Cocked wah!

[Steve Blackdog]

Does anyone have a schematic for a cocked wah? I am thinking of building a wah that I can set - in effect a cry baby, but with an on/off switch and pre-set pot.

has anyone built something along these lines?

cheers

steve

[pdf64]

Why wouldn’t a regular cry baby schematic apply?

[Chuck H]

Sure! Why not? And...

A pedal designed for a "fixed" wah effect wouldn't be pinned down by the need for a special pot taper. You don't need "intuitive" foot control. Easy peezy. Just build a box with the wah circuit and use a more accessible linear pot for the mid effect adjustment and use a plain button switch. Should be a piece of cake.

[pdf64]

I’m a bit sceptical there’s much in the special taper thing. When desperate, I’ve used a regular 100k lin in my cry baby before now. They work fine, no really noticeable difference in use to purpose made wah pots, but don’t last long before getting crackly.

Sourcing a suitable inductor is perhaps the bigger hassle with this.

[Helmholtz]

In my wah thread there's some info on circuit, pot taper and inductors:
https://music-electronics-forum.com/...lts#post923817

[tedmich]

A tone control for your feet? But the tone knob is already right on your guitar ; ) Several player do like this set up, and I suspect they developed this preference after getting tired of being on the Wah which is a drag after a while

see (briefly!) a famous later adopter of cocked wah here (M. Schenker)

Michael was 16 years, 8 months, 11 days old when this was filmed FYI

And as Mark has stated taper is fairly meaningless for fixed positions, although it may get you to your desired tone faster and easier if the range you like isn't a tiny percentage of the ~270 degrees of rotation.

[Mark Hammer]

Pot taper pertains to foot-operated wahs, but is relatively moot when it comes to cocked-wah pedals. The reason is that in a foot-operated device, one needs the pot sweep to maximize expressiveness via movement of one's ankle. As long as the most-used settings are not smushed into a 5-degree arc of the pot, most tapers of a hand-controlled pot will be fine.

The old Systech Harmonic Energizer may not be inductor-based, but is make a pretty decent cocked-wah, and has adjustable resonance. Frank Zappa had one installed in at least one of his guitars. Madbean had projects for building one under the project name "Karate Shop" and later "Slap Chop", although I think they were since discontinued. I've made a few, and like it.

[35L6]

FYI Antique has Dunlop boards for 24 bucks !

[Helmholtz]

A tone control for your feet? But the tone knob is already right on your guitar

Good point!

Clapton got his famous "woman tone" with the Cream in the mid-sixties just by rolling back his tone control on the neck PU.
OTOH, a typical wah circuit has a narrower filter bandwidth and allows for wider peak frequency variation.

I don't think that anyone said or meant that pot taper matters with manual operation.
Nevertheless a linear taper will give best frequency resolution.

[Steve Blackdog]

Michael was 16 years, 8 months, 11 days old when this was filmed FYI

.

Wowsa! I had no idea he was so young. A born talent!

[Mick Bailey]

The E.H. Soul Kiss makes for a superb fixed-wah type pedal with a pot instead of the LDR and has much more range than a regular wah. Dispenses with the need for an inductor. Another possibility is the Colorsound inductorless wah.