Wah Wah Pedals

[Justin Cyder]

Where do you put yours?

I've had a Cry Baby on the board for a few years & it's placed after the tuner & compressor and before the overdrive, modulation effects & distortion.

Even though I've modded it with a red fasel, it sounds a bit weedy when I'm driving it with my tube screamer or Big Muff. My board is all screwed down to the extent it's not possible to swap the patch cables around without getting a screwdriver out & releasing all the boxes.

Would I be cranking up the wah if I stuck it after the distortion?

[gazza285]

No, post drive wah just sounds wrong. I've found you need plenty of middle in your sound for wah to work right. That and a Morley wah, never liked the Cry Baby sound myself.

[Justin Cyder]

Gah!

I chat with a guy on Twitter who had a few hits in the 90's & he's just told me the opposite! I suppose I'll have to wire it in & see for myself.

[Tom_C76]

I put mine first in the chain, but then I don't use compression. Surely it would be better to feed the wah with the straight guitar signal if possible?

[BorkFactor]

I don't use any pedals at all, so when I use my wah it is the only thing in the circuit! Would I be better to use it through the effects loop?

Either way, interesting thread. I will keep an eye on it - you hear different things all the time.

[Justin Cyder]

I bring it up as my stomp boxes are literally screwed to the board cheek by jowl & it's not an easy thing to reorder them.

At present, the order is tuner - compressor - wah - tubescreamer - Big Muff distortion - tremolo - chorus - phaser - delay.


I generally play at home through headphones & a boss E-band but use a Fender frontman 212r live & don't bother much with the effects loop. Looking around, I see a good deal of general consensus is that a wah likes to be close to the guitar & benefits from being pre-amp in the chain and yet plenty of others saying it's much more wah like after!

My wah use is generally to embellish an over driven solo so I'm going to unscrew it all tonight & do some testing on the chain.

[Justin Cyder]

Just to update, I trialled the signal path both ways & found that with my set up at least, the wah was significantly better pre o/d than after it. The wah felt thicker in the mids after the o/d but practically disappeared as the pedal was rolled off whereas pre o/d it was at least consistent throughout the tonal range.

I suspect in my case the issue is driving the distortion a little harder when I'm using the wah. Anyway, it's all filed away in the gear section now.

[davidd]

I've always used wah first, then od then whatever else I had....

[Dr Z]

I don't use wah, but pre-OD sounds about right with the way a wah works.

ETA: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/eff...

^This agrees.