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that is a cool grind, i like the treble bite! what is the guitar?

i used to like a SHO into my jtm45 clone with an attenuator, it sounded very similar to the treble grind in your clips.

great videos, loved the sounds. the mayo is nice, as are the FFs. i liked reading all your notes about the transistors. the way the oc144 ff cleaned up at 2:03 is impressive. your chops are great as well.

after all these years, i still find that i like the si Q1 /hot ge Q2 combo a lot in FFs. i recenlty tried a .002 silver mica treble bleed cap on the input gain of an easyface, makes the pedal clean up really nice. i also have a silver mica treble bleed cap in my tele, so,  double treble bleed caps - gives a really wide range just from the guitar.  i did a demo of john lyons peds , i thought it was an unfair advantage to represent the pedals this way, due to the high quality treble bleed and relatively low output pickups ( seymour duncan nashville studio lead and  fender CS strat neck PU) i was afraid that customers would have unreasonable expectations of the cleanup factor. oh well.

anyway, here is the demo of the aforementioned easyface with treble bleed. you can see me turn down the pregain and the result. all other dist. changes are form pick attack changes or vol on guitar.

sounds great.

after 10 years ( easyface, 2000), i still like 2n3906 for Q1 and a hot 120 to 130 hfe* pnp for Q2.

i had really good luck with  purchase of surplus 2n2614s from summit in florida, but they sell in bulk.

*hfe refers to measure using Rg's tester

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.

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

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...

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):

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.

and then, there is the whole topic of the charge/discharge time on the cap as it relates to your wah foot, pot value, taper etc etc.

in theory, 4- 1 uf caps would do the same thing as a single 4uf cap, but it is possible that the two might actually 'feel'different tothe player due to the charge discharge time.

in a wah, the pot is causing a resistance change to two halves of the circuit. ( a pair of resistances going to each side at any given point in time) is it possible that the cap charge/discharge time and these resistances 'under the bell" are the reason that pot taper is such a touchy part of how it feels? something i have not heard discussed.

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

i'm the redneck in that video. you won't get this sound with two stock wahs, or even two normally modded wahs.

two thomas organ wahs in series. both modded.
first one, i can't remember what i did but it had to do with getting the most harmonics out of the inductor. mostly adjusting the  mh and resistance of the inductor and ind>cap to ground value. each inductor has its own favorite value anywhere from 3 uf to 12 uf, you have to find the one that opens up the harmonics of each inductor. that is why many wah modders miss the boat, they aren't getting the inductor tuned. probably a treble bleed cap around the input resistor as well.

2nd wah (superpuke talking weasel) has a huge Q cap and a morley bad horsie inductor, 480 mh and 12 ohm (measured) per morleys stated spec. it is the one that has the huge vocal bark. when a good sounding wah is placed in front of it, all hell breaks loose. when combined like this, i call the whole mess superpuke talking weasel with vitamin Q injection. they are hardwired together, each with their own dpdt, each can be operated on its own but they share one battery and one masonite board with a brontoboost ahead.

each wah sounds really good on its own, but the superpuke is crazy. guys who have heard live it say it reminds them of a talk box.

superpuke on its own:

superpuke talking weasel with vItamin Q injection:

thanks for listening!