Wah pedal enclosure broke... what to do with the guts?

unbrokenchain

unbrokenchain

Supporting Member
Jun 8, 2011
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Black Mountain, NC
#1
Was trying to figure out why my Rocktron tri-wah was having some issues - pedal felt grindy/stuck when I rocked it back and forth. Took the pedal apart and realized the entire housing/enclosure was cracked, ostensibly from me putting too much weight on it (which is weird, because I'm not a heavy guy and only played with it while sitting down..) I tried to bend it back into place and the whole enclosure shattered into pieces.

So, I pulled everything out... looks like wah enclosures are around $50, but that's all I paid for this pedal, and there are other wah pedals for sale for $50, so I'm not all that tempted to buy a new enclosure, but I like the way the thing sounded on the bass setting. Any creative ideas for using the wah innards for purposes other than a rocker pedal? I guess I could just turn the pot by hand and have a static type of effect.
 
#2
The rocker just acts like a pot. Put the guts in a regular project box. Research or ask here and find out the values of the rocker are/were. Put a pot in place of the rocker. It will in essence act like a preamp with a mid sweep pot instead of a rocker pedal. You should be able to get a project box for literally a few bucks.

Give it a funny name and paint it all wacky and you can probably sell it for $350. :D

(Yer gonna split that with me, right? :cool:)
 
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#5
When I was an undergrad a million years ago I took a liberal arts elective course called Foundations Of Creativity in which our final project was, essentially, to create something. (And then rigorously document the creative process, of course.) My project was a series of "sculptures" [sic] made out of individual shoes...but all the shoes had been repurposed or juxtaposed with some element that had absolutely nothing to do with shoes

...or, in one case, that was only peripherally connected with shoes: I installed the guts of a Foxx fuzz/wah/volume pedal into an old decrepit Adidas running shoe.

Got an A in the class!
 
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#7
Thanks for the responses. I decided to mount it all inside a steel electric box (like that would have light switches or outlet on it). Trouble is, the box is a little wider than the circuit board, and the input/output jacks are mounted on the board. I have extra regular jacks that I can use, but how do I wire them to/from the circuit-board mounted jacks?
 
#9
Yeah that would work, but I was hoping to make it fairly clean, already have holes drilled for i/o jacks, but can only mount one side or the other, and I'd like the board to sit lower in the box than the holes allow anyway, so I'd like to make these other jacks work. I can't quite figure out how these board-mounted jacks are wired, though. This isn't my photo, this is of an intact wah pedal, but the jacks look the same.
IMG_2050.jpg
 
#12
BadExample said:
Can you run patch cords out the holes for the electrical wiring?
Click to expand...

Yep. Push through on of the pre-cut knockouts in the side of the box and use a strain relief connector to run the cable through. Push the cable through and then tighten the sleeve around it and it won't allow the cable to move back and forth and come out of the 1/4" jack.
strain relief connector.jpg
 
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#13
I just pretended the knock-outs weren't there, not as classy a job as most of the folks on this board would have done, but for a "if it ain't broke, don't mess with it. at all." type of guy I'd say it's not too bad. Didn't leave a hole for AC adapter and I accidentally oriented the in/out on top and bottom instead of the sides, but who cares? Can get a lot more sweep on the pot by hand than with the pedal, obviously, even if I can't manipulate it while I'm playing with both hands.
Cocked wah?

Cocked wah?

 
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