Quick Q for the gurus.

[digi2t]

Circuit I'm tracing;



What exactly is Q3 doing? Current control for the audio transformer/tone section?

[PRR]

First-- what is it??

Ah, "Wah" is it.

Look at any classic wah pedal. A portion of the output is tapped at the Tone pot and fed-around through a small cap to the coil. The impedance relationships are such that we want a buffer somewhere. Q3 is the usual spot and looks like typical values.

[thermionix]

Q1 is added to the front of the standard wah circuit.  No idea why.  Won't it distort, in an unpleasant way?  Isn't that 22u on Q1c backwards?

What the 4049 is doing is over my head.  Just gain?  Is this an always-distorted wah?

[anotherjim]

Looks to me like it's intended to sound like a "%^&*ed" wha into distortion.
Made from 3 existing pedal circuits.
LPB-1 boost on input.
Inductor wha using audio transformer for the coil.
CMOS distortion. Red Lama/Tube sound fuzz with an extra stage to attenuate back to guitar level.

[digi2t]

Paul.... I see what you did there.

Thanks for putting me on track guys.

The Red Llama angle I spotted right away. I've been hip deep in that sucker of late. Front end looked familiar too. I think Q3 faked me out because I was expecting the collector to be going somewhere downstream.