Make Your Own Expression Pedal

ozanerkal

Inspired
Hi everyone!

After a period of searching for affordable expression pedals, i finally found one.. for FREE :)

Well not exactly free, but in my case I consider it free because I made a very simple modification on my existing wah pedal which I haven't used in years.

The steps were as follows:
1. I opened the cover of my Dunlop Jimi Hendrix wah.
2. Located the pot which has three poles.
3. Got a Male-to-Male TRS cable, put one end into the PEDAL1 input at the rear of Axe-FX.
4. Now this part was a dumb guess as I have nearly no electrical knowledge. My idea was that the three poles of the pot should connect to the TRS jack, one for Tip, one for Ring and one for Sleeve. So I used crocodile cables to try and find which pole should connect to which. To understand if any combination worked, Axe Edit was open in the computer and a preset was open with a wah block, and i was in the control screen for the wah block. So when i found the right combination, the little dot would move with the movement of the pedal.
5. After finding the right combination, i soldered three ends of a cable to the three poles of the pot. And the other ends to a female TRS jack. Before that, I made a hole in the wah's cover for the cable.
6. You can see in the pictures that now it's a nice looking expression pedal.

AND THE GOOD THING IS, it still works great as a wah pedal too.. because nothing changed about its circuits, inputs or outputs. So when it is powered, it is a wah pedal.

For the expression function, it doesn't need power. Just connect to the Axe's Pedal inputs or your MIDI controller's expression input and that's enough.

Note: I can tell that the reason that this works perfect for me is because the Pot inside the Jimi Wah has the qualities that Axe-Fx requires. There's no guarantee that any wah with any pot can do this. For more info, check the PEDAL part in the Axe's manual.

Hope you like it! Thanks..

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Good Idea, but may I add if you had a female trs socket, you could drill and mount it in the pedal. this would be a little less likely to cause you trouble with the adapter cable getting cut by the aluminum on the bottom pedal cover.
 
Yes, that was my original idea too. But the body is made of very thick metal so i didnt want to take that challenge.. Maybe some other time though.. Thanks
 
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