I say build it, you will have much more fun building it than the 30 minutes you will play with it before it ends up a door stop
Well maybe I’ll dust mine off and see if I still hate Wah pedals.
Blech. Welcome to my shit list. Population: you.
For not liking wahs. I think. Wait, is having a wrong opinion bad? It feels bad.
No, no, I think I'm right here.
Anywho...wahs. wah wah wah. Wahdie wahdie wah. I love wahs. The Tearjerker PCB is quite good, but is at its core not a different circuit from the standard gcb-95.
The primary difference is the tweakability: the tearjerker replaces several resistors with potentiometers, and allows for multiple different caps to be switched in parallel so you can find tune the range. It's a solid platform, but the number of options can be a little overwhelming.
My personal preference is to have a Jfet buffer before the wah circuit rather than a bit. Helps to retain some of the high end that could get lost due to the low input impedance of the circuit, plus I just feel that the Jfet buffer lends itself to a livelier response. That's the lie I've told myself anyways.
The Sham Wah board is pretty easy to modify for this purpose. So is a standard crybaby circuit board. The PPCB Jfet buffer board offers up a good example schematic. Without the 10uf on the end.
Overall, though, there's not much difference between 90% of what's out there. Rocktron's wahs are made by Eleca, tend to have solid inductors, but their boards are a bit unnecessarily cramped. Crybabies are good modding platforms, but modern day variants tend to come with toroid inductors, which I've found myself to not be particularly fond of. Yes, the red and yellow fasel that so many seem to love; not a fan.
That said, the SBE ME-6 is excellent. Really quite good. Cheap too. Although you can always get one custom wound by your friendly neighborhood stickman if you don't mind a "when I get around to it" timeframe.
Transistors: I'm a basic bitch here. I really like the BC109b in a wah pedal. Honestly, you probably won't notice a difference with the BC549b: it's cheaper, and it's basically the same transistor.
2N3565s and PN3565s are great too. I shoot for 200-300 hfe in Q1 and 300-400 in Q2. Higher gain in Q1 will extend the range...which can definitely be a bad thing.
MPSA18s don't belong anywhere near a wah. Too clean, too hot. Never understood why this became the go-to.
The range cap: I, personally, like to make this one a polystyrene cap. At the very least, polypro.
Little mods: drop the input resistor from 68k to 47k. Adds a little bass/gain. Drop the emitter resistor on Q1 to 330-390r. Play around with the midrange feedback resistor on Q1's base. Stock is 1.5k, 1.8 is about the upper limit for me on that one. Q resistor: anywhere from 68k to 100k.
And...honestly...because I believe in magic, I like to replace one of the 220nf caps (the upper cap leading to one of the end terminals, not the one attached to the wiper) with a 680nf polypro, and I swap the other 220nf polyester cap for a PPS variety. Because magic.
Honestly...it's a little tricky. Theres something really great about getting that vowel-like tone just *nailed* in a circuit, but it takes some patience.
Also, the above are just my own mods. Feel free to explore to your hearts content.
