Morley WVO Wah/Volume

Alright, here I am 25 years after turning down a deal from a neighbor to buy his Morley Wa for $40. I had taken it home and plugged my Series Ten Strat copy into it, and then plugged it into my re-covered,and badly cigarette burned $25 Fender Bandmaster ( that's right a wopping 25 bucks!). Man I was bummed. It sounded nothing like the Vox wawa pedal that my bandmate had. I was building Craig Andertons effects projects from his *27 Electronic Projects for Musicians*, and the Super Tone Control project had a smokin'!! wa capability, but I didn't have a proper pedal for it. So I quickly took out the 4 sheetmetal screws from the neighbors Morley and discovered that it was using light and photocells instead of pots. So, back on the cover went. The following Christmas my dad ( God bless him ) had built me a wa pedal himself from couple of pieces of flat aluminum with beveled edges. He actually unknowingly created the first 'slimline' wah! The two flat pieces of aluminum he staggered so the 1 inch or so edges closed over each other like how a shoe box fits. Then he put a rather inventive heavy 2 inch spring around spst switch ( Dad didn't know about bypassing, he just made it turn off the power.) It turns out that he found the schematic in a copy of Radio Electronics for building a wawa pedal. One thing about the pedal that I really liked was that he put an adjustable tensioner on the treaddle, so that depending on how much force you exerted it responded with an almost active hydrollic feel. Dad had 15 mechanical engineering patents so I figure it wasn't a happy accident. Unfortunately the pedal is long gone. I didn't sell it or even lose it. It disappeared the same way many things do- from trusting that someone who borrows it will return it someday. Now that it's 25 years later I can't for the life of me figure out how he did this treadle, but I recall two long coil springs besides the two for the on/off and the spring-string-pully configuration for the wawa potentiometer. The actual pivot for the treadle had the typical nut and bolt except unlike the Morley, the bolt went all the way through from one side to the other. It was inside on this bolt that the two additional springs were fixed to which made it so responsive, and yet when you lifted your foot the pedal would stay in position.
So what in the world does this have to do with the old WVO Morley I am reviewing. Well, not much except that about three weeks ago I actually bought another WVO on Ebay for $46. The seller posted it had worked great until one night at rehersal it just quit all of a sudden. He not mentioning the all important lightbulb I knew I was going to get a bargain. So I bid early for a hidden maximum of $50 and won it.
I've yet to put a bulb in it, but I checked it with a penlight, and it works fine. In fact great! The frequency range is incredible for almost anything you plug into it. As I recalled from years ago when i was disappointed with my neighbors Morley, I had not played with it enough to understand the sensitivity to the specific frequency range of guitar, and so playing it like a Vox pedal didn't work.
My goal is to somewhere somehow find a good PARTS LAYOUT SCHEMATIC FOR ANY AND ALL OF THE SAME MORLEY PEDALS BUILT ON THIS SAME CIRCUIT BOARD. Uniquely, Morley had only used less than HALF of the PCB ( printed circuit board) for the WVO pedal. The rest of the board is to implant with components for the other pedals. I'm assuming that the WVO. PWF,PWFII,& PWB all were built on this same board. I know I can just take a little time to decipher where the parts go by studying the schematics for these models, but it would be nice to see actual PCB's with the parts layout. Another unusual, and very cool thing about the old Morley's ( and maybe the new??)is that they put the parts on the same side of the circuit board as the traces!
I'd appreciate seeing any CLEAR PICTURES OF INSIDE THE UNIT of your old PWB,PWF,PWFII's on Google or Yahoo Images.

Using with a little known solidstate 2-10 amp called a DINOSAUR. It's made in China and imported for a company in California. I am a total tube nut, but the amp was a bargain for $60 to my door! on Ebay. It's supposedly listed for $399 originally. Okay it's not a review for the amp, but I will say this, that without a doubt the amp is as close to tube sounding and responding than any solid state amp I've ever heard! My brother is an electronics engineer and he told me that the digital test equipment for pairing up diodes ( and the amp uses 2 germanium LED's of all things) is extremely accurate these days, and probably accounts for the beautiful dynamic response of this amp. Hey, I know it's not a review for the amp, but there is nothing written anywhere about these amps, I figure they can use a good word. The Morley is quiet as can be, even with the distortion on, on the amp. It sounds excellent for doing post mixing on lo-fi recordings too. Who am I kidding, Lo-Fi High-Fi it's all subjective sometimes. Lets just say I can sweep the entire frequency range of a song with this thing. The Volume is a very smooth audio taper like transition. The best volume there is!

Built like a tank, and can be repaired very easily too. Nothing so period electronically that you couldn't find a replacement transistor, or even replace the transformer. The light bulb would be better served if it could be swapped out with a more reliable white LED. I hope to experiment with our pedal to see if we can even make it battery operated, seeing how all of the components are operable with a wide range of voltages- great for circuit bending.

I don't like the fact that there is not an interactive website AT Morley for mods and users opinions. They are like most people with quality old product lines, the old stuff is viewed like competition to their new line. They should maybe think about some reissues like what Fender and Gibson have done- How about a reissued electrostatic delay, or the original MORLEY ( The namesake Morley comes from a play on words, the two brothers who made the original Morley pedal joked of it being the 'more lee' instead of a Leslie ( the popular swirling speaker it was designed to emulate in it's pedal form). I'm sure that it was a sarcastic remark regarding the huge size of the Leslie speaker cabinet. I'm an organ player too, and I had to lug my Leslie 122 and Hammond M3 on more than one occasion.

It's a great pedal for anyone in my opinion, but if you are after the kuquakaquaka straight out of the box you are just going to be frustrated. Don't bother trying to take the back off and adjust anything either. I remember carefully trying to readjust my neighbors WVO to see if I could get it to 'kick in' from the bottom of the heel position. The fact is, it was working from this position it's just that it is lower than the frequency range of an ( 6 string) electric guitar by 2 full octaves. So this first 1/2" of travel is more of a 'volume travel' than a working wah sound. The manual puts it best. It says:
" This can be effective in performance.Toe up to use it for rhythm,toe down 1/2" to play lead and beyond 1/2" to play lead using the wah."
My wish list includes many of the things I used to have. In fact my dream of wanting to rich in the past was actually a quite practical one because if I had been I would still have all of the old equipment I used to own. Instead i had to sell it to pay bills etc.Here is a list Of what I had, and would love to have again:
--Red Continental electric guitar- my first electric- got another one in mint years later, but someone stole it reaching into my trailers crank out window.
--Sound City 120, and later a Sound City 50 watt reverb ( Liked the 50 watt best, the 120 I gutted and converted to a stock 1969 Marshall head. TOTAL AC/DC!!
-- Watkins Copicat Mark IV made for Guild Guitars, tape delay-it had an incredible 2 transistor bc109 buffering stage on the input that made my Sound City screem with my Gibson Melody Maker electric Guitar
-- Gibson Melody Maker
-- Maestro ring modulator, it's trigger input on the back was the be all and end all for anyone wanting to do experimental music with tape loops. I used a Wollensak tabletop Reel to Reel tape recorder. we made loops anywhere from 6 inches to 6 feet in length! Always splice at an angle and let them play a while to 'warm up'
-- ART Minisynth. This clips on the edge of a drum and has a piezo sensor for the triggering device. I adjusted it for super sensitivity so all you had to do was barely touch it. It is a full blown synth in a tiny box with 7 knobs. all based on a simple quad op-amp. Excellent for circuit bending practice. Just run a breadboard and go for it-- Crown Bass- a quality Japanese copy of a Gibson SG bass. In fact I hate to say it, but the Crown was better. My buddy had the actual Gibson and it looked identical. Both were from the mid 60's, his was worth 1,200 and mine I got for 120 bucks! I did put a real Gibson pick-up in it. Very nice to play and I played my career on it in the band Bubba Hotep here in Columbus Ohio...don't bother looking us up. It was before everyone put all their info online. I am on fuzz.com now and my name is PR Jacobs check it out.

It takes a little getting used to, as the previous reviewer said it has a much wider sweep than most other pedals, my own personal experience being with Vox. Once you get acquainted with it, though, it's pretty simple. I had some trouble with accidentally hitting it too far, so I made a little plywood stop for it, which I attack w/velcro. This reduces the range, but is easily removable if I ever get wierd.

Putting this into a Marshall AVT-50 (say what you will, I love that amp!) with a "mexican" strat with duncan pickups (humbucker in the bridge) gets a really nice sound, just about whatever I set the tone at. On the brighter tones (bridge pickup and "pedal to the metal" on the wah) it sounds kind of nasal, a bit like "Money for Nothing" Overall it sounds excellent. The reason it isn't higher is that it's VERY noisy, don't think about using it without a heavy noise gate right after the pedal.

Funny story about this one. I thought it was broken, so I took it to the repair shop. As luck would have it, the pedal being controlled by photocells, I paid $50 for him to change a light bulb. DAMMIT!!!!! So this was my fault more than anything, but still an element of failure which I would rather wasn't there. On the plus side, no scratch from the pots. The other thing is that the flap which covers the photocells (look inside and you'll know what I mean) came loose from the case, so the volume would be off in the middle of the pedal's rotation, then on again towards where it would usually be off. I superglued it, and no problems since.

I would like it if this pedal had a true bypass switch to save power and not accidentally hit the volume pedal and mess with the sound (rather than just switching between volume and wah) and the 120V power chord is kind of bulky, but other wise I am quite happy with it. If it were lost or stolen and I found another one at a decent price I would get it, but it is not going to completely replace my Vox. I've been playing for 5 years, mostly blues, rock and some wierder folkish stuff, using my messed with strat and an old peavey Les Paul clone. This is on a pedal board first, then a Digitech RP-50 (used as a noise gate), modded MXR phase 90, TS808, Fuzz Face, Univibe, Home made Octave (fOXX), boss CH-1 chorus, DD-6, along with Amp Reverb. Occasionally other stuff goes on or comes off, but this is the most common arrangement I have with it.

Just a note on the previous review. www.morleypedals.com doesn't send out schematics or owners manuals any more!!! Go to the web page and click on "Downloads" for a list of available manuals and schematics. Don't go to "contact us" and bother them as I did, without looking first.

first off, just to clarify, this is the WVO big chrome bad boy made by morley in the 70s. yes, big, chrome, and bad. there's another review section for Morley Wah/Volume. i'm assuming most of those reviews refer to the WVO, but morley has made lots of wah/vol pedals so i'm being specific.
so, ease of use...
well, wah usage requires some hand-foot coordination. other thatn that it should be easy to use. the only thing that may take getting used to is the large sweep, which players raised on crybabies, voxes, or even new morleys may have to get used to.

well, this ain't no normal wah pedal, kiddies. first of all, it's big. its size not only takes up space on your pedalboard, it also means that the treadle has quite a sweep. with a cryababy, the slightest foot movement will take you from heel to toe position. with the WVO, you really gotta pump it. too much work, you say? no sir, i say. because that sweep means you can really control the frequencies being filtered better than voxes/cryababies/new morleys/etc. also, this makes it perfect for volume swells. you can really sneak up on a note, do violin-like swells, fade out slowly, etc.

the wah has an EXTREME range and is EXTREME. no pussyfooting wakka-wakka here.

the pedal was designed to be used with guitar, keyboard, or bass. now, a guitar's range is somewhere in the middle of the keyboard, and the bass is well below the guitar's range. this means that the number of octaves the wah can filter is much greater than what you find on most wahs. the standard guitar wah range is found somewhere in the middle of the pedal's travel. if you go back to heel position you're basically filtering bass frequencies that aren't even there. what that means is that between the heel and middle position you get a sort of volume swell/wah effect if you're playing a guitar thru this. nice! past the middle position toward the toe you're in tinkley keyboard territory, also past the guitar's range so the wah effect lessens but there is a sort of treble boost and a.m. radio effect. also nice!

now, the wah itself is, as stated, not for wakka-loving reggae players. it's mean and nasty. it sometimes sounds microphonic and usually has a strong "swoosh" sound. when rocked slowly forward, the "swoosh" sound can sound sort of phaser-like. it's anything but smooth and that's why i dig it. even when played clean it can overdrive and amp, but couple it with distortion and prepare for devastation.


i've played it thru a couple of different amps and haven't noticed any noise problems, no bleed-thru when off.

these chrome morleys take a proverbial licking.
you should get a spare bulb as the wah is opical, whcih is to say, that LED isn't just a little light to let you know that the pedal is plugged in but ACTUALLY PART OF THE CIRCUIT! you can get spare bulbs at tubesandmore.com or other amp aprts suppliers.

i have the big chrome phaser (PVO, i think it's called), which wasn't working properly when i got it. i wrote morley and asked if they happened to have a schematic for it. i got it within a week. it's hard to find that kind of customer service!

noise freaks shouldn't even consider any other wah.