Thomas Organ Crybaby
I suck at wah. I might not suck so much if I spent some quality time working out how to make use of one in an interesting way. This is something I’d definitely like to do someday because any time that I do plug into one and put in a little effort I can see things heading in a direction that is pretty cool. Usually though, I plug in and find myself doing that standard “cha whakka whakka” porn soundtrack stuff that seems to be programmed by default into these things. I really like the wah when it’s used as a static filter ala Mick Ronson. I Love that nasaly, half cocked tone for melodic single line stuff!
As guitar pedal circuitry goes the wah is one of the simplest out there. Just a pot, an inductor and a handful of other electronic bits. Given that, it’s pretty amazing how sensitive it is to modifications. In my (fairly limited) experience modding them it seems the smallest of tweaks changes the response and tone in pretty noticeable ways.
I’ve owned 2 wahs in the past several years. Before that only one in the late 70s. The one pictured is from 1979. I picked it up a few years ago and I dig it a lot. It’s a Chicago-made Thomas Organ version with the “stack of dimes” inductor. This was another nostalgia-based purchase. Had one as a kid, need one now. I don’t know the particular city of manufacture or the inductor type of my old 70s one but it certainly would have been Thomas Organ made. It’s worth noting that I was a pretty wretched wah player way back when too.
My 80s/90s Dunlop Crybaby had the transitional circuit board and chassis mounted jacks. It sounded pretty good but the 79 kills it in response and tone. I don’t understand why since they are nearly identical component/value wise. Like I said, this circuit appears to be very sensitive to the smallest changes/tolerances.
After owning the Dunlop for a while I decided to try some modifications and to explore the circuit. The original buffer-less Crybaby is one of the most notorious pedals out there for “tone suck”. You really know when it’s in your chain. The first mod I wanted to try was to lose the tone suck so I converted it to true bypass. I found that I was unable to make it true bypass without losing the things I most liked about the tone. After the mod it seemed less vocal and a little clinical sounding. It just wasn’t as fun to play. I reverted it back to stock bypass and it was immediately better. I also tried a couple of cap/resistor swaps in an attempt to get a more pronounced vocal sound and didn’t like those results either. Lastly, I explored adjusting the pot for a different sweep range and swapping the stock inductor for a red Fasel. I ended up preferring the stock range of the pedal’s pot setting. The Fasel really didn’t seem to sound much different than the stock inductor. I kept the Fasel in.
If I ever do develop my wah chops I reckon I’ll need to address the tone suck. I’d probably use a bypass loop or perhaps see how it actually affected my rig and maybe just adjust for it at the amp. I’d be happy to have that problem though so the sooner I can lose the “cha whakka whakka” and learn to make something useful the better. Excuse me while I dig out and dust off my wah.