Have anyone tried this buffer in a wah ?

[warioblast]

Hi,
Have anyone tried this ckt as an output buffer for wah
http://www.singlecoil.com/tb-strip/buffer.pdf
It looks pretty much like the BYOC onboard buffer
http://buildyourownclone.com/wahinstructions.pdf
My couple attempts at making a JFET buffer were not very successful 
Cheers,
Fabrice

[petemoore]

  No, it works.

[warioblast]

  No, it works.

Are you talking about JFET buffers ?
I tried Fuzzcentral and Homewrecker ones. They worked but they both denatured the sound of my Sun Face, at leat in my builds.

[petemoore]

Have anyone tried this ckt as an output buffer for wah
They worked but they both denatured the sound of my Sun Face
  Sun Face is different than a wah.
  A big part of the "FF" sound is the impedance between the FF input and the guitar pickup, and the nature of the FF will change when a buffer is driving it.

[jonathan perez]

yeah, buffers go in wahs...not fuzzes.

[warioblast]

yeah, buffers go in wahs...not fuzzes.

I've never said I put the buffer in the fuzz. 
Both fuzzcentral and homewrecker ckts, as an output buffer IN my wah, denature the sound of my fuzz (the sunface). 

[Skreddy]

What I don't get is that people report that buffering a wah with a FET, going into a fuzzface, doesn't change the nature of the fuzz.  That seems rather counterintuitive to me. 

[RaceDriver205]

I built the Tonepad wah, with the input and output buffers. I was very pleased with the sound.

[Ronsonic]

I don't like what buffered pedals do to my fuzz face type pedals. The output impedance of the guitar's a big part of that sound.

Ron

[rockgardenlove]

Yep, it is for sure, but without them the wah won't work at all with the fuzz behind it.  It's one of those trade offs.

[Doug_H]

I put an input buffer on my wah in lieu of using a dpdt switch for "true bypass". This raised the Zin sufficiently to keep the wah from sucking tone when it was in bypass. I added an output buffer to help it work better with my fuzz face too. But the output buffer alone won't solve that problem. I discovered my wah worked much better with my fuzz face when I turned my guitar volume down. So I mimicked that condition by adding a series resistor after the output buffer. This creates a voltage divider with the input of the FF, lowering the signal strength to the input, like if you lowered your guitar volume. IIRC I used a 47k, enough to interact with the low Zin of the FF properly, not enough to make an appreciable difference with a typical high Zin pedal or amp. I used a JFET for the input buffer, don't remember for the output buffer, could have been NPN. JFETs work fine for this kind of thing, nice high Zin, smaller footprint than op amp, etc, etc.

Okay, wah cloners and modders out there- grab this idea while it's hot!!! Sorry, I don't have a layout though... You'll have to research that complicated JFET buffer schematic and layout on your own...

Edit: Oh and one more hot tip... I'm not even sure the output buffer is necessary. It's been a while since I looked at the wah schem, not sure if the 47k interacts with the wah output in a bad way or not. The 'design' was just a progression of events, so I ended up leaving the buffer in as it doesn't hurt anything.

[Skreddy]

I put an input buffer on my wah in lieu of using a dpdt switch for "true bypass". This raised the Zin sufficiently to keep the wah from sucking tone when it was in bypass. I added an output buffer to help it work better with my fuzz face too. But the output buffer alone won't solve that problem. I discovered my wah worked much better with my fuzz face when I turned my guitar volume down. So I mimicked that condition by adding a series resistor after the output buffer. This creates a voltage divider with the input of the FF, lowering the signal strength to the input, like if you lowered your guitar volume. IIRC I used a 47k, enough to interact with the low Zin of the FF properly, not enough to make an appreciable difference with a typical high Zin pedal or amp. I used a JFET for the input buffer, don't remember for the output buffer, could have been NPN. JFETs work fine for this kind of thing, nice high Zin, smaller footprint than op amp, etc, etc.

Okay, wah cloners and modders out there- grab this idea while it's hot!!! Sorry, I don't have a layout though... You'll have to research that complicated JFET buffer schematic and layout on your own...

Edit: Oh and one more hot tip... I'm not even sure the output buffer is necessary. It's been a while since I looked at the wah schem, not sure if the 47k interacts with the wah output in a bad way or not. The 'design' was just a progression of events, so I ended up leaving the buffer in as it doesn't hurt anything.

That sounds like a very logical fix for the FF/buffer interaction problem.  And, yes; I do believe that wahs need output buffers.  The 100k "wah" pot is a feedback loop which is highly interactive (of course) with the resonance.  The output signal is tapped directly off that pot (of course).  Any appreciable load at that point will degrade the performance significantly.  Thank you for sharing your experience.

[petemoore]

  Because it was there I picked an MPF102, not good choice or I couldn't have messed up.. low output.
  so I got this new Hexfet Mosfet, supposed to have low turn on and ruggedness, wired that up like a Mosfet Buffer, it showed in the diagram a Zener, but from source to gate probably, so I forewent the zener protection anyway, we have steam heat [low static] and I've had good luck without ZP diodes.
  Honkingly huge transistor does a nice buffer job, the sound has much better drive [than plain wah] and output is unity.
 

[Doug_H]

That sounds like a very logical fix for the FF/buffer interaction problem.

Thanks. Old idea. It was on my web site for years, when I had a web site. It works well, but it's been so long that I don't remember exactly what I did. The thumbnail sketch above should be close enough.