back. Bummer, the dust particles had ruined the pot. Damn Damn Double Damn.
I went online and researched replacement pots for VOX 847-A wah pedeals. There were a lot. I mean a freaking lot. Freaking zillions.
I settled for a Dunlop CryBaby Hot Potz II, 100k. The Hot Potz II is a sealed pot (no dust gets into this pot). The pot is usually around $35 US, but I found one for $25 (including shipping). The Hot Potz II fit perfectly. Of course, I had to do some mods to wire it up because the original pot in the VOX 847-A is soldered directly to a small circuit board, while the Hot Potz II has posts to solder wires to. So, I pulled out my little cutters and clipped the leads on the original pot, leaving some of the original leads on the circuit board. Why you ask? Well, I don't like using solder suckers and I don't like to bypass circuit boards that are already in place. I needed something to solder wires to on the circuit board, and leaving a little of the original pot leads in place provided the surfaces needed. Next, I ran the wires to the Hot Potz II posts and soldered that end.
.
After I finished the mod work, I plugged in the VOX wah and gave it the acid test. Hot Damn! The wah was "SMOOTH." The VOX wah was smoother than the it was with the original pot. The first acid test revealed that the rocker arm and the gear on the pot were a little out of whack because I wasn't getting enough treble in the toe-down position of the wah pedeal. Fixing that was easy. I just loosened the rocker arm and turned the gear a little to change the position of the pot in the toe-down position.
So, I can say that the Dunlop CryBaby HotPotz II pot makes a VOX 847-A wah pedal sound "much' different than the wah sounded with the original pot used by VOX. It was not just different, but MUCH better, MUCH smoother and clearer, with a wider sweet spot.
Enjoy The Music!
Jimmy Haggard
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