Fluttery Wah sound

[jmusser]

I'm working 12 hour shifts this weekend at night, so I have time to check the forum and ask a question or two. I was just listening to the oldies station, and heard "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by the "Temptations" I believe. Anyway, they were playing some funk rhythm with what sounded like an auto wha, and then it fluttered, making a lot of quick whas in a row. It was like how "Bread" starts out "If". It's much too fast and evenly timed to have been a standard wha pedal, so it must have some sort of adjustable sweep like a phase shifter or flanger. What is this widgit?

[KarbonHed]

Nope it's a normal wah "played" fast.

About 10 years a go I was in a big soul band and we did "...rolling stone", it's entirely possible to do the flutters with very little practice.  They're just a small movement over part of the sweep of the pedal not fully back and forward.

Just don't wear big heavy boots laced up past the ankle  

[jmusser]

I guess that shows my wha ignorance. I've never owned one to play with, so I didn't know that was possible. There are so many of those wha pedals out there, and they're usually expensive, that I wouldn't even know where to begin. Or, maybe it's just that I don't look good in an afro and polyester.

[R.G.]

There is a wah effect that is driven by a LFO like a tremolo, but it sweeps with the LFO, not your foot. Seems like there was a DIY effect article on it in Popular Electronics before it died the first time. It's not hard to gen one of these up with the info from "The Technology of Wah Pedals" at GEO. Just make a resistor-to-ground-wah with a variable resistor and drive the resistor with an LFO. The LFO/resistor stage from the EA Tremolo should work.

[jmusser]

Thanks RG I will look at that GEO page later on tonight. The technical stuff you said eludes me. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I used to be able to spout capacitive reactance formulas, and figure hysteresus loss, and new what a culomb of electricity was, but it's mostly Greek to me now (IE. "LFO/ Resistor stage from an EA Tremelo" . I like it when someone says, "take the circuit on page X, and put the output from pin Y on the collector of Q3" or whatever. I will have to read for quite a bit, before I can speak fluent stompbox circuitry. I read one page the other night that was real good, as to what components can be substituded if you don't have the ones at the time from Outer Slombovia, that were called for in the original schematic. If you were the one who wrote that, it was good stuff.

[David]

Jeff:

I could be wrong, but "If" reminds me of a wah-wah into a Leslie.  Many years ago, I tried emulating this by running my guitar into a borrowed Cordovox speaker (an accordion player's Leslie clone -- wish I could find one now!).  Wasn't perfect, but it got me into the ball park...