Last week, radiostationexp brought over his Behringer Hellbabe to see if anything can be done to improve it. The Hellbabe is generally regarded in the guitar community as an entry-level piece of equipment, if not a POS. Hardly any pro or serious musician would use it. IMHO. Anyway...
This golden opportunity for me to study it. So we opened it, tweaked around a bit. Hmmm...dig this..all possible mods for traditional wahs are built in. Variable sweep control, Q-control, there's a fine tune knob for i-dont-know-what-yet, and looky looky...a built-in booster ! Yeah. Has a spring too so it pushes back when you release.This is gonna put wah modders out of business. Anyway I inquired what the complaint was. And radiostationexp's complaint(which seems to be the general observation): bitin ang sweep.
Studied it further. Hmmm...surface mount, PCB-mounted controls...so Behringer. Optical. Hmmm...no pot to wear out. Akin, or perhaps more apt, ripped from the Morley Bad Horsie design. Looked at the boards. Hmmm...TL082 op amp chips. Dual JFET-input op-amps (surface mount albeit). Not bad at all. Audio grade, low-noise chips and not the bipolar-input POS chips found on stock DS1's and TS9's.
Anyway, after tinkering, I seem to have disabled its ability to bypass. So ariff left the unit with me, but graciously mined the internet for data on it and he found a couple of ways to improve it.
Just tonight, I thought I'd take it up again. So using the data ariff sent me, I proceeded to fix the trouble I caused (no bypass) by lowering the LED and LDR of the large notch on the plastic light blocker. It worked...fixed the problem. Next, with a hobby knife, I proceeded to cut out the small notch which actually controls the sweep of the wah. First I cut it down towards the LED/LDR so the sweep would start early in the rocking action. Preliminary tests were encouraging. Sounded much better, and the sweep was wider. Then as a coup d' grace, I started to cut upwards, thus enlarging the triangle. When you do this, make sure to *somehow* maintain the slope of the triangle, or at least keep close to it. Too much cut and you will lose the sweep. With that final cut done, we tried it again (me, psychic sushi and chito_eoi). Wow ! There's the rub ! Nice, wide sweep with a very conspicous "me-owww". That's it, no further mods required.
With this simple mod, surely, the Behringer Hellbabe will make a worthy addition to your pedalboard. Yep. Even for professional use.
I love cheap stuff.
