How do you deal with volume boost from a cry baby wah?

[nosuch]

The situation: New to me funk band starts to rehearse. The plan is to do silent (except for drums and brass) rehearsals and gigs with in-ear-monitoring so I'll be using my fly rig cali into a di-box and also my trusty old cry baby wah. To get used to hear myself over headphones I set it all up into my motu at home. With the wah there is a hefty volume with clean tones – it overloads the input stage of the motu.

Hw do you deal with that volume boost? I asked the guy that sets up the mixer if he can maybe put a limiter into the channel. Good plan?
While I'm at it: Are there any wah pedals or envelope filters (I was thinking about that instead of a traditional wah anyway) with volume adjustment out there?

 

[Buzzgrowl]

You get a Morley.

 

[Festofish]

You get a Morley.

Here here! The basic crybabys all suck. The Q Series is great. I’m sure the artist series are great too. I fell bass-ackwards into a Dimebag CFH wah and it’s fantastic! I don’t do metal. I think I still prefer my Morley Bad Horsie 2. I just like the treadle movement on Morley’s.

 

[Festofish]

Which model do you have?

 

[kingvox]

You can replace the input resistor on the PCB with a higher value resistor to reduce the volume.

I'm not sure where it is on your model, but I did this on my BBE wah and it worked great. I also got an "Italia" wah from Joe Gagan (Joe's the best, great wahs and great guy), which has a socket for the input resistor so you can change them out to adjust the volume boost to your liking.

This may help you:

http://www.wah-wah.co.uk/diy.html

Usually it's a 68k resistor. Which you can identify by color coding.

"Volume

If you've converted to true bypass, replace the 68K series input resistor with a lower value, say 47K. This gives a slight increase in volume. Too low a value is likely to result in the pedal picking up radio interference. This can be addressed by adding small value (10 - 20pF) capacitors between the collector and base of each transistor."

In your case, you might want to try a 100k resistor to drop the volume a bit. I never messed with adding capacitors, so don't worry about that. Resistors are so cheap, it's easy to experiment, but just as a guess I'd say 100k will probably get you where you want to be, and should get your wah close to "unity gain" (same volume as your normal signal).

I recommend a solder sucker, such as the Engineer solder sucker, if you don't have one already. Very handy for working on PCB's. Very little can go wrong on PCB's if you're careful and don't overheat anything.

It's a very easy mod and will make a world of difference. Same with changing the position of the pot to your liking. I usually set mine a little farther back so the toe-down position is not as trebly. Sounds better to my ear.

 

[Post-HK]

Lower your guitar volume knob a couple notches when you engage the wah.

 

[Buzzgrowl]

Which model do you have?

Bad horsie 2.

Had a Vox before. On its own was fine but was crap because the switch was clunky, always turned on at the high extreme, the pot got scratchy quick, and it did not play nice with the other effects. The Morley solved all these problems.

 

[teleplayr]

You can replace the input resistor on the PCB with a higher value resistor to reduce the volume.

I'm not sure where it is on your model, but I did this on my BBE wah and it worked great. I also got an "Italia" wah from Joe Gagan (Joe's the best, great wahs and great guy), which has a socket for the input resistor so you can change them out to adjust the volume boost to your liking.

This may help you:

http://www.wah-wah.co.uk/diy.html

Usually it's a 68k resistor. Which you can identify by color coding.

"Volume

If you've converted to true bypass, replace the 68K series input resistor with a lower value, say 47K. This gives a slight increase in volume. Too low a value is likely to result in the pedal picking up radio interference. This can be addressed by adding small value (10 - 20pF) capacitors between the collector and base of each transistor."

In your case, you might want to try a 100k resistor to drop the volume a bit. I never messed with adding capacitors, so don't worry about that. Resistors are so cheap, it's easy to experiment, but just as a guess I'd say 100k will probably get you where you want to be, and should get your wah close to "unity gain" (same volume as your normal signal).

I recommend a solder sucker, such as the Engineer solder sucker, if you don't have one already. Very handy for working on PCB's. Very little can go wrong on PCB's if you're careful and don't overheat anything.

It's a very easy mod and will make a world of difference. Same with changing the position of the pot to your liking. I usually set mine a little farther back so the toe-down position is not as trebly. Sounds better to my ear.

Exactly!

I have an old Thomas Organ Co. wah that I've made several mods to and just swapping out some resisters will usually give you the results you want.

All Cry Baby's suck? Not in my experience.

 

[Festofish]

All Cry Baby's suck? Not in my experience.

All base model crybabys suck. Sucks your tone right down the drain. Not all crybabys just the base models. As stated my CFH wah is awesome! I think I just prefer Morley. Switch-less and optical. My preference.

 

[cravenmonket]

You guys who have/use volume pedals, do you recommend one with an audio taper or a linear taper? Or do I need both?

 

[nosuch]

I feel like a moron: the boost and distortions seems to be coming from a dying battery. I connected it to a power supply and the tone is clearer and there seems to be less boost when switching on. I've been using a daisy chain from the fly rigs power supply which says 12 volt. It seems to be working – maybe the increased power even gives me a bit more headroom?