I got sent a couple of wah pedals the other day, one of those new Vox 847A’s that needed a true bypass, fairly straight forward stuff. The other was an old wah that had clearly seen much better days. A note included in the package saying the pedal had failed and could I replace it with a new board, new pot etc.
On opening up the old wah I could see that the wah was road worn and weary. The pot had failed long ago and had been replaced with one of those blue ones but I also noticed the stack ‘o dimes inductor. The silk screen labeling had long worn off but I knew this wah was not the kind I saw everyday.
Then I realised it was one of the ‘transitional’ wah pedals made by Dunlop after they took over from the Thomas company in the 70’s. The serial number was stamped into the pedal base plate, CB025892, meaning it was a very early pedal.
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I emailed the owner and suggested that it would be better to repair what we had rather than butcher the chassis to take a new board and throw in 9 volt power jacks etc.
In the end we fixed up the circuit, replaced the pot with an ICAR taper pot, added true bypass and tweaked the circuit little more to improve it and the end result is one very fine vintage wah pedal restored to good working condition and sounding wicked.
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