Friday 31 August 2012

Inductorless wah pedal (coloursound)

Inbetween hacking CNC drilling machines, and almost as a respite from it, we've been busy preparing some guitar effects to show off at the up-and-coming Brighton Mini Maker Faire.
As well as a variation on the earlier Fuzz Factory pedal (made during a BuildBrighton workshop) we've been trying one of these inductorless wah pedal effects -




The final board size is really tiny. This is a perfect candidate for use in some kind of onboard electronics as well as a traditional pedal. Here it is alongside one of our Fuzz Factory boards (wah above, fuzz below):


When we've got it working, the idea is to replace the 100K linear pot on the wah effect (we'll leave the optional volume control out) with a digital potentiometer and use a microcontroller to set the wah intensity. This should allow us a couple of different options for activating the wah -

  • A wii controller would allow us to rock the guitar up and down, using the actual guitar body as the pedal rocker.
  • An ultrasound range finder would allow us to change the wah effect by strumming at different positions along the guitar body

In fact, once we've managed to hook up a microcontroller to control the wah effect, the possibilities are endless!

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