Zoom G3 B3 ashbass Patch Select Mod Instructions DIFFICULT

Wah Wah Pedal Retensioning the Treadle/Rocker DIFFICULT
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Many Wah Wah pedals suffer from floppiness in the treadle/rocker positions. Meaning that when you take your foot off of the pedal the treadle does not stay where you left it, but drops down to the toe-down postition. This is OK I guess for those players who just use the pedal for WahWah-ing and the treadle is already in toe-down postion for a quick tap to turn it on/off. Some other players like to use the Wah pedal for changing and maintaining the amount of Wah in their playing. They might postion the pedal in half-Wah and play with that filter in place. To do this, you need to "retension" the treadle part of the pedal. Retensioning will let the pedal stay in whatever postion you leave it in. Like heel-down and your foot comes off of the pedal and the pedal is still in the heel-down position. The steps below show how to retension a Wah pedal the hard way. The easy way you can find here.

Click on any photo below to see a larger version.

Here is the pedal I'm working on for the lesson. It's a 60s-70s Thomas Organ Cry Baby with a Halo inductor.
Obligatory gut shot.
We need to remove the treadle from the chassis. There is a metal rod/axle that holds the treadle on the chassis. The end of the axle on the left side of the pedal is larger than the one on the right side as the next photo shows.
The end of the axle on the right side of the pedal is smaller than the one on the left side as the previous photo shows.
To remove the axle you need to pound it out of the pedal with a small tool like a screwdriver.
The screwdriver goes in and the axle comes out.
The treadle can now be removed from the chassis.
Notice the tension strip that is bent where the axle would be. Manipulating the strip will tighten/loosen the treadle action.
A problem here is that the axle is blocked from passing through the holes due to the strip getting in the way. I didn't realize at the time that I could have loosened the screws that hold down each end of the strip until the axle rod could easily pass under it. So now the treadle is on, but we do not have access to the screws anymore and can't tighten them down and thus tighten the action of the pedal. See the easy way instructions for help getting this to work.
The end of the axle rod on the left in the image is stock. There was a minor bevel on this end. After trying to pound the rod through the hole on the left side of the treadle and then under the strip took a while with no success. So I sanded the end of the axle so that it could possibly better wedge itself under the strip and on to the hole on the right side of the treadle.
Here is the axle pushed through its holes and under the strip. I wanted to test getting it in before trying for real with putting the treadle back on.
Here is another angle of the axle and tension strip.
After a successful test, remove the axle again, put the treadle in place, and then pound the axle back through the hole on the left side and under the strip and finally through the hole on the right side of the treadle. I needed to add a little washer inside the pedal and between the hole on the left side of the pedal and the internal axle hole for that same side. Otherwise the treadle would move side to side as well as up and down. YMMV
And that's it. I wasn't impressed with this retensioning fix as it didn't really work to stiffen up the action of the pedal. The treadle was stiffer but it would still drop whenever I went heel-down or tried to set it at half-wah and then took my foot off of the pedal. See the easy way instructions for help getting this to work.

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