Friday, 28 September 2007 21:46
Last Updated on Friday, 20 August 2010 07:34
Since I had 3 different versions of the EH Crying Tone pedal on hand, I thought this would be a good time to compare the 3 units and note the evolution of EH’s wah-style housings.
In the first pic, the wahs are arranged from old to new (L-R). The one on the left is a nice example from 1974. This was EH’s first attempt at this sort of pedal. It’s a well-built, sturdy casing, similar in styling to some DeArmond wahs I’ve seen. Were they bought from DeArmond? It’s possible. Anybody got a DeArmond to compare? In the center is a Crying Tone from 1977. Note that it’s a bit wider and has the footswitch exposed at the end, rather than under the treadle. The one on the right is an example from 1979. Personally, I’m not overly fond of this particular chassis, but it does serve the purpose. A couple of facts worth noting:
- All the catalogs up until about 1978 show the Crying Tone in the ’74 chassis, even when all other wah-style pedals were shown in the ’77 chassis. They also showed a toggle switch for SWEEP REVERSE instead of the rotary switch.
- I’ve yet to see a catalog which depicts the ’79 chassis. I have seen this chassis used on the Volume Pedal and the Talking Pedal, so I suspect it was used across the board by this time.
All 3 units had the same controls and the same circuit. The controls are: MODE (selects between wah and volume pedal), TONE RANGE (selects from 4 different wah sweeps) and REVERSE (changes the direction of the sweep from low-high to high-low). Give them credit for providing 4 usuable sweeps on the wahs. All are decent sounding and range from a deep bassy wah to a standard sweep.
By now you’ll have noticed there are 2 different circuit boards. The ’74 has an EH-5600 board while the ’77 and ’79 have an EH-3006 board. Both boards contain the same wah circuit. You also may have noticed some empty holes on the upper half of the EH-3006 board. Simply filling these empty spaces with a few parts and adding a control for fuzz volume and a footswitch for fuzz on/off would turn the wah into an EH fuzz-wah pedal. Having the boards made this way saved a lot of trouble since they could use the same board for 2 different products. You’ll also notice the ’77 housing has a plugged hole for the 2nd footswitch.
Labels for the controls were originally done with black adhesive labels but by ’79 the control labels were silkscreened onto the sides of the bottom plate. The ’79 also included another technological advance: the battery door!!
Finally, here’s a pic of the ’77 with it’s original box and foam knob protectors. Why does this pedal make me think of the Queen Alien from the ALIEN movies?
