Wilson Effects WH10V3 Retrofit

The Wilson Effects WH10V3 Retrofit is a wah pedal retrofit service: you send Wilson Effects your Ibanez WH10V3 and the shop rebuilds it around the original Ten Spot II circuit. The pedal keeps its existing enclosure and controls, so there are no major modifications to the enclosure, and it comes back with true bypass switching, pre and post effect volume control, and DIP switch Q controls for both guitar and bass settings¹.

Wilson Effects describes the retrofit as bringing the WH10V3 "closer than ever to the revered original V1 while offering expanded tonal flexibility"¹. The project has a long history at the shop: it was originally developed during the WH10V2 era, set aside, and then brought back after John at Wilson Effects started playing the modded V3¹.

What the retrofit changes on your pedal

The retrofit kit reuses the WH10V3's existing enclosure and controls and adds a 3PDT footswitch. The Guitar/Bass toggle switch on the stock pedal is replaced with a volume control¹. The stock WH10V3 itself ships with a selectable true/buffered bypass switch, which Wilson Effects calls an improvement over the WH10V2; the retrofit goes further and makes the pedal hard true bypass⁴.

The controls break down like this:

The Q controls are the heart of the tonal flexibility. Instead of a single fixed sweep, the internal DIP switches let a guitar player choose among six Q settings and a bass player tailor the wah response across two separate six position banks¹³.

True bypass and the fuzz buffer

True bypass switching is one of the retrofit's headline features. Wilson Effects says it "eliminates tone loss when the wah is off"¹. The same approach runs through the related Wilson Effects modification services: the shop's WH10 modification removes the buffer entirely and replaces it with true bypass switching, "eliminating any unwanted signal coloration"⁵, and the Modified WH10V3 and Modified WH10V3 with V1 Pot Swap pedals are both true bypassed with their mods⁵⁶⁴⁷.

The WH10V2 Retrofit, a separate service for the previous version of the pedal, takes a slightly different route: it keeps a fuzz friendly fuzz buffer alongside pre and post effect volume control, a vintage V1 replica potentiometer, and Q control⁸.

Can it be installed in a WH10V2?

Yes, as a separate service. The WH10V2 Retrofit is its own product at $180.00⁸. The WH10V3 retrofit installed into a WH10V3 is $165.00¹. The WH10V2 is the previous version of the WH10, superseded by the V3⁷.

How to send your pedal in

The process is simple:

1. Order the retrofit from Wilson Effects.
2. Send your pedal with a copy of your order to Wilson Effects in Guilford, IN¹.
3. The shop retrofits the pedal, reusing the existing enclosure and controls, and returns it¹.

The V1 pot swap

The V1 pot swap replaces the WH10V3's stock potentiometer with a V1 replica, which Wilson Effects describes as "an accurate reproduction of the WH10V1 potentiometer created by reverse engineering an actual V1 pot"⁹. The fully assembled WH10V3 Retrofit wah pedal at $275.00 includes the V1 vintage replica pot swap¹, and the same swap is offered on the Modified WH10V3 with V1 Pot Swap at $255.00⁴.

Wilson Effects also sells the replica pots on their own. The WH10 Replacement Pot is described as an exact replica of the original WH10V1 potentiometer, compatible with the WH10V1, V2, V3, Funk Factory, and Ten Spot II, though newer WH10 versions may require minor modifications for installation¹⁰. The OEM WH10V3 Pot is the stock replacement part at $7.00².

Prices at a glance

For more on the wah category generally, see wah pedals.

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