Another MoWah Build – Sparkle Wah

[Chuck]

This one is almost done enough to share.  Essentially this is another version of my EddyVWah but using a Yellow Fasel (for now) and the newer version of the Roto-Tone.  The inspiration started when I was digging through my pile-o-stuff and realized I had an extra wah pot and most of the parts of a beat up Dunlop wah shell.  I fought myself with this one making a series of errors that frustrated me to no end.  Before the shell ended up as ‘parts of a beat up Dunlop wah shell’ I had drilled more LED holes than I needed because I sometimes have trouble mentally transferring the inside of the box to the outside for drilling.  With 50% more holes than I needed I set it aside for later use.  In the meantime I started another wah project that involved disassembling the shell for painting – and losing the cross piece.  So I scarfed the one from the holey shell along with the screws for that strappy widget under the foot plate.  Fast forward a few years and I used a lightly polished piece of brass rod to replace the cross piece, replaced the missing screws with new ones from Ace, filled to extra holes with JB Weld, and refinished the shell with some heavy sparkle paint.  Used a long shaft 3PDT stomp, jacks, pots, knobs, and most of the fiddly stuff from Small Bear; Barry provided the MoWah, 3PDT board, Roto-Tone Deluxe board and rotary switch, and Yellow Facel (a long time ago), as well as the bi-color LED.

Here’s the outside:

And the guts:

Initial fire up was somewhat less than earth shattering so I spent some time replacing suspect parts (wah pot and a Whipple inductor), rewiring the gain and q pots, replacing the wrong FETs with the correct MPF 102s, soldering the middle leg on the LED, and finally realizing the Roto-Tone was supposed to be connected to C8 not C9.  I’m not in love with the Dunlop pot and will retry the Joe Gagan Smooth Pot I started with.

Thanks for looking,

Chuck

[Author]

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