Monday, August 23, 2010

Crybaby GCB-95 Repair

The Dunlop Crybaby wah pedals are very repairable. I have a GCB-95 I bought in 1988 or so (my first fx pedal inspired by listening to Hendrix all the time) which was in pretty bad shape. Mostly this was due to a crackling pot. Dunlop sells replacement 100k pots for these here. These pots come with the gear included and installed, so you can drop it in with minimal soldering. Pretty simple fix, really. Blow the dust out of the pedal, pop in a new battery, and it's good to go. The only adjustment to make is the range of the pot. Just unscrew the stop holding in the rack gear, separate the gears and adjust the pot to your liking. I like mine with as much treble as possible. These things are damn near indestructible.

4 comments:

  1. Does it matter the color of the wires when soldering to the pot.

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  2. Yes it does. Remember or note the colors of the wires as you clip or desolder them and attach the wires in the same location on the new pot. I forgot to do this and had to swap the wires around a couple times before it worked. It's likely that different revisions of the pedal will have different colored wires.

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  3. Hi there, my crybaby has recently stopped working. When I engage it, and pivot the pedal back and forth, all it does is get louder (at the "treble" end, and quieter at the "bass" end, with no wah-wah sound effect whatsoever. Any ideas?

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  4. Andrew,

    I'm not that good at troubleshooting more complex circuits. Change the battery and check all the wires including the switch, pot, and board, for loose connections and resolder if necessary. Otherwise you might get some answers in a forum that is focused on fx.

    Good luck,

    Chip

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