Morley vibrating wah pedal help please!

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mcfate

Active member
Joined
Jan 5, 2005
Messages
35
Location
LA
Hi All,

Are guitar pedals OT? My apologies if so - please delete. If not...

I finally found one of these puppies on evilbay - sort of a poorman's leslie/ classic morley wah in one handy gigantic pedal. I found the "vibrating" effect to be quite nifty as a tracking/ mixing reamp kinda thingy.

Anyway - both the wah and the vibrating effect on my particular unit work KIND OF. I would like them to work REALLY A LOT.

So I open the thing up and right away notice some leaking electrolytics to replace, which is one of the few things I am qualified to notice/ do. THEN - I observe that the wah mechanism is not the pot I was expecting to see, but in fact some very far-out photocell or something like that? Is that right? Then I notice faded reflective shiny stuff surrounding it, and that the action of the pedal seems to change the position of a light-blocking black material.

Can anyone illuminate (get it?) further on what the deal is with this thing? Apart from replacing caps, is there a light source or something I should check out or replace?

Also - the vibrating motor has a mechanical tensioning lever (marked "variation") which is missing a belt or rubber band or whatever used to connect the two. Anyone know the principle behind the vibrating effect? I get that there is something mechanical that spins in an eccentric way - but how does it create audio pitch oscillation and delay?

Please help me restore this weirdo gem to its former boss-ness - any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
I don't think that it does create a pitch variation; rather amplitude or filter conrer F. shift...

Anyhow, Yes Morley used photocells and folded black cloth, as a way to get round the "scratchy pot" issues that everyone else had.

Photos would help... but no pots in a Morley... How is the black cloth 'fold' in terms of condition?

Keith
 
While taking these pics, I noticed some bare twisted wires from the input jack tip possibly shorting onto the circuit board, so I will clean that up and check it out. What do you make of the black cloth? Thanks for responding Keith!

morely_0001_2.jpg


cloth folded back for photcell view:

morely_0002_2.jpg


The missing linkage:

morely_0004.jpg
 
Your "black clothe" looks fine. You may experiment a bit with the LDRs position in order to "tune" the effect to taste...

If think this the right schematic for your Morley:
http://www.morleypedals.com/rwves.pdf

As for the vibrato effect, looks like it is a Tel-Ray oil can device... I never had one in my hands so I'm no specialist, but I think you should have a look to this website:
http://www.geocities.com/tel_ray/

There are a lot of pics, tips, and even a forum dedicated to this particular piece of electro mechanical soundgear...

Axel
 
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/

Is another place to ask.

I see carbon comp resistors. A good thing to do is to check them for value they can drift. Went in circuit they can measure lower than marked.
 
One of the optos looks like it may be 'mispointed'... and also -as observed previously- your cloth looks like it's in fine shape, but do try not to tempt fate by 'over-handling' it... it's usually easier to make things worse rather than better! :wink:

Keith
 
I have a morley wah, but haven't use it in years. when I first got it, it was weak. The curtain wasn't making complete contact with the reflector, so I use some masking tape to change the angle of the reflector edge. I know I changed the lamp, I may have put a brighter bulb in. That lamp kept going bad, I wanted to put in an LED, but still haven't got to it. I'm curious about the motor mechanism, more so about the can that vibrates. Years ago I saw a vibrato pedal that had a glass jar. The fluid had dried, but Dish detergent has the proper viscosity to slop around on that transducer. Those can vibratos contain PCB oil- nasty stuff, toxic.
 
You guys are awesome - thanks for all the info and links. I'm looking over the Tel Ray forum right now, there's a lot of good info about oil can overhauling. I will recap, relamp, possibly re-oil and report back.

Thanks again,

Gideon
 
I tried led's in mine. The lamp always sounded best to me. I think I've only had one lamp burn out since I owned it (bought it new) so it's little point in using led's for me.

I saw a guy rockin one of those pedals years ago in the old 9:30 club and it sounded fantastic.
 

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