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Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 10:02 am
by Douglas
Saw this over at the Gretsch Discussion Pages. Interesting idea.....

http://mentalfloss.com/article/82031/these-converse-kicks-have-built-wah-wah-pedal

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:45 pm
by nasonm
Oddball idea but fun for sure. Lucky for me (and my bank account), I don't particularly care for wah so I can pass.

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2016 6:44 pm
by albertgen
I thought Chet's wa wa pedal was the best I ever heard, but of course he made it himself out of a leslie organ circuit. Al

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Mon Jul 04, 2016 9:05 am
by Norm
My understanding is he just took a volume pedal and wired the pot as a tone control. I don't recall reading that he added any special circuitry to boost the effect (which is what the wah pedals do). I think he only used it once on Boo Boo stick beat and shelved it after that.

The gadget using organ circuitry was his "invisible bass man" where he used a frequency splitter from a Hammond organ that dropped signals down an octave. The Leslie is basically a cabinet with a two speed rotating speaker

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Mon Jul 04, 2016 12:35 pm
by Douglas
Norm wrote:My understanding is he just took a volume pedal and wired the pot as a tone control. I don't recall reading that he added any special circuitry to boost the effect (which is what the wah pedals do). I think he only used it once on Boo Boo stick beat and shelved it after that.

The gadget using organ circuitry was his "invisible bass man" where he used a frequency splitter from a Hammond organ that dropped signals down an octave


Norm, I think he did use it on a few other tunes... Lonesome Me, Django's Castle, White Silver Sands, One Mint Julep, Night Train, Sleep Walk, Till There Was You, Hot Toddy all on the Teensville album. It's never "in your face" but used sparingly for the most part. Lonesome Me is a good example, used for example once at the end of the 1st chorus to emphasize "lonesome", just enough to perk up the ears and ask yourself "what was that?" Not sure if used it on other albums but that was typical. Outside of echo, tremolo, and the phaser in the 70's he seemed to use effects sparingly and tastefully, on one or two tunes that benefitted from their use (Inka Dinka Doo with the envelope filter comes to mind).

Doug

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2016 8:50 pm
by albertgen
That's right Norm, I forgot. I think Chet ended up using the Bass strings on a Country Gentleman getting the same effect. That WaWa I think he used a pedal with a volume pot and some type of capacitor to change the tone. I sure liked the sound. Chet was unbelievable, it seems like he got a different tone on every album or every other one. They were all great sounds! Al

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2016 10:34 pm
by Norm
Just for fun I dug around in my Bugs Bunny pocket (the one he always pulls just what he needs from in cartoons) and found two quotes from Chet himself talking about these two devices/

__________

Note: your volume and tone pots are the same units. The difference is in how they are wired up.

"I've fooled around with a foot pedal too. I had a foot volume control and I wired it up so it would accentuate the highs or the lows. You can get dramatic effects with it. I used it on a couple of my albums.
__Chet Atkins, Radio Electronics magazine november '66

___

This thing Chet describes here was made to work with the "Dark Eyes" guitar

“…Well, around 1957 an engineer named Bob Ferris and I developed an “invisible bass man.” Bob’s deceased now but he was a wild engineer. He was a terrific idea man. He’d take a pencil and draw a diagram and I’d build it, however crudely.
We used part of the pedal circuit from a Hammond organ. The divider and trigger were added and we used a filter to smooth the sound which was basically a square wave. So we experimented around with an octave divider…we had one years ago. We had a divider on the E and A string of a guitar. It would play with you an octave lower. It gave the effect of a bass playing along with you….”
The interviewer asked if they had thought of marketing the device:
“…Well we thought we had a sensational idea and sent off for a patent search and found that a guy in England had already done it in 1948…”


___Chet Atkins, Guitar Player Magazine, October, 1979

Re: Chet Wah Pedal?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 11:58 am
by Oddsteven
I think he might have been using a wah on Inka Dinka Doo as well.