NPD - Cry Baby wah, but a switch question

thecolourbox

Picked up this bad boy earlier for the princely sum of £10 from Facebook Marketplace. Bit battered and well used but seems ok on the whole. Never really taken the time to learn wah, have done whammy and other expression pedal stuff just never wah, thought worth giving it a go for some Jimi noodling as a sidetrack to an acoustic thing I'm working on at the mo.

It sounds like a wah, bit of a silly place for the power input and it seems a bit noisy but I'll try mounting it on a proper board with the supply cables coming from underneath to see if it's any better. 

Didn't seem to be able to switch it on and off though, I'd understood you normally just chunk your foot forwards to the toe position and on/off it goes but doesn't seem to want to do that. I can press it by hand but obviously that's not super convenient.

Googled it but of course the kind of key words in that search bring all kinds of stuff up but not what I needed really. There was one suggestion to raise the switch up by loosening the washer and then tightening it again with the switch higher but that didn't want to work. I now also seem to have removed two rubber feet either side of the switch, and I can now hear the switch clicking but of course it's now whacking down on the unit which isn't ideal I don't suspect. 

Should I just cut the rubber feet down and stick them back in, hoping that's enough to hit the switch better? Or attach some kind of block underneath the treadle to press the switch more firmly?

Cheers
Matt

Magnetic_Effects

If you have raised the switch as high as it will go and still can not turn the pedal on and off then you need to add some padding on the underneath of the treadle at the front where is presses against the switch. There should be a small pad there. The pad may have fallen off or become compressed. 

thecolourbox

Magnetic_Effects said:

If you have raised the switch as high as it will go and still can not turn the pedal on and off then you need to add some padding on the underneath of the treadle at the front where is presses against the switch. There should be a small pad there. The pad may have fallen off or become compressed. 

Superb thank you. I will try to stick the little rubber feet back in Honestly I'm like a small child taking small parts off stuff haha

ICBM

It's just a question of getting the combination of switch height in the pedal casing, the thickness of the two rubber stops under the front edge, and the pad that presses on the switch, to be 'just so' - not so easy that you accidentally turn the pedal off at the toe-down position, but not so stiff that it needs a Sumo wrestler to stand on it... the precision of adjustment needed is quite subtle.

randella

ICBM said:

It's just a question of getting the combination of switch height in the pedal casing, the thickness of the two rubber stops under the front edge, and the pad that presses on the switch, to be 'just so' - not so easy that you accidentally turn the pedal off at the toe-down position, but not so stiff that it needs a Sumo wrestler to stand on it... the precision of adjustment needed is quite subtle.

I like them so it needs a good stamping to switch - I almost stand on mine.  Bear in mind if you play sitting down a lot you'll want it to switch with less force.

Woodenhead

Also, if there's too much high end (or not enough in my case) you can adjust it with a screwdriver.

ICBM

Woodenhead said:

Also, if there's too much high end (or not enough in my case) you can adjust it with a screwdriver.

It’s not quite ‘as simple as that’ - you must make sure you don’t set it so the treadle can drive the pot beyond its end stop when it’s fully down, including the switch travel - you’ll break either the pot or the gear rack when you put your weight on it. (Or at the other end if you’re trying to reduce treble.)

The furthest forward setting possible is with the treadle fully down and the switch clicked, and the pot set in the last notch it will fully reach. The standard setting is to back off one notch from there, which usually doesn’t change the sweep since the pot track normally has a ‘flat spot’ at the very end of the track.

Woodenhead

Yes, good point, I wouldn't want anyone knackering their wah pedal trying this. I left enough room so as not to damage or stress the mechanism and managed to add enough high end to make a noticable difference.

I had to add padding a few years ago when it became tough to switch, a piece of a mouse pad worked for me. Altering the sweep didn't occur to me until recently and I've only owned it 20+ years.

bohemianbuoy

There's quite a few things you can do to a wah circuit if you're comfortable using a soldering iron. First off, you can replace the pot with an ICAR taper pot, which is a favourite for many wah users. Then, there's a few resistors that you can switch or replace with trimpots that will affect things like the 'Q', bass and mids. You can even replace the inductor, although I would prioritise the former mods before changing the inductor. 

MattBanshee

Tape a 1p coin underneath the treadle, over the pad where it hits the switch. If there's no pad, use 2 pennies.

soma1975

bohemianbuoy said:

There's quite a few things you can do to a wah circuit if you're comfortable using a soldering iron. First off, you can replace the pot with an ICAR taper pot, which is a favourite for many wah users. Then, there's a few resistors that you can switch or replace with trimpots that will affect things like the 'Q', bass and mids. You can even replace the inductor, although I would prioritise the former mods before changing the inductor. 

Buy a Castledine pot off Reverb for £14.99 and never look back. Plus a Foxrox fuzz buffer if you play with a fuzz face too. 

thecolourbox

MattBanshee said:

Tape a 1p coin underneath the treadle, over the pad where it hits the switch. If there's no pad, use 2 pennies.

Thank you for this, seems to have worked with 2x 1p even though there is a pad there, albeit looks quite squashed. I've not switched it on yet to see if it works in practice but now I seem to be able to do the switch easily enough I'm hoping that'll do.

I don't think I'll be modifying it any further than that! Not got the skill and to me a wah sounds like a wah so tweaking it won't really bring a noticeable benefit that I would hear really.