Here's a collection of vero (stripboard) and tagboard guitar and bass effect layouts that we have put together covering many classic and popular effects in growing numbers. Many of these have been posted on freestompboxes.org, so check that site out for great discussions on building your own effect pedals. Enjoy the builds and please also visit us on Facebook and Twitter
No problem. Now that its boxed up and in my rig the output is just below unity, is there a resistor I can play with that effects output volume? Then this thing would be perfect. Take your time, thanks IvIark.
Thanks, the reason I am going for a volume pot is because when the switch is in the up position, the volume seems to drop, I almost thought I messed up somewhere, but the down posiiton sounds so friggin good!!!! IDK the video does not show when the switch is flipped up, to me its like all the bass is sucked out idk.......
Update, I boxed this up, there is a huge pop in the one main setting that works perfectly, the pop is only when engaging the effect, VERYY loud. And the other range settings volume drop is not as dramatic as I initially thought on my breakout box, but is still there................
thoughts? SmoothAction is your volume drop with both settings? Do you get a huge pop when engaging?
Try placing a pulldown resistor (1M or 1M8 is good value) between the board input and ground. That usually eliminates the popping you can get from switching. +m
Hey guys. Two things I've noticed in messing with this. 1. A buffer infront of this pedal dramatically improves both options, and seems to help with the volume drop. 2. 1M resistor from input to ground did not kill the 'engage' pop. It's more of a thick thud. I can live with it, but still looking for a fix.
I think it's a good auto wah for its simplicity. Autowah -> Distortion is shredtastc. Add a choppy trem + delay... Soundscape bliss. It gets used regularly, I really like it aside from it sounding like a bass drum when engaging.
I used a 20K trim and a 20K pot. Could that be the reason I am not getting any wah? It was late and I was tired when I did it last night, so there is probably a problem somewhere. I will go through the board tonight.
Still can't get any wah at all. It sounds flat. It's like a wah at the bottom of the sweep, but without any dynamics. The trimmer and reso controls have no effect whatsover. I checked it over twice and everything that should be there is there. I changed all the 4.7's to 47's and I saw a mistake I made with putting an 100n where the 1u cap should be. I swapped the 20K trimmer for a 50K with no effect at all.
Put it to one side mate, I noticed that Bernard who did the schematic has posted another correction which looks a bit more involved so when I get a free 20 minutes I just need to compare and see what I have to change. I'll let you know when I've had a good look.
Thanks. I put it aside and built a lovepedal eternity instead so that I could go to bed with a win. Psychologically, it's important! I will check my cuts again, just for s&g's and wait to see what changes are made are made to it. Take your time, there are a thousand other projects on this site I could work on! Thanks
guys, i use one of these live for years, it's one of my "secret weapons"... it will track a lot better if you turn down the sensitiivity a bit and play with your volume and tone knobs on the guitar a little... with a little practice, you can dial in a real nice sweet spot. psyched you guys did this. thanks IvIark and +miro
So is this still on HOLD? It also tagged as Verified, and several people are reporting successful builds in the comments above. Has someone forgotten to verify the schematic changes, or forgotten to remove either the HOLD of Verified tag? The information about this one is pulling in opposite directions and it is impossible to understand if this layout should work or not...
I built this a while ago and did not notice the "Hold" (or to be honest: I did not understand that it was not a part of the Effect name), I only noticed that it was tagged as verified, and went ahead and built it. Well... It did not work even though I can not find any problems with my circuit. How about you guys who are stating that you got it to work? Did you use the layout above? Or did you find an alternative layout? Is it verified or is it still on hold?
Can't say anything about the layout, but... The schematic is 1:1 (except for one resistor value) with this: http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.fi/2013/01/ehx-doctor-q.html +m
Wow, that was a fast response. Thanks! I will check and cross check with the Doctor Q and see if I figure it out. Or maybe I should just build the Doctor Q instead...
Thanks for the reply and I hope you do not feel bombarded by my comments/problems on various circuits today. But my Ipad has a problem with posting comments, so there is a lot of posts from me today, as I finally dug out my laptop that actually works as it should do, as opposed to the highly overrated Ipads from (cr)Apple! - Neil
Hi Mark, I've finished built this few month ago, and its sound good, although there is a volume drop on one of the switch position. But, my question is whenever I change order of this pedal in my pedalboard, there is no wah sound come up,and I have to adjust the trimmer to generate wah sound again. I just don't want to open the box over and over again just to adjust trimmer. Is there any solution for this? thx
Unfortunately things like this can behave differently depending on the impedance of the signal going into them, so there's not much you can do other than tweak it, and so maybe having the control external would be more useful to you.
The only other thing I could suggest is putting a buffer in the same box and have it before the main board input. Once the control has been tweaked to work with the buffer in place you shouldn't need to change it when you change pedal order.
There is a 100K pulldown resistor on the input going to the reference voltage (vref) instead of ground which is more commonly seen. That reference voltage is 4.5V and so your voltage reading isn't surprising.
This is the best autowah sound i have found yet. Built this along with the QZ1 and this sounds way better but i think i still havn't adjusted the trimmer properly in the QZ1, so i will mess with it abit more. This one is really easy to dial in via the trimer unlike the QZ1. I will explain in my QZ1 response, Anyway if you want an easy autowah build this its really really good. Thanks to all.
Thanks for this layout - fun to build and to play with! One switch position works great (once I got the trimmer right), the other does merely respond to the input. Could the quite low output of my pickups (Strat SCs) be the reason? With a buffered pedal in front it seems to be more responsive... Maybe I can tweak it a bit.
Reg. Rascal's last post: If I get it correctly (I'm still new to this...) the 100k pot-mod cannot increase volume, it can only help to decrease it if there's to much output (therefore I instantly removed it again...)
so i built this up last nite. a couple mods to the circuit i found useful: use 1n34's or some such GE diodes. it tracks better than with sili i found a tl082 worked real well, more transparent than a 4558 and use a higher gain q... a 3904 doesn't have enough balls to really quack, a 5088(or 9, i forget which i used) works a lot better. try a 50k trim pot.its a little harder to dial in, but the sweet spot is REALLY close to the 22k specc'd for the trimmer and doesn't have enough swing for lower gain transistors. once its dialed in, it works perfectly, and is a hair quieter than the originals i have. if the effect isn't sweeping, turn the trim pot down. too much treble content won't sweep audibly, ya gotta get it down into the "wah" range of frequencies. awesome fun and quick build, once again, thanks guys. this sucker is going on my live board tonite. rock on
ok, one more thing.... ditch the 100k resistor to vref, it shouldn't be there without the input buffer stage from the i/o board. it puts dc on the audio input, and if ya adjust your guitar knobs, it will scratch. could not get it to unity gain. researched some, asked on aron's, and finally took the ludwig phase II approach of utter simplicity. i got this suckah nailed.
made a small daughterboard. 5x5 piece of vero. used a 5089 as the q. 2.2k resistor from b+ to c, input from the output cap to b, and 470r resistor e to ground. 100n output cap off the c/2.2k node.
to my ear, its now unity gain when i kick it in. i had to use ky jelly and a spatula and a 10 lb hammer to fit this sucker all in the box, and i will NEVER EVER OPEN IT. cuz i think getting it to close was some kinda magickal fete, its closed, it works, i'm good!!!!! there was JUUUUUUST enough room to cram the daughterboard on the side of the footswitch, i had to stand the resistors up and then lay them and the q down to make it work.
warms it up just a smidge too. i couldn't fit a trimmer in there, just not enough space... but for a repurposed box, i can live with it. one more 1590 to add to the heap...
.......annnnnnnnd what i'd worked up was ok on the bench but not in a live situation... tho it made for some really amusing sitar kinda sounds ;) i did a little messing with it and came up with a daughterboard for this, it uses jack orman's dr quack input buffer and a small darlington boost stage i came up with. it's small and uses standing components, but its only a 5w x 7h piece of vero. i reccomend whatever jfet ya got doesn't seem to matter, tho some need to be rotated 180 degrees. i used an mpsa18 for the darlington.
i used a 10k trimmer for the master volume, you may wanna go a little bigger if ya want some more volume out of it. with the buffer you can turn down the guitar to find the sweet spots with your volume knob. it should have ample gain now too which imho it desperately needed. there's a lot of ways to skin a cat; this is just one of 'em. not saying its the best method, but put this at the front of your chain with some good distortion after it and its a lot of fun. ;) anyways, hope this helps someone if they ever mess with this circuit
Hello! Collected this project. Everything works fine, but when the pedal is working, the volume goes down too much. And in one of the modes you can hear fuzz, if you unscrew the handle of resonance to the maximum. Someone faced this? The fact that you hear fuzz is not scary. But how to increase the volume?
Collected the buffer by this link: https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2014/08/buffers.html (second on the account) The dips in the volume were gone. But the signal became slightly overloaded and the frequencies changed slightly. The upper frequencies became smaller.
Hey, I built this one the other day and added a simple clean boost (Lovepedal Deluxe 60) at the end, to get better control of the volume. It works and sounds fine, but it is a bit dark. With the switch in the down position and the resonance knob cranked, it sounds like a wah that’s almost in the toe position when I pick, strum or pluck really hard. But not fully there. With the resonance dialed back a bit, it’s too dark to be useable. I’m gonna go over the board again and make sure I got all the correct capacitors and resistor. But I’m fairly certain I did.
How would one go about making this one a bit brighter?
Built this one, works pretty well. Having the same just below unity volume drop with this pedal, but honestly its not really that extremely noticeable or to the point where this pedal is unusable. It works pretty great, honestly its literally the exact same as the Dr Q autowah. I did throw a 2n5088 instead of the 2n3904 and it gives a bit more quack, and used a 50k trimmer. My main complaint with this circuit is that it colors your tone really dark and bassy at the end of the trimmer, but turning it counter clockwise gives pretty extreme volume drop, but retains a lot more high end. It was pretty damn difficult to tune in the sweet spot with the trimmer, but I have a setting I am happy with and I def think its a pretty cool sounding autowah.
Looking at some of the values it looks kinda like the Dr Q
ReplyDeleteYes it does doesn't it. I don't know if it's identical but it looks very close with a quick scan.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFixed. Had the 390k resistor a row up accidentally. Sounds pretty good, one trick pony for sure. VERIFIED. Thanks IvIark!
DeleteI was just going to say I've been over it again and can't see anything wrong! :o) Awesome thanks for verifying mate
DeleteNo problem. Now that its boxed up and in my rig the output is just below unity, is there a resistor I can play with that effects output volume? Then this thing would be perfect. Take your time, thanks IvIark.
ReplyDeleteVery nice sounding Wah!! I would like to add a volume knob, hmm............
ReplyDeleteAdd a 100K log pot, take the output wire on the board to Volume 3, Volume 2 is the new output, and Volume 1 to ground.
DeleteThanks, the reason I am going for a volume pot is because when the switch is in the up position, the volume seems to drop, I almost thought I messed up somewhere, but the down posiiton sounds so friggin good!!!! IDK the video does not show when the switch is flipped up, to me its like all the bass is sucked out idk.......
DeleteDid I mention the down position sounds INCREDIBLE!!!!
ReplyDeleteUpdate, I boxed this up, there is a huge pop in the one main setting that works perfectly, the pop is only when engaging the effect, VERYY loud. And the other range settings volume drop is not as dramatic as I initially thought on my breakout box, but is still there................
ReplyDeletethoughts? SmoothAction is your volume drop with both settings? Do you get a huge pop when engaging?
Try placing a pulldown resistor (1M or 1M8 is good value) between the board input and ground. That usually eliminates the popping you can get from switching.
Delete+m
I am not able to message the other guy who built one, SmoothAction, but maybe one of you guys can. I am wondering if his has both same problems.
ReplyDeleteHey guys. Two things I've noticed in messing with this.
ReplyDelete1. A buffer infront of this pedal dramatically improves both options, and seems to help with the volume drop.
2. 1M resistor from input to ground did not kill the 'engage' pop. It's more of a thick thud. I can live with it, but still looking for a fix.
I think it's a good auto wah for its simplicity. Autowah -> Distortion is shredtastc. Add a choppy trem + delay... Soundscape bliss. It gets used regularly, I really like it aside from it sounding like a bass drum when engaging.
Did you change the 4K7's to 47K's as per the update a couple of days ago? The layout above is now correct
DeleteI used a 20K trim and a 20K pot. Could that be the reason I am not getting any wah? It was late and I was tired when I did it last night, so there is probably a problem somewhere. I will go through the board tonight.
ReplyDeleteStill can't get any wah at all. It sounds flat. It's like a wah at the bottom of the sweep, but without any dynamics. The trimmer and reso controls have no effect whatsover. I checked it over twice and everything that should be there is there. I changed all the 4.7's to 47's and I saw a mistake I made with putting an 100n where the 1u cap should be. I swapped the 20K trimmer for a 50K with no effect at all.
Delete??
Put it to one side mate, I noticed that Bernard who did the schematic has posted another correction which looks a bit more involved so when I get a free 20 minutes I just need to compare and see what I have to change. I'll let you know when I've had a good look.
DeleteTrue, but this layout still produces a very great sounding wah, so I would double check your cuts, make sure they are in the right spot and are full
ReplyDeleteThanks. I put it aside and built a lovepedal eternity instead so that I could go to bed with a win. Psychologically, it's important! I will check my cuts again, just for s&g's and wait to see what changes are made are made to it. Take your time, there are a thousand other projects on this site I could work on! Thanks
ReplyDeleteguys, i use one of these live for years, it's one of my "secret weapons"... it will track a lot better if you turn down the sensitiivity a bit and play with your volume and tone knobs on the guitar a little... with a little practice, you can dial in a real nice sweet spot.
ReplyDeletepsyched you guys did this.
thanks IvIark and +miro
So is this still on HOLD?
ReplyDeleteIt also tagged as Verified, and several people are reporting successful builds in the comments above.
Has someone forgotten to verify the schematic changes, or forgotten to remove either the HOLD of Verified tag? The information about this one is pulling in opposite directions and it is impossible to understand if this layout should work or not...
I built this a while ago and did not notice the "Hold" (or to be honest: I did not understand that it was not a part of the Effect name), I only noticed that it was tagged as verified, and went ahead and built it.
Well... It did not work even though I can not find any problems with my circuit.
How about you guys who are stating that you got it to work? Did you use the layout above? Or did you find an alternative layout? Is it verified or is it still on hold?
Can't say anything about the layout, but... The schematic is 1:1 (except for one resistor value) with this:
Deletehttp://tagboardeffects.blogspot.fi/2013/01/ehx-doctor-q.html
+m
Wow, that was a fast response. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI will check and cross check with the Doctor Q and see if I figure it out.
Or maybe I should just build the Doctor Q instead...
Thanks for the reply and I hope you do not feel bombarded by my comments/problems on various circuits today. But my Ipad has a problem with posting comments, so there is a lot of posts from me today, as I finally dug out my laptop that actually works as it should do, as opposed to the highly overrated Ipads from (cr)Apple!
- Neil
http://mirosol.kapsi.fi/2013/08/danelectro-dj-24-french-fries-autowah/
Delete+m
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteI've finished built this few month ago, and its sound good, although there is a volume drop on one of the switch position. But, my question is whenever I change order of this pedal in my pedalboard, there is no wah sound come up,and I have to adjust the trimmer to generate wah sound again. I just don't want to open the box over and over again just to adjust trimmer. Is there any solution for this? thx
Unfortunately things like this can behave differently depending on the impedance of the signal going into them, so there's not much you can do other than tweak it, and so maybe having the control external would be more useful to you.
DeleteThe only other thing I could suggest is putting a buffer in the same box and have it before the main board input. Once the control has been tweaked to work with the buffer in place you shouldn't need to change it when you change pedal order.
Thx for your replay, I end up drill the box and expose the trimmer. This is the simplest thing I can do.
ReplyDeletePedal sounds great but I have a little question? Is it normal to have a 4,5V on input?
ReplyDeleteThere is a 100K pulldown resistor on the input going to the reference voltage (vref) instead of ground which is more commonly seen. That reference voltage is 4.5V and so your voltage reading isn't surprising.
DeleteThank you Ivlark! Pedal sounds great! I put together with distortion in the same box and that sounds remarkably! All the best! Predrag Serbia!
DeleteThis is the best autowah sound i have found yet. Built this along with the QZ1 and this sounds way better but i think i still havn't adjusted the trimmer properly in the QZ1, so i will mess with it abit more. This one is really easy to dial in via the trimer unlike the QZ1. I will explain in my QZ1 response, Anyway if you want an easy autowah build this its really really good. Thanks to all.
ReplyDeleteits subtle, very subtle and well below unity gain clean or dirty channel. the add one 100k pot didnt do anything for me.
ReplyDeleteI am going to try another one ..this uses common parts so i was really hoping to for it to work lol ..seemed to good to be true, probably is lol
going to take a shot at freppo's penfold AW next see how it turns out. he has all his schematics open to the public and for usage.
Thanks for this layout - fun to build and to play with!
ReplyDeleteOne switch position works great (once I got the trimmer right), the other does merely respond to the input. Could the quite low output of my pickups (Strat SCs) be the reason? With a buffered pedal in front it seems to be more responsive... Maybe I can tweak it a bit.
Reg. Rascal's last post: If I get it correctly (I'm still new to this...) the 100k pot-mod cannot increase volume, it can only help to decrease it if there's to much output (therefore I instantly removed it again...)
so i built this up last nite.
ReplyDeletea couple mods to the circuit i found useful:
use 1n34's or some such GE diodes. it tracks better than with sili
i found a tl082 worked real well, more transparent than a 4558
and use a higher gain q... a 3904 doesn't have enough balls to really quack, a 5088(or 9, i forget which i used) works a lot better.
try a 50k trim pot.its a little harder to dial in, but the sweet spot is REALLY close to the 22k specc'd for the trimmer and doesn't have enough swing for lower gain transistors.
once its dialed in, it works perfectly, and is a hair quieter than the originals i have.
if the effect isn't sweeping, turn the trim pot down. too much treble content won't sweep audibly,
ya gotta get it down into the "wah" range of frequencies.
awesome fun and quick build, once again, thanks guys.
this sucker is going on my live board tonite.
rock on
ok, one more thing.... ditch the 100k resistor to vref, it shouldn't be there without the input buffer stage from the i/o board. it puts dc on the audio input, and if ya adjust your guitar knobs, it will scratch.
ReplyDeletecould not get it to unity gain. researched some, asked on aron's, and finally took the ludwig phase II approach of utter simplicity.
i got this suckah nailed.
made a small daughterboard. 5x5 piece of vero. used a 5089 as the q. 2.2k resistor from b+ to c, input from the output cap to b, and 470r resistor e to ground. 100n output cap off the c/2.2k node.
to my ear, its now unity gain when i kick it in. i had to use ky jelly and a spatula and a 10 lb hammer to fit this sucker all in the box, and i will NEVER EVER OPEN IT. cuz i think getting it to close was some kinda magickal fete, its closed, it works, i'm good!!!!!
there was JUUUUUUST enough room to cram the daughterboard on the side of the footswitch, i had to stand the resistors up and then lay them and the q down to make it work.
warms it up just a smidge too. i couldn't fit a trimmer in there, just not enough space... but for a repurposed box, i can live with it. one more 1590 to add to the heap...
[img]https://i.imgur.com/OtyYxM3.png[/img]
.......annnnnnnnd what i'd worked up was ok on the bench but not in a live situation... tho it made for some really amusing sitar kinda sounds ;)
ReplyDeletei did a little messing with it and came up with a daughterboard for this, it uses jack orman's dr quack input buffer and a small darlington boost stage i came up with. it's small and uses standing components, but its only a 5w x 7h piece of vero.
i reccomend whatever jfet ya got doesn't seem to matter, tho some need to be rotated 180 degrees. i used an mpsa18 for the darlington.
i used a 10k trimmer for the master volume, you may wanna go a little bigger if ya want some more volume out of it.
with the buffer you can turn down the guitar to find the sweet spots with your volume knob. it should have ample gain now too which imho it desperately needed.
there's a lot of ways to skin a cat;
this is just one of 'em. not saying its the best method, but put this at the front of your chain with some good distortion after it and its a lot of fun. ;)
anyways, hope this helps someone if they ever mess with this circuit
https://i.imgur.com/YD9bxR3.png
I know this is years later, but what does "output to switch" and "from board output" mean on the daughterboard? Thank you for your modification! :)
DeleteHello! Collected this project. Everything works fine, but when the pedal is working, the volume goes down too much. And in one of the modes you can hear fuzz, if you unscrew the handle of resonance to the maximum. Someone faced this? The fact that you hear fuzz is not scary. But how to increase the volume?
ReplyDeleteCollected the buffer by this link: https://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2014/08/buffers.html (second on the account) The dips in the volume were gone. But the signal became slightly overloaded and the frequencies changed slightly. The upper frequencies became smaller.
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteI built this one the other day and added a simple clean boost (Lovepedal Deluxe 60) at the end, to get better control of the volume. It works and sounds fine, but it is a bit dark. With the switch in the down position and the resonance knob cranked, it sounds like a wah that’s almost in the toe position when I pick, strum or pluck really hard. But not fully there. With the resonance dialed back a bit, it’s too dark to be useable. I’m gonna go over the board again and make sure I got all the correct capacitors and resistor. But I’m fairly certain I did.
How would one go about making this one a bit brighter?
Thanks.
How is resonance 3 supposed to connect to switch 2? Is it board->switch2->pot? Also, is switch 1 unconnected? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteBuilt this one, works pretty well. Having the same just below unity volume drop with this pedal, but honestly its not really that extremely noticeable or to the point where this pedal is unusable. It works pretty great, honestly its literally the exact same as the Dr Q autowah. I did throw a 2n5088 instead of the 2n3904 and it gives a bit more quack, and used a 50k trimmer. My main complaint with this circuit is that it colors your tone really dark and bassy at the end of the trimmer, but turning it counter clockwise gives pretty extreme volume drop, but retains a lot more high end. It was pretty damn difficult to tune in the sweet spot with the trimmer, but I have a setting I am happy with and I def think its a pretty cool sounding autowah.
ReplyDelete