DIY Wah pedals, need some suggestions.....

[Feral Feline]

How much discount do they do when MiniBear has a sale?
$69 is really steep for an enclosure.

I agree, it’s way steep — but it’s pre-assembled with a quality black coating and SOLID.

My cheap&cheerful ones from China don’t weigh near as much ( which itself can be a very good thing!).

Anyway, as I recall I got 30% off …
And wished I’d bought more — most Synthybearsmallcube-sales are at best 20% off.

When you consider folded steel/aluminum enclosures can get up to $30-$40 depending on size and that’s not even painted nor any moving parts, and you’re not dealing with hunting down a used wah-shell that may have worn out pivot-pin or rack, then the sale price for a pre-assembled painted enclosure with all new mechanical bits may not sting so much.

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

If you want, I can send you a copy of the TR152 PDF with the entire article.

Could you send that to me! As a Zappa geek, the Boomerang Wah is majorly cool to me, so I’d love to read whatever there is to be said about it

 

[MichaelW]

I agree, it’s way steep — but it’s pre-assembled with a quality black coating and SOLID.

My cheap&cheerful ones from China don’t weigh near as much ( which itself can be a very good thing!).

Anyway, as I recall I got 30% off …
And wished I’d bought more — most Synthybearsmallcube-sales are at best 20% off.

When you consider folded steel/aluminum enclosures can get up to $30-$40 depending on size and that’s not even painted nor any moving parts, and you’re not dealing with hunting down a used wah-shell that may have worn out pivot-pin or rack, then the sale price for a pre-assembled painted enclosure with all new mechanical bits may not sting so much.

Ahhh, I thought you got those in HK, which is why I didn't bother looking. The ones from AES I've read here are kind of "iffy" in terms of construction and need some mods to make them operate smoothly. Plus they weren't inexpensive. That's why I just used a coupon and got a real Dunlop CryBaby for not much more than $69.

I thought about buying a used one for the shell, but I have a bit of a problem with "pre-jismed" gear. Gives me the heebie jeebies...... . All part of my OCD I guess hahaha

 

[Guardians of the analog]

I have the the smallbear shell. It's not bad but I do feel that the actual crybaby shell is about the best you can get. The weight, the travel of the foot treadle, the look...I refuse to accept any substitute everything else just seems like cheap knock off in comparison

 

[mkstewartesq]

I have the the smallbear shell. It's not bad but I do feel that the actual crybaby shell is about the best you can get. The weight, the travel of the foot treadle, the look...I refuse to accept any substitute everything else just seems like cheap knock off in comparison

Agreed. When I built my Tearjerker, I was lucky enough that a friend gifted me his Mission expression pedal as a donor body. When I opened it up, I found out that Mission used Crybaby shells (the “Dunlop” stamp is plainly visible) and, just comparing the enclosure to the various pictures of the DIY enclosures from various other vendors, it seems apparent to me that the fit and finish of the Dunlop enclosure is superior.

Mike

 

[Guardians of the analog]

Playing a wah is just as much about feel as it tone. I'm using my foot as an extension of my playing. The throw, feel and expressive nature of the unit is a direct correlation to the shell and it's heft and construction. Nothing smoother than crybaby imo. If it's good enough for Jerry Cantrell, it's good enough for me

 

[Feral Feline]

Ahhh, I thought you got those in HK, which is why I didn't bother looking. The ones from AES I've read here are kind of "iffy" in terms of construction and need some mods to make them operate smoothly. Plus they weren't inexpensive. That's why I just used a coupon and got a real Dunlop CryBaby for not much more than $69.

I thought about buying a used one for the shell, but I have a bit of a problem with "pre-jismed" gear. Gives me the heebie jeebies...... . All part of my OCD I guess hahaha

The ones I got in HK were the cheapo types available at Amp'd Parts, Small Bear, and everywhere. I bought two from different TaoBao vendors and one was slightly more complete than the other (some screws provided, for which one had a few holes drilled the other no holes at all) — IIRC both needed some self-tapping screws.

I literally stumbled upon my higher quality ones at SCSB while looking for something else, they didn't come up in a search on the SCSB site for "WAH" at the time, though they might now.

Like you, I wouldn't buy the SCSB shell at $70 when for about $20 more gets a brand-new wah with the jacks, working circuit-board, footswitch etc. Here's what you get with the SCSB shell (*bamboo cutting-board not included):

Note the gear-wheel is there, near the heel for shipping, and not yet installed in its proper place.


At least now you can rehouse the circuit that came with your brand new cry-baby and make a fixed-wah pedal of it (with expression jack, or not) to gift someone, or mod the hell out of, or just leave as a back-up to pop back in the shell if ever needed/desired.





The thing is, I'm pretty sure the shells I have are made in the same factory as the Dunlops, they've got the same weight and vibe to them — but I couldn't for the life of me find them on TaoBao. Same with getting some UNDRILLED footswitch-boxes for an amp, the kind used by Orange, Marshall and a host of others. I found some drilled ones on TaoBao, but not UNdrilled. Where did I finally come across the undrilled ones I sought?
Small Bear.

You'd think I'd've been able to find these dang things undrilled on TaoBao.



The other day I found a used WARM Klone in the local music store. It comes in a 1590BB-sized enKlonesure (or maybe it's 1:1 with a Klon, I forget).
The price for the entire pedal is less than one of the enKlonesures you can get on Alibaba. I'm tempted to buy it just so I can have the enKlonesure and strip it. When I last looked, long time ago, I couldn't find enKlonesures on TaoBao, but AliBaba had 'em. Most of the vendors on TaoBao are on Alibaba and vice-versa — the only real difference is 淘寶是中國人 = $, and Alibaba i$ Engli$h = $$$$$. Oh, and Taobao only ships within China while Alibaba ships internationally. Here's the WARM Klone/enKlonesure:

 

[Feral Feline]

I have the the smallbear shell. It's not bad but I do feel that the actual crybaby shell is about the best you can get. The weight, the travel of the foot treadle, the look...I refuse to accept any substitute everything else just seems like cheap knock off in comparison

Which Small Bear shell? They've got both the cheap-Chinese one and the Dunlop-like one.

I've got my friend's CryBaby here for repair, I'll compare it to the shell I got more closely when I find time (hopefully tonight).

 

[Phil hodson]

I have a suggestion, @MichaelW:

Don't bother with the basic DIY shells of (sometimes) questionable quality from eekBay/TaoBowl/AmplifiedFarts/Alleybuhbuh/DiminutiveB'ar etc — unless you like monkeying with the mechanical aspect of things. Then by all means go for it.

If you want to just pop a board into something physically ready to work, I recommend catching a sale at TinySynthyCubBear for a unit that's damn near on par (if not right there) with commercial shells from Dunlop etc.


Foreground, in cling-film the former-indicated DIY shell; above and beyond it are 3 of the latter-described working wah-shells:

PS: Also check out the Maestro Boomer 2 — Kula did a DIY vero fixed-version with expression-pedal input in Tone Report #152.

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If you want, I can send you a copy of the TR152 PDF with the entire article.

Would a Sham Wah fit in one of those enclosures from Synth cube?

And would it be easy enough to add the pot for the trim like Chris did?

Phil

 

[Guardians of the analog]

Which Small Bear shell? They've got both the cheap-Chinese one and the Dunlop-like one.

I've got my friend's CryBaby here for repair, I'll compare it to the shell I got more closely when I find time (hopefully tonight).

The one I got from smallbear was pre-pandemic and powder coated black already. It was aluminum and not the cast steel like ones that Dunlop used

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I've got some searches setup on ebay and gumtree for a broken or used vox wah to use for an enclosure. I love the look of the chromed top and really want to use one for a sham wah if I can find one for the right price.

 

[Big Monk]

I've got some searches setup on ebay and gumtree for a broken or used vox wah to use for an enclosure. I love the look of the chromed top and really want to use one for a sham wah if I can find one for the right price.

Another great search to save is ALL effects pedals on Reverb and filtered for Non-Functioning.

Some gems in there is you know what to look for.

 

[Feral Feline]

Would a Sham Wah fit in one of those enclosures from Synth cube?

And would it be easy enough to add the pot for the trim like Chris did?

Phil

Any of the PPCB Wah PCBs will fit — Sham Wah, TearJerker, Parasite.

I imagine it would be a doddle to add Chris' pot for trimming.


I had no idea the CryBabies were cast steel!
Cultivating automatic searches for non-functional pedals is even further beyond my ken. I mean, who knew?
Would be good to give up manually searching (when I remember to) for that Morley wah for the DEFX Maestro Flanger clone...

 

[Feral Feline]

Unassembled cheapo on the left, $C$B middle and of course the real-deal CryBaby on the right.

The footprints match up, when holding one to another, even though in the last pic it looks like the Crybaby has a wider heel area. Note in the last pic also the wall-thickness of the enclosures. The two on the left are of equal thickness where the CryBaby seems thinner.

One thing's for sure, the middle one is NOT from the same factory as the shell for the CryBaby, which before I thought it might be. The angle of the side-wall of the first two are identical, whereas the CryBaby has less of a slope.

The middle one has several advantages over the cheaper left — it comes assembled and painted, of course, but it also has the felt pad for the footswitch, rubber pad for the battery, rubber foot-pad for the treadle and a few other things I forget. Of my two cheapos, one didn't come with a bottom plate.

Back to the CryBaby — note its more robust clutch for the rack and pinion; also note the window for the rack is a bit larger than the other two. The shape of the CB's side-wall around the jack in the third pic is different from the middle enclosure (silver's being obscured by angle of camera, but is similar to middle one in pic 4). The jack-holes for the DC are of different size for all three enclosures. It seems the black-DIY is from the same factory as the unfinished silver (look at the 3 dimples above the footswitch hole in each, the size of the clutch, but there are still other subtle differences apart from the DC jack-holes — the biggest is weight, the paint alone can't account for it weighing that much more!

The paint on the CB is smooth, the paint on the DIY is highly textured, and of course the bare alloy DIY should be anodized-orange. Note the treadles' fulcrum-pin on the CB looks far more robust in the pics than that of the DIY options. I'll have to check the pins again later, physically, to see if that is indeed the case.



CryBaby...
Still sorting out some issues with which I need to re-acquaint myself as it's been so long since I last tackled it; and going to try a better inductor in it.

 

[swelchy]

Does it have a specific tonal landmark you can describe?

I’ve come full circle from the Tearjerker to a simple Clyde style wah. The main things in my estimation are finding the right Q resistor and making sure you adjust the physical travel of the pot to get the best sweep.

It’s hard to describe for me… it’s definitely a different frequency sweep than most… not so much high end and I almost think it’s a reverse sweep

 

[mkstewartesq]

I had no idea the CryBabies were cast steel!

Well, if so, that explains why I had such a bear of a time drilling it this weekend. I had procrastinated on moving all of my trim pots on my Tearjerker to external knobs for a while and finally got around to it. (I know some of the trim pots are barely used but I figured “as long as I’m moving one, why not move all?“). As I mentioned earlier, this is a Mission shell but it turns out they just bought Dunlop Crybaby shells and rebadged them.

Mike

 

[Harry Klippton]

This thread is making me think about building a harbinger two in my crybaby shell

 

[jjjimi84]

@bigmonk hit it on the head, physically adjusting the where and how far the actual pot moves is key to having the wah dialed into your personal taste.

@MichaelW I have a few wahs I can send you if you want to try some out. I used the tearjerker in next weeks video and it is a tweakers delight. My lazy ass got it dialed in and haven’t touched anything on the inside since.

 

[MichaelW]

Well, if so, that explains why I had such a bear of a time drilling it this weekend. I had procrastinated on moving all of my trim pots on my Tearjerker to external knobs for a while and finally got around to it. (I know some of the trim pots are barely used but I figured “as long as I’m moving one, why not move all?“). As I mentioned earlier, this is a Mission shell but it turns out they just bought Dunlop Crybaby shells and rebadged them.

MikeView attachment 50784View attachment 50785

That looks awesome Mike!! It needs a dedicated build report and demo

 

[Diynot]

*WARNING- “pre-jismed” content*
Just picked this up at the local musicgoround for $40. I cleaned all the carpet fibers and hair out of the gear for the sake of Michael. It’s a little rough, but nothing that’s gonna stop this harbinger build