Fixed A Few Effects

Over the long holiday weekend, I had a little bit of free time and began working on a few projects that I had acquired.

2 of them were Crybaby wah pedals that I had mysteriously come into ownership of.  It is mysterious because I don't know where they came from or why exactly they were in the condition they were.

Both wahs were the same model except one featured the J-Fet buffer and the other had an older style pot.

Having two similar (although not identical) pedals in front of you can be pretty helpful when you don't feel like thinking too hard about where each wire is supposed to go.  There are slight wiring differences between the two pedals but the color coding of the wires and their general paths are the same.

It was clear on the one crybaby with the older style pot and no buffer that the pot had a wire break off of it because the pot came loose.  I resoldered the wire and tightened the pot into place.  When I went to fire up the pedal for the first time, I got absolutely nothing.  I was admittedly a bit stumped until I noticed that the PCB connector was not keyed and could be reversed.  I tried that and I now had 1 of the wahs working as intended.  It didn't sound the best and the pot was a little scratchy, but at least now it functioned as it should.

The other pedal clearly had more wrong with it.  The pot was missing the gear and c-clip that retains the gear.  Additionally, the switch was completely loose within the pedal.  After acquiring the proper tool to put a new c-clip on (which comes with the gear if you order the Dunlop part), I reinstalled the pot with its new gear and used a loose nut from my bin of parts to secure the switch in the correct spot so that it activated at the extreme toe position. 

Again I fired it up and again I got no sound.  A quick flip of the same PCB connector and my pedal was once again working.  I don't know why they were both backward but I suspect that probably had something to do with why I had both of them and neither of them were working. 

I was surprised at how much better the buffered wah sounded than the non buffered.  I don't know if this is true of all buffered wahs or just the two I had worked on. 

I didn't have any white lithium grease to lubricate the rack and gear so I used some sort of grease that I bought for my vise.  It is sticky but doesn't really like to stick to the plastic of the wah parts so should I even need to go inside of either of those again I will probably switch it up for white lithium grease as the factories use. 

Another pedal that I had very recently purchased was a 1970's Electro-Harmonix Small Stone.  It was an ebay purchase that I was surprised to have won for as little as I did.  It is missing the battery door (as 90% of them are) and through the hole you could see that there was some electrical tape holding some wires together. 

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I opened the pedal up but inside the only thing that had been tampered with was the battery clip.  I removed the electrical tape to reveal the wires hadn't even been soldered.  They were just being held together by the tape and being twisted around each other.  Worse than that, both wires of the battery clip went to the wrong places internally. 

The positive lead was sent straight to the ground and the negative lead was put on a non switching part of the power jack.  I took a new battery clip and soldered it on the correct terminals and then reassembled for test. 

Immediately I was greeted with the warm and smooth sound of the Small Stone Phaser.  It is a really neat sounding pedal and in my opinion, the black and orange 1970's pedal sounds quite a bit better than the green Russian Small Stones (which also sound excellent!).  The Small Stone has always been one of my favorite phasers because of how good it sounds!  The only other phaser on the market that I have ever liked is the DOD FX-20B Stereo Phasor (at least I think they spelled it with an "o"). 

Both phasers use Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA's) instead of the more common matched FET system.  I don't know if it is the particulars of the circuits or the OTA's, but I think both of those phasers are the best! 

Unfortunately, neither of them are available new.  However, neither is particularly expensive used either.  This is especially true when you factor in the cost of modern boutique pedals which are no longer only for the wealthy but are becoming more of a common thing. 

One thing I like about the Small Stone is the simplicity of one knob and one switch.  Plus the footswitch can be modified for true bypass if you have to have it (which I don't - another story for another time).  The Small Stone has speeds that are nice and slow to just plain silly. 

The DOD on the other hand uses a buffered bypass scheme like almost all modern pedals (Boss, Ibanez, etc.).  The switch itself is just a cheap tactile switch.  I know a lot of people are not fond of the DOD pedals because of the case itself.  It does appear to be cheap (it is!).  Bear in mind that DOD pedals were always the budget pedal when compared to Boss.  One place that the DOD trumps the Small Stone is for actual control.  It has 3 controls which allow you to really dial in your phased sound. 

Another positive of the DOD is the price.  It is significantly less money than the Small Stone which has more than just a cult following. 

One quick note about the DOD FX-20B is that the FX-20 (no B) is not the same pedal nor is the FX-20C.  The FX-20B is a 6 stage phaser while the FX-20C is only 4 stages.  The FX-20 has 1 less knob and isn't stereo.