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Problem with Morley Wha

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10/12/1999 10:33 AM

Philippe Dumont

Problem with Morley Wha

I have a Morley Wha/Volume pedal. It works fine with clean sound, although the wha effect is quiet weak, but when I use it with distorted sound, I can barely hear the difference with or without the Wha. Wha is barely unnoticable with distorted amp setup.
Is it normal? Should I change my amp setup? should I put the wha in the effect loop of the amp (digitech 2101) ?
Can someone help me with this? (morley website is unreachable)
Thanx a lot by advance

10/12/1999 1:09 PM

It sounds like you have a problem with the wah. Check that the light is on inside the morley pedal. I assume you are reffering to the older style morley's that have a light bulb? Also, look to make sure the photocells are properly oriented to pick up the light when you sweep the foot pedal.

If you have a new Morley wah, they still use a photocell/LDR circuit but it is an LED instead of a light bulb or a bulb with a tungsten filament.

CJ

10/12/1999 2:13 PM

I second CJ's advice. Although the absence of a pot eliminates some problems in the Morley designs, they also beget other problems. The "blinder" (for want of a better term) has to be positioned just so with respect to the light source. When I replaced the bulb in a former student's wha, I had to futz around with the positioning of the blinder and bulb for a while to get it just right.

If this is an older model with a light bulb, remember as well that it IS a lightbulb, and subject to all the Achilles' heel issues that your average ceiling light is subject to, such as shorting out filaments when jiggled in an "on" state (my hunch is this is one reason why older designs had to be so bloody heavy - to prevent shaking).

Finally, I was just about to suggest that maybe you had the wrong URL for Morley (http://www.morleypedals.com/docs.asp), and found that my link did not work either. Hmmmm....

10/13/1999 1:27 PM
GFR	The url for the Morley support page is right... and is not! It only works if you are coming from the Morley homepage first go to: http://www.morleypedals.com/ And then click on the link to http://www.morleypedals.com/docs.asp and it will work.

10/12/1999 4:56 PM
Don Symes	I had one of these a zillion years ago, so if memory serves, teh pedal is either in WAH mode or in VOL mode with no way to totally disable it. If the VOL function works correctly, it ain't the lamp or photocell. Check out the switch to make sure it's OK. Then look at the general condition of the heavier components and their solder joints.

10/13/1999 1:08 PM

Philippe Dumont

A lot of thanx to You all who answered my question...it is really appreciated.... :-)

:-)

In fact, it's a new one....I bought it new some weeks ago and further to the replies I'd like to give some extra information about my problem.
Actually, it SEEMS to work correctly as a volume unit....;but I find that the volume effect is not easy to handle since the volume only increase at mid-course of the rocking process....
(For CJ Landry and Mark Hammer) As it is a new one, does the " light bulb syndrom" also happen to new ones.....I mean the new serie ??
If so, can I fix the problem easily by myself or should ask to someone else who needs to be qualified for this.
Once again, thanx a lot......any other suggestion is welcome

10/14/1999 1:22 AM
Don Symes	If you can tell us what model, we can probably get a little further. If there is an output level knob, is it working? is it set right? It sounds like whatever they're using to control the light is out of adjustment - but I'm thinking that's a side issue to the weak wah problem, which still sounds to me like a bad switch or a semi-broken connection.

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