Wah Buffers

Big Monk

Big Monk

Well-known member
I'm not a huge fan of the very garish, "Pukey" sounds from a wah AFTER fuzz. It definitely has it's place for certain things, Jeff Beck's "Truth" tones in particular, but I am looking into a buffer for the output of my Tearjerker so I can run it first in line.

Now, I realize it's a low parts count item but there are some commercial examples available for very reasonable prices and the FoxRox in particular has an excellent track record.

Anyone have any advice/experience?
 
A simple solution is to add series resistance to the output of the wah, on the order of 10k to 100k. It could be variable with a trimmer as well.

Here’s the Foxrox:

1635193714076.jpeg

Seems a bit overkill to me but I’ve never tried it. It uses series resistance on the output, with an added attenuator on the input and filtering well outside of guitar range, probably to reduce noise and oscillations
 
You only need a buffer (or a 10K series resistor) if you're driving something with a low input impedance, such as a Fuzz Face. A TearJerker will have no problem driving a high-impedance pedal like a TS. Should work fine into a BMP for that matter.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
You only need a buffer (or a 10K series resistor) if you're driving something with a low input impedance, such as a Fuzz Face. A TearJerker will have no problem driving a high-impedance pedal like a TS. Should work fine into a BMP for that matter.
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thewintersoldier said:
thats why I suggested putting it on a switch. If your using it before a fuzz face or other fuzz flip it on. If your not, turn it off.
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I have space for another single pole switch next to the "Bird" mod on the face. I'll try this before anything too complex. Right now my desire is for it to always be first in line before my Germanium Fuzz Face.
 
thewintersoldier said:
thats why I suggested putting it on a switch. If your using it before a fuzz face or other fuzz flip it on. If your not, turn it off.
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If you're using a series resistor, there is no need for a switch. When you're driving a low impedance load, the resistor does what it's supposed to do. When you're driving a high-impedance load, the resistor does nothing.

If you drive a Fuzz Face with a low-impedance buffer, it completely changes the character of the Fuzz Face. You may or may not like that. Try driving a Fuzz Face with buffered-bypass pedal in bypass mode and you'll see what I mean.
 
Quick Update: I tried the 10k resistor on the output. At lower volumes the wah sounds with fuzz are improved but with the volume up on the amp I'm getting some oscillation and almost no wah sweep.

Today was a bum day with fuzz as well. None of them sounded all that great to me.

I will likely pursue the buffer route now.
 
Chuck D. Bones said:
I cannot fathom how a 10K resistor is causing or contributing to oscillation and weak wah sweep.
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To be clear, I don’t believe the 10k resistor to be the root cause. First off, I’ve got 3 phaser/UniVibe devices between the Wah and fuzzes. Secondly, I have not played at full volume with fuzz and Wah for a while so it’s more likely a pre-existing issue that the 10k simply did not mitigate.

Tomorrow I’ll connect the Wah directly in front of the fuzzes and see where I am. Worst case scenario I’ll do a down and dirty little point to point buffer to jump in there.
 
So I did a better test yesterday. I hooked the wah directly to the fuzzes and the wah tone was definitely improved.

Also, the oscillation issue was simply a matter of too much fuzz and amp gain. IOW, garden variety, "turn your amp down stupid!" type stuff.

All of this has exposed something for me though: I need to revisit my Fuzz designs. I need some refinements to make them play well anywhere in the chain. I'm gonna do some research here in the next few weeks on a number of modern fuzz pedals and see what I can learn and incorporate.
 
I’m in the middle of requiring and cleaning up my Tearjerker.

I’ve decided to put a spend freeze on project stuff for the rest of the year so I’m going with a JFET output buffer.

I do plan on either building a FoxRox buffer or simply purchasing and Area 51 output buffer in the new year if I dont the the JFET buffer though.
 
I have the PedalPCB Simple JFET Buffer hooked up to the Tearjerker output between the "Echoes" switch and the stomp switch. Everything works great and the Wah tone is much improved with my fuzz face downstream.

Being that I've come this far and had improvement, I thought i'd ask the following question: Since the output impedance of the JFET buffer is very low, is there a benefit to a series resistance on the output of the buffer that is close to standard pickup DC resistance?

I see the FoxRox buffer seems to have a series resistance of 22k on the tail end, which I assume is for something close to this reason:

1635193714076-jpeg.17492
 
So glad I found this thread. I was about to go down the road of adding an output buffer to my wah because of the oscillation it went into with my Bliss Factory but the resistor ended up working.

I tried a 10k resistor at first and still had the oscillation. So then I wired up a pot to play with it a bit. The oscillation went away right around 18k so I ended up using a 22k resistor. This also let me confirm that there was no change in the wah tone with the resistor in which was nice.

This did effect the input/output reverse mod to get the Gilmour seagull sound so I had to make sure it was only in the circuit when I had the seagull effect off.

🤘🏼🎸
 
Absolutely. The Gilmour seagull tone depends on loading the wah's amplification stage with something reactive, like pickups and a Tone knob.
 
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