wah pot taper guide

[joegagan]

hi guys, sorry i have not been around for a while - i received a query about pots for wah, i thought it would be good to post the info i wrote last year here, for general digestion and comments too.

thanks!

how to pick a wah pot taper. the basics.
there are basically two food groups when i comes to wah pots through the years.
1. ICAR
2. thomas/ dunlop crybaby hotpotz 1 & 2 ,+ all crybabies going back to at least 71.

1. the icar or similar taper( log) was found in some voxes , especially the UK and Italian versions. this taper has been made famous by boutique wah makers in the last 20 years , it has a very linear range of sweep when pressed. it is NOT a LINEAR pot, but when measured in a wah, it actually runs through the range in a linear manner. people like it because in most wahs it lets you explore more of the full spectrum of expression. in most cases, the adjustment of an icar type pot has to be set to favor either bass or treble side, as the pot's range exceeds the actual limits of the pedal itself. our new SMOOTH pot eliminates this problem with our new ratio gear however.

2. the THOMAS ( same as all hotpotz). this pot taper was designed, i think, to make sure that the limited foot travel of the wah shell will get the entire wah range. there is an abrupt shift from mids to treble. some people actually prefer this action, it can sound very lively with minimal foot movement, which also sometimes seems 'quacky' or 'talky' to some people. players who are used to the THOMAS type taper sometimes think an ICAR lacks character because they like the faster action of the crybaby taper. we also offer a solution to this 'kink', we install a larger gear on the hotpotz2 to spread this transition out a little bit. this puts our modded hotpotz2 around 65% hotpotz, 35% icar, sort of a happy midstep between the two tapers. we call this our hotpoz2 'smooth kit'.
note - since sometime in the 80s, when dunlop started making vox wahs, the vox and dunlops all had the same hotpotz taper. this ran until vox moved their wah production to china in around 06 - 07. they now are back to more of an ICAR-like taper.

which one is better for you? try both and find out!
- joe gagan

[Chankgeez]

Nice topic, Joe, thanks for posting it.

[joegagan]

and the testing rig

[HorseyBoy]

^ Love the testing rig photo! Now you just need to come up with a device that will allow me to play three or four wahs at once…

[joegagan]

^ Love the testing rig photo! Now you just need to come up with a device that will allow me to play three or four wahs at once…

if you figure that one out let me know .

furthest i have gotten was 2 at once. i fell off.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoxNZXQKV9Q[/youtube]

[spacelordmother]

Like an m13?