Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

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rootfifthoctave
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Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by rootfifthoctave »

For a long time, I've felt the coolest wah enclosures were the ones with both a chrome rocker and the white bumper around the bottom plate. Like this bad mofo:

Image

I bypassed the volume control functionality and replaced the footswitch but, as a wah, it's just not got the beef at the low end of the sweep and gets a kind of laser beam-y sharp sweep towards the treble. No amount of adjustment to the rack/pot connection helps.

The pot is probably past its prime, my first instinct is to swap for a castledine (Stu has said he can take the gear from the JEN pot and put it on a new pot, which is cool of him to offer). There's part of me thinking that I may as well change some of the component values to make it sound better, or even pull the inductor and transistors and build a circuit on veroboard. The most costly thing would be to drop in a Castledine PCB as well, which would be cool but extravagant.

The old PCB is really quite flimsy so it's fairly likely it'll get wrecked by any more messing with it. I'm really quite torn about what to do, so I'm reaching out to get some input from the wah fans here. :tu:
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jerms
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by jerms »

have you replaced the 4.7uf cap? when these drop in value the wahing gets weak
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rootfifthoctave
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by rootfifthoctave »

^^^ when my new solder sucker arrives, I'll warm up the iron and report back.
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Laundromat
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by Laundromat »

Before committing to tearing the old one out, you can wrap a new cap in parallel to see if it helps.
Condolences, the bums lost!
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rootfifthoctave
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by rootfifthoctave »

I didn't mess about... just stuck a brand new cap in there, another 4.7uF. Sounds tonnes better. Thanks fellas.
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jerms
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by jerms »

awesome!!👍🏼
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rootfifthoctave
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Re: Jen Crybaby sounds lacklustre - gut it? tweak it? sell it?

Post by rootfifthoctave »

I tried a friend's jen with a white Fasel and it sounded better than mine with the red. Now I've picked up one with a white and, for whatever reason, it's definitely a better wah than the red one. Longer throw/sweep, fatter sound. Now I'm thinking of building a v846 Clyde so the cool enclosure of the wah/vol isn't wasted.
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