Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

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Papus
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Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

Postby Papus » 24 Dec 2017, 14:20

I've owned this pedal for 25 years, never let me down.
Built like a tank.
One of Roland's earliest forays into guitar effects, pre-Boss.
I've performed three modifications to lift this poorly designed circuit into legendary status. This pedal will never leave my board.

1) Changed the effect order to be Wah before Fuzz. The rookie engineers at Roland designed it with Fuzz before Wah, the idiots.
2) Removed the 20dB attenuator in front of the Wah circuit which causes a massive volume drop when engaging the Wah - WTF was Roland thinking?
3) Added a 12dB attenuator in front of the Fuzz circuit because the stock Fuzz gain is way too high, even on the lowest setting it was like a Muff on full gain. Now it has useful rhythm crunch gain on 0 and full-blown outrageous fuzz on 10.

I boost the Fuzz into stratospheric levels occasionally with a Blackstar HT-Boost.
I demonstrate my take on David Gilmour's "Time" solo near the end of the video, to show how close the pedal can sound to a silicon Fuzz Face on the "Sine" tone setting. On the "Square" setting it's more like a Muff.

Timestamps for the various settings are in the description on YouTube.

Dime that puppy!!!

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Re: Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

Postby Anitoli » 24 Dec 2017, 14:35

Cool sounding wah Papus. How loud was the amp? Every time you hit a low note the camera vibrates!

Reminds me of a wah i built years ago that had a compressor after the wah built into it and an up to almost 30v ac output potential. To get that kind of output i had to run the quad op-amp on a dual 18v supply. Wasn't the greatest sounding wah but man could you slam the front end of an amp with that thing and the compressor had a huge amount of gain, it was feedback city.

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Re: Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

Postby Frode_K » 09 Oct 2020, 09:39

Hi!

This post made me curious. I have owned this pedal for years and have used it on and off. I love the fuzz-circuit, but it is absolutely stupid that the order is wah-fuzz. And the same with the volumedrop when I use the wah. I was very excited to find this post, but sadly your video is not there anymore. Any chance you could re-upload or share the fix with me?

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Re: Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

Postby Frode_K » 09 Oct 2020, 09:41

Correction: I meant that the order is fuzz before the wah.. How can I change this?

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Re: Vintage 1971 Roland AD-50 Double Beat Fuzz-Wah (Modified)

Postby surfnorthwest » 10 Oct 2020, 08:03

The linked video was removed by the owner so it does not exist anymore.
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