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1974 Morley Rotating Wah

Year: 1974
Brand: Morley
Model: Rotating Wah
Class: Wah
Owner: Jeff Hewitt
Status: in the process of being repaired.

So this one was very rough on arrival. It was intact and all there, but very rusty.

with a bit of work it came a long way. So these units are getting rare. Its just a Morley optical volume/wah with the tel-ray oil can leslie emulator added. The oil cans work using a motor and a spinning aluminum disk, anodized on one side. The heads (write, read, erase) in this case are conductive rubber wipers that brush the disk while it spins. The tricky part is the oil, it works as an insulator so the electro static charge the heads put to the disc isn't lost but it's also an electrolytic. Basically the unit is a rotating capacitor for storing and echo, in this case the rotating leslie effect. No oil, no echo. A scratched disc will make a click noise as it rotates. The heads write to the hardened anodized side of the disk. Quite an ingenious design for a 1959 patent.

2022-12-17: The first thing was to disassembly the unit and start rust removal.

A CLR bath for all the rusted parts and screws was in order. While they were bathing I went a head and restored the top cover with a replacement graphic I made. I removed the variation plate and reapplied it after the top was polished and the graphic added. Good by snow bird.

Now it was time to check the electronics, luckily everything was stock and in great shape, so I just had to replace a few caps and polish the housing. The oil can needed a full cleaning and rebuild. Pretty standard for these old monsters. I cleaned all the bearing and gave them a good oiling and a little silicon lube so the all spin free. The inside of the can had the oil dried oil solidified in the bottom so that took a bit of scrape and scrub to clean. The irreplaceable parts (the disc and the wipers) were gently cleaned with alcohol and reassembled.

The board the units mount to was separating so I removed the t molding and glued it back up. After it dried I cleaned and gave it a few coat of black and put the tmodling back in place. After the rust was removed from the big box, I cleaned and painted it, unfortunately the back was very pitted and will never be perfectly smooth again but a good coat of black paint has it looking pretty good. I may add a large Morley label to the back as many units had them. Everything is working as it should now, the oil can needs a little head adjustment as its a bit noisy and a tad low on oil as I only had a little here on hand left from another restoration (2 tbl spoons). I can really hear the effect when I move the can so I know Its just a little low. Oil is on the way. I also still need to add a knob to the rotating sound level pot and make a replacement "instrument/Amplifier" label from the jack side. It look like this unit may have never had that label, but I do like things clearly labeled as a lot of vintage effects are completely backwards from the modern ones.