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Rat and Wha don't sound good together

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1/6/2000 4:34 PM

Rat and Wha don't sound good together

I was tinkering last night and finally got my
Dunlop Wha sounding pretty good. I installed the
buffer circuit from RG's site and hacked in a
trimmer pot into one of the transistors. Also
replaced the .22 Caps. Then I set the gear to where it just starts to open up at the highest position. Playing a strat into a Deluxe Reverb it sounded really good clean.

I've been lovin the sound of a Rat pedal through
the same rig. I plugged the wha in front of the
Rat and tried it out. Well, it didn't sound exactly
bad but its not knockin me out like either pedal alone.
The sound kinda thinned out and the Rat got kinda raspy
in the middle of the wha's travel rather than screaming.

Does anybody know any mods that I might try to make these
two work a little better together.

Thanks,
jc

1/6/2000 10:46 PM

I'm not a big Rat fan in general but perhaps the thing to do is not F*** with the Rat but instead find another pedal that works with your wha/amp setup. Perhaps something with more of a mid vs. high boost (i.e. Rat). Maybe a pedal you don't normally like will work with the wha!
- A

This morning I discovered some pretty grim realities about the Dallas Rangemaster I built in regards to a FF type pedal. They STINK together!

1/7/2000 3:54 PM

Save my old Fender Amps

Alright you guys I know you can do better than
that.

I have a garage full of old Fender Amps and
drills and soldering guns etc. I am just
about ready to start working on them install
dual stage master volumes, extra tubes,
effects loops, channel switches etc.

Then you will all have John Stokes to answer
to.

Please save me from this madness. How do
I get my Rat and my Wha to work together?

I must hack....

1/7/2000 4:16 PM
keith	Had the same problem back in the 80's with a crybaby. I was able to thicken the sound by running the wah via the effects loop, rather than in front. Don't know if you've tried this, or even have an effects loop. Have you tried a parallel scheme? might sound funky. Good luck. Keith

1/7/2000 4:10 PM

Re: Rat and Wha don't sound good together

quote:
"Does anybody know any mods that I might try to make these
two work a little better together."

1. Eliminate potential defects; use your DMM to measure DC volts at the output of the modified wah and the input to the Rat to see if either is putting out a DC level - they should not be. A DC level interaction could be pushing the Rat to an more-nonlinear place and uglying up the distortion.
2. Put a volume pot between them. It's possible that the wah is now putting out a big signal at the resonance of the circuit and actually driving the Rat harder than a bypassed signal since the peaks could be higher. Mess with the volume control to see what happens.
3. Sub in another distortion and see if it does something similar.

1/7/2000 4:27 PM
Gus	Dist in front of whas sound better to me.

1/7/2000 5:26 PM

I prefer the wha before the distortion. I feel like when the distortion is in front of the wha, it's hard to get the "W" heard (in a band context) - you just get the "HA" part. Using the distortion after the wha gives me some "compression" so that the output level is more constant with wha pedal position. Maybe I could get the same volume equalizing thing by using dist->wha->compressor but then how would I stop this chain from squealing?

Anyway, when I use a wha I like to use distortions with less gain than a RAT.

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