For the past few months I’ve been struggling with a floppy wah. Stop sniggering at the back. I have a Snarling Dogs Whine-o-Wah. Snarling Dogs wahs are the funky ones that look like a foot.
Unfortunately that big foot-shaped treadle is very heavy. I found that every time I took my foot off the pedal it would flop back into the ‘toe down’ position.
“What’s the problem with that?” the uninitiated may ask. Well we don’t always want to be rocking the wah backwards and forwards to make a ‘wakka-wakka’ sound. It can be very effective to find a spot you like on the wah and then just leave it there. At the heel down end you’ll get a fuzzy soupy bassy sound, in the middle you get a nasal honk and at the toe end you get a fizzy rasp.
When we’re using the wah in this way we don’t want to have to sit there with our foot glued to it. We want to move away, stand up on a stage monitor and rock out. So it’s very annoying when you’ve found the perfect spot, then take your foot off, the wah flops down and your tone is ruined.
After a bit of investigation I discovered the problem was the P-Clip which presses the treadle’s connecting bar on to the gear which is attached to the main wah pot. (It was actually Charlie Chandler of Chandler’s Guitar Experience who pointed this out to me, I’d never have found it on my own). [Click on pictures to enlarge]
The P-Clip just wasn’t sturdy enough to stop the heavy metal treadle from flopping down. So I went on eBay and ordered myself a slightly larger one – 12mm. It turned out to be quite a bit thicker than the stock one too, which helped.
When it arrived I thought it wasn’t going to work because I couldn’t get the hole on the new P-clip lined up with the one in the wah’s housing. But then I realised I could put it in sideways, keep the screw loose, rotate the P-Clip in to place and then tighten the screw fully. This worked and I’m happy to say it has cured my floppy wah.
It’s not perfect. The action of the pedal isn’t very smooth. I’m hoping that over time, with repeated use, it will smooth out a bit. But the new P-Clip was a whole lot cheaper than buying a new wah, so it’ll do for now.
I hope that helps some of you out there who might be experiencing a similar problem.
Hi there!, where did you find the P clip on the web !?
On eBay I think. I bought 2 for about £1
Hi. The same problem with my exact pedal. On mine, the design feature that sets the ability to cock the pedal in any position without it flopping forward under its own weight is the presence of an adjustable spring strip that has a friction pad in contact with the pedal fulcrum/spindle. This can be tightened by opening the pedal and adjusting the set screw by tightening the nut that holds it in place. The ‘P’ clip, at least on mine, is there to keep the nylon rack and pinion gear for the pot full engaged so it less likely to skip a tooth when being operated. Cheers. Rob.
I think your intention here is good, and I applaud your effort, but it seems to me that this is going to wear out and possibly damage your wah pot because of all the extra sideways pressure you’re putting on it as you push the pedal up and down. That clip’s normal function in most wahs is to apply just enough pressure (and a bit of grease) to make sure that the gear and treadle make good contact with each other and don’t skip or jump any teeth as the pedal moves up and down. This Wah uses an unusual pot, and I wouldn’t want to wear it out prematurely. The pedal mechanism is just poorly designed and doesn’t have enough resistance to stay put with the heavy foot thingy. I followed another guy’s excellent suggestion in the forum and put a chunk of foam under the pedal, which improved things quite a bit. With that, I just need a small amount of pressure on the gear to bet the pedal to stay, and it’s been working great for the last year or so.
That’s a great suggestion, thank you. Do you have a link to the forum thread where you heard about it? Or some photos of your solution? I’d love to give it a try.
Here’s where it was discussed…
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/snarling-dogs-wahs.398867/page-2
On my pedal, I used some leftover foam rubber from a small road case, and cut it so it would fit back behind the gear strip, and was just thick enough fill the space back there from top to bottom. Adjusting the overall size adjusts how much it pushes back on the pedal. Once I got it working the way I wanted, I added a dab of silicon rubber glue to hold it in place.
I tried adjusting the strap across the axle on mine first, and it had almost no effect on holding the pedal in position, but the foam trick worked quite well.
Awesome, thanks – I’m humbled to see my blog post listed on a Gearpage discussion!