Overdrive coming from Wah (nothing to do with OD pedals with wahs)

[FrettFretless]

Ok guys, first post ever! I'm wondering, have any of you experienced this? I got this guitar crybaby wah, and of course it didn't do too well on bass, so I did some mods listed on this site: http://www.wah-wah.co.uk/ I did the obviously sweep frequency change so it would even work for bass, then I also did the gain mod, volume, and increased midrange. So now I have a working wah which is reasonably adjustable, but I also got another pedal out of it: a distortion. When you rock it all the way to the toe side, and turn up the gain all the way (I changed the gain resistor to a pot so it's adjustable), I get this REALLY good sounding light to medium overdrive sound. The tone of the overdrive can be governed by how far to the toe the pedal is rocked, it's really interesting. It's also really touch sensitive to how hard I pluck. Blending it with my clean signal really tops off the tone. Well, I'm a rambling man, what do you guys think? Is this a good idea? Anybody done it before?

Cheers!

[Daniel L]

Sounds to me like the pedal is clipping from too much input signal? someone correct me if I'm wrong, not sure if it could damage it, but hey, if it sounds good, and you can use it, why not?

[FrettFretless]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Makes me wonder if other non-overdrive pedals are "clippable" given a hot enough input... Of course, making sure first that it's not bad for the pedal. I would think it wouldn't be though, since amp clipping isn't too much to worry about

[Bearded Wizard]

The old wah circuits can be "driven". There's a couple transistors in the old circuits, I've seen BC109's used, for example. Many people love the extra harmonics from driving a wah, and it's a feature on some boutique wahs.

Also, there's a rumor Tim Commerford of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave built his custom fuzz pedal from an old wah pedal. It's very likely he did, you could make a pretty cool Fuzz Face clone from the transistors found in some old wahs.

[FrettFretless]

Hmmmm, that's really interesting, cool to know it's been done before. You read my mind though! As soon as I heard it I thought Rage basslines