Paul Marossy

Glad I could be of some assistance.

Either one will work. You only need a 3PDT switch if you want to use an LED indicator. Otherwise, the DPDT switch will suffice.

1/4" is plenty thick.

That's actually something I dislike about the Ernie ball pedals - while the pots seem to last more than I thought they would, they do use normal conductive carbon potentiometers. I've been thinking of retrofitting mine with something like Andertons volume pedal descratcher. I wonder how well that would adapt to use in a wah? It's been ages since I've looked at the circuit. I have had some success with using LED/LDR combos as well; nice thing about that is you can often use what works as a pot and get different resistance out of the LDR. I'm rambling. Also, best of luck Paul. I wish I could offer more than condolences. Yeah, regular pots jusst aren't going to last that long. That's why I like the Hot Potz, they are supposed to last for a million operations. On the Anderton de-scratcher circuit, I think it's noisy. I like my DOD FX-17 wah/volume pedal the best. It's compact, there's no pot inside to wear out, and it's VERY quiet. Thanks for the well wishing, I appreciate the spirit behind it.

I've heard about this one. I don't know if anyone has built it, either, but everything RG designs is usually spot on and works great.

Huh, I didn't know they had those available. I will keep that in mind for future reference. If you plan on using your wah a lot, you'll want the Hot Potz as it will last a very long time. Regular pots aren't designed to take the kind of abuse that a wah pot will see. Thanks for the condolances on the loss of my job. I went from making good money with fully paid benefits for me and my whole family to being way below poverty level for a family of four in just one day. Hopefully things will work out...

Trust me, you wouldn't be able to build your own for any less than that. why is that? I agree 35 is not much at all. but 2 switches and a stereo cable. hmm. A decent metallic enclosure will be $10-15. Two heavy duty switches will be about $10. LEDs and bezels, another $3-4 depending on what type you use. If all you have is a RadioShack to get stuff from, you will not find what you need there, and all of this stuff will have to be mail ordered. Figure on at least $10 for shipping and handling that. Grand total is estimated to be $39 for parts. Then you have to take a few hours to build it and work out any bugs. I'm Mr. DIY, but sometimes it doesn't really make sense to build it yourself. This is one of those cases...

Is it possibly static electricity? I've had a problem with static on a Strats with a single ply pickguard. The problem went away when I replaced it with a 3-ply pickguard. I used to getting popping and crackling sounds because I anchor my right hand on the guitar, and there would be a static buildup that would be released whenever I touched the strings or something metal that was connected to ground. Just a shot in the dark...

Cool, I think you'll really like the Firefly. I'm guessing that you're slow on guitars only because you probably don't wire them up every day.

Just use a 47K resistor, it won't change anything. For the pot, you can use a 100K Dunlop Hot Potz II. It's been reported to me that it still sounds good with a 100K pot instead of a nearly impossible to find 25K pot.

Trust me, you wouldn't be able to build your own for any less than that.

If it were me, I would use the yellow Fasel. I honestly can't hear much of a difference between the red and yellow ones, though. Nothing strikingly different about them, anyway.

Or just buy one. You'll probably spend just about as much in parts and shipping to make your own as you would just buying one already made for the amp. I do a lot of my own DIY stuff, but there are times when it just doesn't make sense economically to do some things...

OK... so if you can find schematics for both units, then it can be determined beforehand if it's even possible to use the Marshall footswitch the way that you want to.

Maybe this could be adapted for use with a guitar? http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/automike/automike.htm

Wow, cool. The Firefly is a very cool little amp. I had to sell mine the first time my hours cut at work. Now that they cut my hours again, I have nothing left to sell...

Yeah, it's a pretty good guess that that one power tube is bad. The power tubes should always be replaced with exactly is in the amp. And the power tube bias really ought to be checked, but it's not absolutely necessary. Only if if you want to get maximum tube life out of your power tubes...

I seriously doubt you can use that same footswitch for both amps. Amp footswitches are rarely interchangeable. The only way to find out is to give it a try, but don't be surprised if it doesn't do anything. That is if the connections at the amp/cords required aren't totally different from eachother...

Try here: http://www.ax84.com/index.php/oldprojects....ject_id=firefly

I built a Firefly when Doug Hammond first designed it. It's a cool amp, and still pretty loud at only 1/2 watt. I also love the Octal Fatness, it has an awesome distortion tone and it's about 5 watts the way that I built it (using a 6V6 power tube). You can do that. But the problem with those big wattage resistors in parallel with speakers is that they are a static load on your amp, not a dynamic load like a speaker is. Translation = it doesn't sound that good (in my opinion). I like my Seymour Duncan Convertible amp, it has a variable wattage circuit (5-100 watts) in it that is perfect for for just about any venue. http://www.diyguitarist.com/GuitarAmps/Convert.htm

That's kind of weird how they did the grounds on your example. On my SpankenStrat project guitar, I have a ground wire that connects to the shielding inside the body cavities (which I did myself), kind of like what is shown on the wiring diagram you linked. Sounds like Fender is getting cheaper still and omitting the shielding altogether, or someone at the factory is lazy and isn't putting it in...

Yeah, losses in the high end due to loading on the pickups and the limitations of the audio transformer itself. Some active electronics would need to get involved to compensate for that. It may not be that bad - if you get a really good audio transformer. I agree that shielding will do a lot to help, but my Strat is fully shielded and the pickups were still very noisy. That's just the nature of single coil pickups. And it doesn't help when you have an army of wall warts in your home studio... EDIT: I looked at the schematic at the Naiant website. (http://www.naiant.com/images/Balanced_Guitar_Wiring.GIF) Conceptually, it's a great idea and should help a lot with ground loops, hum and stuff like that. But the fact remains that pickups are also to a degree inductors by nature, and they like to pick up any EMI around them. The audio transformer would eliminate a lot of that, but there still would be some losses to contend with. I do see that he suggests a 14:1 audio transformer, which I guess is intended to minimize the loading on the pickups. There's only one way to find out how well this would work... (and if you try it, please let us know how it works!)

You'll have to do more than just put a transformer in. There will be losses involved with the transformer addition, and you might not be happy with the end result. If it were me, I would get a set of Fender Noiseless pickups and put them in. They still sound like a single coil, but they are dead quiet. I have some Fender "Hot Noiseless" pickups in my Strat, which were apparently designed for Jeff Beck. I love them. Just my 2 centavos...

Yeah, I love my Parker Mojo Nitefly. It's really cool to be able to blend the magnetic and piezo pickups together and/or send them to two different amps/processing systems. I don't normally ever play thru two seperate amps, but I like that I have that capability if so desired.

It depends on what pickups you want to use. Different types of pickups generally are used with different value pots. Humbuckers usually are paired with 500K pots and single coils with 250K pots. When you have both types together, there's several different philosophies on what to do in that scenario. And then there are active pickups which use different values of pots, like 10K or 25K. What were you planning on putting in your guitar, specifically?