Wah Pedal Newbie

[Trip]

This may be a stupid question, but bare with me I'm new at using a wah pedal. I seem to have very little sweep response after the 15 fret when using my neck pickup. The bridge pickup is a little better but still not great after the 15 fret. I have a modded Crybaby gcb95. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Duffy]

Wah

Some wah pedals seem to be most effective in the bass frequencies. This might be physically adjustable with your pedal, I don't know.

My experience has been that when you get into the higher pitched sounds the wah gets very thin. It seems to wallow around in the full bass sounding frequencies very well, producing pronounced wah.

My new old style classic Vox with the chrome trim, no sure of what model, has more useable sweep of the pedal range - instead of just producing wah within a short half inch or inch of pedal travel, leaving the rest of the pedal travel as basically an exercise pedal, having no wah effect whatsoever. The new Vox reissue I got has a much longer range of effective pedal travel that actually produces wah sound, rather than being just an exercise pedal. Plenty of wah pedals have mostly no effective pedal travel that actually produces a modulation of the sound. Most of the travel up and down is dead space and you need to find the sweet spot, which can be very narrow indeed.

Some pedals are adjustable so they have more range of action, but none of mine do, other than what is designed into them - the Vox being far superior to my Cry Baby and some of the ones on multipedals. The tone on the Vox with the chrome trim is also far superior and it was well under 100 US. Some dude turned me on to the Vox one. It's a four hundred and something "A" I think, like a 425A or something. Maybe it's technically not much different, but practically it is WAY different. To each their own on wah pedals.

Don't be surprised if you find that most of them are minimally effective on the higher notes. You will have to search around and use your feel and your ear until you find one that works the way you want it to.

Good luck. I'm sure if you play all the ones you can find you will see the phenomenon I'm alluding to. Some of the good wahs are quite expensive.

I wonder how he wah pedal on that Line six HD500 is?

 

[Trip]

Thanks man, I actually tweeked it a bit. I adjusted the sweep on the pot and swapped out the red fasel for the yellow one and that seemed to help quite alot. All in all I think I'm gonna go to the local shop here and demo a Vox and see how it performs, I picked up the Crybaby for really cheap so it really was a no lose situation.:rockya

 

[Duffy]

Wah

Keep the Cry Baby too. Have some diversity. A bag of tools.

Also I would consider picking up a good multipedal. A lot of them like RP250 Digitechs are selling dirt cheap and used to be expensive and have usb connectivity as well as reg. amp jacks. These will have expression pedals and sometimes a few different types of wah and some are quite good sounding and sometimes combined with distortion or overdrive, etc. They even have auto wah built in. A multipedal is a cool item if you get a good one. You can practically tell which ones are good ones just by looking at them - the good ones have a good vibe and obviously have some features that stand out clearly, like adjustability knobs instead of hidden computer menus. The more dials the better I think. These are almost universally more intuitive and easy to use right off the bat, instead of figuring out hidden menu settings and so forth. A multipedal can be very cool, and contain a noise gate, a very useful item when playing a noisy telecaster thru a high gain amp model or amp with an overdrive or distortion pedal, etc. A noise gate is awesome. Plus you can stack effects on some of the pedals and combine effects you want. Some are already combined and can be tweaked.

Then again, there is no substitute for individual pedals, in my opinion. I use just a reverb and an overdrive many times, straight into a good tube amp.

I hope some of these ideas help. Also, if you don't have one, a full sized humbucker guitar will be very rewarding, to compliment your single coil strat or other single coil guitar. I'm about to play my Agile AL 3100 cherry burst LP copy right now thru my Hot Rod Deluxe or Tweaker head. Very rewarding combinations to play that get and hold your attention and make you WANT to play and take lessons, etc.

 

[Trip]

Really appreciate the advice. I just installed some new custom wound humbuckers from JS Moore here in Canada. I don't even have the words man, these pickups brought my Epiphone Sg to life. Jon is a great guy and really has a gift for winding pickups. Glad you mentioned a smart gate, wondering if you have any opinions on the MXR Smart Gate?