WA76 issues... :(

So, day two of owning my WA76...I turn everything on and notice the VU meter is not moving. I play with the settings and poof, there's no compression at all. When I unboxed it last night and hooked it up, everything was working fine, in fact it sounded AMAZING! Needless to say, I'm pretty bummed right now, as I have a gig this weekend and now am going to have to use my Keeley Compressor Pro instead.

I just finished e-mailing WA's support, so hopefully they have some ideas as to what could be happening. I'm hoping I unwittingly activated some sort of bypass mode, but if it has one, it's news to me!

Anyone have any ideas? Literally nothing changed from last night to tonight, except I was playing with the "all buttons in" mode and tweaking other settings. The VU meter does not move off of zero and it passes a dry signal through with no issue. As I crank the output it does get a little hissy, as I would expect.

 

Well, I got a response back from their support first thing this morning (PROPS +). It seems like a catastrophic failure (BOO -). They proposed I return it to Sam Ash and exchange it for another one. Of course, they don't have it in stock, but can hopefully ship it from another store in the chain. I'm hoping it'll arrive before my gig on Saturday. Otherwise, it looks like I'm using my Keeley as a backup or an old US-made dbx 166XL that I have sitting around.

 

So, to follow up…it’s November and I got finally got the replacement unit (supply chain issues, etc.). I plug it in, and still am having the same issue! The VU shows no compression at any setting. When I have the +4 or +8 buttons pressed in, the needle sits all the way at the left and moves a tiny bit to the right when I play.

I’m at a loss. I can’t believe two units in a row would be dead! I power the unit from my Furman power conditioner, and my signal chain goes from my Mustang Bass, to my Korg PitchBlack rack tuner, to the WA76 to my Fender Rumble 500. I even tried bypassing the Korg and had the same results.

I’m hoping someone has some ideas?

 

Ok, so I think I have this thing figured out and I'm thinking maybe the old one wasn't bad after all! Maybe I just forgot playing around with it and happened to have a chain that worked.

Anyways, I patched the WA76 through the effects loop on the Rumble. Still the same issue...until I reduced the preamp gain and boosted the master. (I remembered reading that the Rumbles are weird like that.) Voila, I have compression! So yes, it has to do with the line level signal.

That all said, I'm now in the market for a preamp, because I hate using the master volume to slam the signal and want to control everything prior to it going into the amp. That master volume quirk is just terrible! I'm thinking the WA73-EQ will be perfect, as it has the perfect frequency shelves for cutting highs and lows and carving out the bass fundamentals. I'm hoping with that, I won't need the Broughton Audio High + Low Pass Filter I was looking at. Until I can save up for that, I'll probably just put my MXR Bass DI in between the tuner and the WA76 to boost the signal.

 

I could, but I’m really digging the Rumble outside of the Master Volume thing. Plus, like I said, there’s other benefits to the EQ.

 

I’m just used to building a signal path a certain way, and for me, master volume should be a power amp level setting at the very end of the signal chain. It’s how every guitar amp I’ve ever owned works and it’s how live sound works, which is my background and probably why I’m so set in my ways!