Around the time I got my first electric guitar, maybe even on the same holiday (relatives are conspiratorial that way), I got my first guitar effect. It was a Crybaby wah-wah pedal.

Within a few days of owning the pedal, I had neatly written at least three porno soundtracks. Not bad considering I had never seen a porno let alone heard the soundtrack to one. But my friend Jeff had, and he smartly pointed out that my repetitive koo-whacka-whacka’s reminded him of the videos his older brother had stashed in the closet. I asked for proof.

Several eye-popping hours later, I replied listing all the guitar players I knew who used a wah. I started with Jimi Hendrix and ended with Jimmy Page. Okay, it was a short list but I was a kid, really, and I was still in my Ace Frehley, Angus Young phase. Kiss wasn’t a wah guitar band, and Angus could never stand in one place long enough to operate a pedal. But I felt Hendrix, Robin Trower, and Jimmy Page should be enough to convince anyone that wah pedals were cool.

It was clear to me then (still is) that the wah pedal can become an extension of the guitar. The separation between the two unique devices is blurred into one funky oneness. This is perhaps the best compliment I can give since many effects sound like they are ‘in addition’ to the instrument they are affecting. Modulation pedals, like choruses, phasers, and flangers, are examples of common effects that often sit atop the guitarist’s sound. Delays used to as well, but the Edge changed all that. Wah pedals don’t sound like an add-on, they sound like part of the guitar, or at least a component of guitar playing—like bending a string, or using a tremolo bar. Maybe that’s because, unlike mod and delay effects, you play the wah in direct relationship to what your hands are doing. This is what all the great players do with their wahs. They use it like a sustained and deliberate english on the ball. Neophytes to the craft of wah often just mark time with the pedal, pressing it down and back on the beat. Problem is that gives you the porno guitar sound which really has no place outside exploitation films or ’70s crime-drama chase scenes.

Make no mistake: When I talk about bad porno wah, I am not talking about the funkified and swing-a-licous tones of Wah Wah Watson. Wah Wah Watson is the man when it comes to R&B wah guitar, a respectable second cousin to the lewd soundtrack/car chase version I found myself dabbling in at a young age. “Papa was a Rolling Stone”, by the Temptations, “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye, and numerous Barry White and Jackson 5 tunes get a good deal of their shuck and jive from Wah Wah Watson doing his thing.

Listening to some of his work today, especially the Barry White stuff, you half expect Bret and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords to come in singing on skates. That’s not Mr. Watson’s fault. The sound and technique was whacka’d into the dirt where it has since bloomed as a cliché. Most people know the difference when confronted with it, so Wah Wah Watson may be obscure in some areas of music, but certainly not languishingly so.        

So why don’t I use a wah in my rig today?

Stigma.

There, I said it. Okay, I’m not sure if that is a true statement, though wah wankery (wahnkery!) has been around for a long time. In my attempt to sound different while sabotaging any possible chance of musical success, I avoid, for better and worse, the common and more popular gear and style trends in both music and wardrobe. That is partly why I don’t bring my wah out. There’s also that “one more thing” argument that veteran players who don’t have techs and cartage wrestle with. It seems that, if you’re the one hauling the gear and setting it up, you need less of it as the years go by. So like my triple-neck axe (zither, ukulele, and Flying V), the wah stays home. 

Many combo pedal systems, like the ones I use live, usually have a few wah pedal modeling effects in them. In other words, through digital signal processing (DSP), they emulate some of the classic wah pedals like the Dunlop Crybaby, the Morley wah pedal, or the original Vox 487.

The Crybaby is the classic wah, its history dates back to the first wah built for a guitar. Originally, the wah was designed and marketed for horn players. Vox (technically the Thomas Organ Company who purchased the Vox name in the ’60s) was the first to use the name Crybaby, but they didn’t trademark it, which is why virtually all the Crybaby Wah pedals you see and hear are from the US company Jim Dunlop. The Morley Power Wah is more unique than the standard Crybaby. It is darker, and, well, more obvious—like Dracula and the Wolfman crooning on a boogie-rock song. In the right hands (or feet), all three are awesome tools.

I own a Crybaby. Actually, I’m on my second after losing my original somewhere along that curvy line. Naturally, it would be worth more than the one I have today.

Most wah pedals are elegantly simple devices. Plug an amp in one side, the guitar in the other, and then push down the pedal to click the little button hiding underneath it to turn it on. The rest is playing guitar while moving your foot.

Rocking the pedal sweeps a filter (essentially a pre-set EQ) across your guitar sound. That’s what a wah pedal does. It is a lot like turning the mid-range EQ knob on an old stereo back and forth, only with your foot. Toe down; you’ve swept the filter toward the highest tones of your instrument, heel down, the lowest. But sometimes it’s best just to find that wicked spot in between and leave it. Zappa and Hendrix did that, along with many others. It’s a great way to get growling feedback, and a great way to make your guitar sound pissed off.

Wah pedals on those digital combo pedal boards have parameters. Parameters can suck the life out of getting your freak on with a plank of wood. Parameters are all the things we have to tweak to get that certain chorus sound or delay effect or environment. For a simple wah effect, the digital versions often let you program how far down and how far up you would like the pedal to go, what corner frequency and width you prefer on the filter, what shape for the sweep across the sound (heel to toe on the pedal), whether or not it should emulate an actual known wah pedal. Sheesh, all I wanna do is go koo-whacka-whacka, koo-whacka-whacka—though I’m pretty sure the guys in the band don’t want me to. Maybe that’s why I don’t bring the wah.

Like fireworks, the hole in the ozone layer, and prog-rock’s libido-killing effect on the ladies, the wah pedal was discovered by accident. Those guys at Thomas Organ, eager to cash in on the newly acquired Vox name and its connection with the Beatles, tried to make a cheaper, transistorized version of the Vox “Super Beatle” guitar amp. In doing so, they replaced the amp’s mid-range boost circuit with a mid-range tone circuit from one of their transistor organs. After hearing the result of this modification, they had the brilliant idea of putting the circuit in a volume pedal housing, which allowed one of the engineers to play his sax through it and control it at the same time. Then there was this smoky and hazy poof, and the next thing you know—“Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).”

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