Ibanez WH10 V3 volume control [SOLVED]

[Giu Lio]

Hi All,
I am very unexperienced in modding but, from time to time, I get the opportunity to help friends and get deeper knowledge of this topic.
A friend of mine needed a mod to solve the issue of volume peak with WH10 V3. This is a well known issue and, even though several people explain that this pedal should not be used on the clean channel of the amp, my friend uses this pedal with different equipment therefore he could not rely on this solution. It is apparently rather common that people writing about this pedal use the WH10 after overdrive, distortion and fuzz in Frusciante style, just like this friend of mine, therefore the issue becomes unbearable in this configuration.

As I wrote, I am not experienced and actually did not really know exactly what I was doing except solder, cut here and there, throw away some pieces... but it works. Some aspects of this solution are not really elegant for the experienced ones who might want to give some advise on how I could have done better. Thanks in advance!

This pedal now works as intended and I just wanted to share the photos of the process because I could not find these info anywhere except in the following link where I found a very precious hint:
Ibanez WH10 V2 volume control - viewtopic.php?p=289926&hilit=Ibanez+WH1 ... ol#p289926

Well... zedsnotdead actually gave more than a hint but the solution. Anyway, due to my lack of tech knowledge, even after reading that topic I was not really sure of what I was doing and a step by step guide would have helped me, so I hope this will help others. Thanks to zedsnotdead and other who participated in that topic.

Here we go.

7mm hole for the 100k pot, as close as possible to the bypass switch. This is where I wanted the pot to be but caused some additional work later:

Mount the pot:

Extend C11 in front of the Output to make room for the 100k pot:

Put the capacitor in a safe position. Cut the corner (cutter + soldering iron) of the output to make room for the pot. This will be necessary while putting the board back in place:

Remove R6 (thanks again zedsnotdead!) and solder two extensions of abt 20-25cm to be soldered to the 100k pot on the other end:

Put everything back into position, extremely carefully. I never though a wah could be this dense inside:

Enjoy the yellow knob:

I hope this helps and any comment is sincerely appreciated.
Cheers!
G

[zedsnotdead]

Nice work!!
Thank you for refering me

[Ichabod_Crane]

But, if you replaced R6 (R11 430k in Dirk's schematics) with a 100k pot, you tamed the boost, but you lose a lot of the gain, too. Does a 500k log pot work better?

[winstonchurchill]

Thanks @Giu Lio and @zedsnotdead
I synthesized both your posts to add a 500k pot for volume to my wh10 v3. The hard part was figuring out how to remove bypass/buffer switch and keep connections active for bypass only. I ended up just soldering blue to black for each molex connector. Once I did that it was easy to solder a pot to R6 holes.

[Giu Lio]

Hi there! Returning back to this topic months later to confirm that, as said by Ichabod_Crane and winstonchurchill, the 100k pot is just not correct but a 500k does the job instead. I called my fried to get the pedal back and used a B500k which was the only one I had available and it works.
In my case I had a lot of troubles in positioning the new larger pot into the old hole. It eventually worked by soldering the wires directly to the holes in the pot and cutting the pot pins because they do not allow the circuit board to be put back in place properly (at best) or the output jack to fit in completely. In the end, the pot is slightly angled for lack of sufficient room in the pedal. A bit hanky panky and I am not completely satisfied of the result but at least I learned a lot and my friend has a working pedal.

Therefore I think the solution showed by winstonchurchill is definitely the best and easiest one.

Thank you all!