making a volume pedal...questions...

[ghetto3jon]

hello. i gutted an old crybaby wah so i could make a volume pedal. it seems easy enough (input, pot, output), but i have some questions. i moded the wah to try to make IT a volume pedal...which worked. BUT. it only went from quiet to loud...not silent to loud. i need the back-most-position to be completely silent. (i checked to make sure that the pot was all the way rotated...and it was).

can anyone tell me why this happend so it doesn't happen when i go to build my volume pedal?

thanks,
jon.

[esun127]

Quite simply, the potentiometer (your volume pot) had a resistance range that couldn't completely cut your signal. The only way to fix this is to a get a different volume pot... something with a steeper curve (more sensative) or a logarithmic curve (more sensative around 0-1/2 volume, less sensative near max volume.

Also make sure your pot has the correct resistance for your application.

[regebro]

A pot has three pins. If you put one pin to ground, the other to in, and the MIDDLE one to out, it will go from silent to loud.

I don't know what a good impedance would be in this case though. If it's to low, it will lower your total signal. If it's too high, the pedal will go 'silent,silent,silent,silent,silent,LOUD'.
You'll probably have to experiment. I'd start with getting a 1k and a 10k pot and try those.