Guitar Gear Forum

So my switchless Dunlop bass wah just recently started sporadically cutting the signal in and out when I’m up on the tow end

Any thoughts?

Open the pedal up and spray some deoxit in the potentiometer. The most common issue with wahs are dirt in pot.

GuitarBilly wrote:Open the pedal up and spray some deoxit in the potentiometer. The most common issue with wahs are dirt in pot.

Yeah I was thinking deoxit somewhere was probably the solve…

Something tripping me out tho… my expression pedal right next to my wah, that is connected to my afterneath in a completely different part of the signal chain is now -also- cutting in and out near the tow position

Maybe some junk in my pedalboard bag happened to simultaneously fall into both pots? Baffling

Yeah it makes perfect sense if you think about it. I'd be surprising if dirt/dust got into one pedal and not the other.

I'd try to deep clean both of them and go from there.

weed in the board bag

Tried to take a shortcut by just blasting into each treedle (also pulling kht a ton of dog hair from the wahs treedle) initial test was “fuck yeah! Problem solved!!!” But after continued testing still getting cut outs on both albeit much less

Seem to be on the right track tho, my lazy ass is just gonna have to pull out a screwdriver

mortatone wrote:weed in the board bag

So I’m at a loss. Took apart both the wah and expression pedal deoxit Ed the crap out of everything….


Still encountering cutting out on both :/

Is there any chance dirty power in my apartment could be causing this as an issue? I guess I’ll get a better idea at practice tomorrow if I’m having the same issue….

I haven’t had this problem in my apartment previously but I also blew a breaker just jamming here last weekend. I know the power and outlets probably aren’t the greatest

It shouldn't be related to power but that's sort of easy to rule out by trying to power it with a battery.

I'm not sure if these pedals take batteries but if they don't have a battery clip to 2.1mm adapter cable and try them that way.

It's a very strange issue indeed

GuitarBilly wrote:It shouldn't be related to power but that's sort of easy to rule out by trying to power it with a battery.

I'm not sure if these pedals take batteries but if they don't have a battery clip to 2.1mm adapter cable and try them that way.

It's a very strange issue indeed

Ah derp yeah. I should have 9v around here somewhere

Just too bizarre that two treadle based pedals that are completely separate entities from each other are suddenly doing the same shit

Almost more frustrating then being able to chalk it up to a wah just being broken

Figure it out yet?

Maybe? I'll check it out with a 9v today... last night we had to practice at the dreaded hourly rehearsal spot and it was just awful. everything sounding really bad and I couldn't hear myself very well. I didn't notice it cutting out, but yeah, couldn't hear very well and was kind of distracted

If your power is that bad, consider buying a voltage regulator (not power conditioner) to prevent some bigger problems, especially with your amps.

APC and Tripp Lite have some good ones that are used for medical equipment so they're very accurate. They're not super expensive and definitely worth it.

What are you using for pedal power?

GuitarBilly wrote:What are you using for pedal power?

MXR ISO brick

I'm not familiar with the ISO Brick, do you know if the power is regulated.
One good thing about CIOKS power supplies is that it can take anything from 90-250v from the wall and it will still put out the correct voltage to the pedals.

With a non regulated power supply if the voltage at the wall goes up or down the voltage to the pedals change. Although it would take quite a drop for a pedal to actually cut out.

A power issue also doesn't fully explain why the pedals cut out at the toe end only.

This is puzzling

Not sure if it’s regulated or not

But some fckn whichcraft going on. Still didn’t try a 9v but I spent the last 40 minutes wahing and expressing to a point that would make hammet blush and got 0 cut out on either wah or expression. So I have no Fuckin clue fingers crossed it doesn’t happen again

That sucks! If that happened with my wah pedal, i know i'd be like "Wah the F*ck?"

Were you using it with wireless at the time this was happening? If so, have you recreated same with cable? That came to mind as one of my guitar wireless for some reason at one venue didn't like being used with morley switchless wah. It wasn't cuts outs but noise though. Removing the wah, switching to cable or using other guitarist's wireless the noise went way. I have no idea why just at that one venue though.

Check for gremlins

IMO you might check out the cables nearby to the toe ends of both pedals. The cutting out could be that a cable elsewhere in the chain has an intermittent short and the physical action of pushing the pedals down is shifting that cable enough to cause the short to happen.

Maybe rock those pedals down and watch nearby cables to see if any are moving. Or replace nearby cables one at a time as a test.

Not using wireless, will evaluate cables by rockers….



Practice tonight… back to cutting out. Fml

spawnofthesith wrote:Not using wireless, will evaluate cables by rockers….



Practice tonight… back to cutting out. Fml

Fuck man I'd be furious. I hate shit like this.

Did you try batteries at practice.

GuitarBilly wrote:

spawnofthesith wrote:Not using wireless, will evaluate cables by rockers….



Practice tonight… back to cutting out. Fml

Fuck man I'd be furious. I hate shit like this.

Did you try batteries at practice.

I didn’t, still haven’t tried batteries at all actually. No wah issues at home all day today…..

Don’t have another gig til the 29th but I’m sure the issue will rear it’s head live

I had a similar issue with a wah and expression pedal having issues at the same time. It turned out that because I want them close together, the right angle cable out of the wah was touching the case of the expression pedal. This would cause a ground issue and make it stop working. I "fixed" it by putting a sticker on the expression pedal where the cable was touching it intermittently.

thermionic geek wrote:I had a similar issue with a wah and expression pedal having issues at the same time. It turned out that because I want them close together, the right angle cable out of the wah was touching the case of the expression pedal. This would cause a ground issue and make it stop working. I "fixed" it by putting a sticker on the expression pedal where the cable was touching it intermittently.

Fascinating

They are right next to each other, and I suppose that could explain the intermittence if not always touching? It's almost lunch time, I'll experiment if I can force replication of the issue (hasn't happened since practice friday night_

overdrivenel34s wrote:That sucks! If that happened with my wah pedal, i know i'd be like "Wah the F*ck?"

OK, that made me laugh!

With strange problems such as you've describe, I diagnose a severe case of new-wah-pedal gear aquisition syndrome.

We'll be on the lookout for a NWPD post from you!