Wah position - pedal board?

[kr236rk]

Hi,

 

Been having a lot of trouble with a Cry Baby mini wah, the fuzz seems to neutralise it. Yesterday I placed the fuzz in front of the wah & bingo! Now I got good fuzz + wah But I thought traditionally the wah came first on a pedal board

[Phil O'Keefe]

Wah can go before or after a fuzz pedal. Some fuzzes absolutely NEED to be the first pedal in your chain... but even if they can be placed later, sometimes you might like the sound better when the wah is placed after the fuzz in the signal path.

 

FWIW, I usually prefer the sound with the wah after the fuzz pedal too.

[JimLiedeka]

My first guitar was a Yamaha SE200, a kind of chunky fixed-bridge strat clone. I never liked the sound of my Dunlop Crybaby when I put it first. My single coil pickups couldn't get much sound out of it. I had a distortion pedal and putting that first made a huge difference in my wah enjoyment. Later when I got a guitar with humbuckers, I didn't have the same problem.

 

I recently got a Morley mini wah but have only played LP type guitars through it. I'll have to try a strat or tele and see how that works.

[WRGKMC]

Wah before the pedal instantly reminds me of that Motown song Cloud 9 redone here by Meshell Ndegeocello here played by the the Funk Bros who originally recorded it with the Temptations.

 

This sound is what you call "Fuzz Wah" and a bunch of pedal makers from japan made Fuzz Wah pedals. I had a couple of them back in the day. I even had the one that had a built in police siren that would freak out all the people in the audience doing drugs. Give the people dropping acid a bum trip thinking the place was being raided by the cops.

 

I think morley did it best with their Fuzz wah but theres no shortage or recordings including this one that had the fuzz before the wah. The main thing is the fuzz would amplify the noise just as much as the notes and the wah would essentially create surf sound from all the white noise. Like I said it worked on this somg very well, but because it was so successful, every time you tried it that way it instantly reminded people of those Motown songs. That theme song to Shaft was another one with wah.

 

[video=youtube_share;356dEAVdBPs]

 

I was never a big fan of fuzz before wah. It lacks all dynamics. of course the type of fuzz and wah used can make a huge difference too. For me I like drive after the wah and compressor before the wah can make for much longer sustains when working the pedal.

 

 

[daddymack]

This sound is what you call "Fuzz Wah" and a bunch of pedal makers from japan made Fuzz Wah pedals. I had a couple of them back in the day. I even had the one that had a built in police siren that would freak out all the people in the audience doing drugs.

The Foxx Fuzz, flocked red pedal, had that one for a while, ~1970/71...the siren really sucked...sounded like a smoke alarm of the day...

 

I will agree that normally the wah should be in front of the rest of the pedals except compression [and maybe the buffer depending how long a chain]...it can be moved back in the chain depending on the sound you want, but then I don't like 'fuzz', I prefer tube distortion or overdrive...back in the olden times, I put my Phase 90 in front of my Guild wah/OD pedal...which was a very interesting sound, came close to simulating a flanger before flangers were available.

 

So, really, there are no right answers, it all depends on the sound for which you are looking.

[WRGKMC]

Very true. If I use a Phaser I put it before my drive pedals which produces an "Auto Wah" effect.

 

I have used overdrive pedals dialed back to simply being a hot preamp sound before wah pedals then using other driver pedals after the wah.

How much you want to gain the signal up before the wah becomes a noise issue.

 

Maybe with a noise gate and noiseless pickup you can get away with it but pedal order doesn't become a big factor till you're dialing up "live" performance levels. Feedback and hum can become a real problem when the wrong pedal order is used.

 

 

[kr236rk]

That's my pedal set-up at the moment. Can't get that 'scream' effect from any other wah (this is a mini on a try-out board) - have stopped using overdrive because it completely cuts up the fuzz signal, use the amp instead with its 'crunch' setting. Know you're not supposed to do this in tandem with fuzz effects but the overall sound is better than mixing fuzz plus overdrive pedals, in a chain, I have found. I have a Fender fuzz-wah but it was a pain because you could lose track of where in the switch-over you were, it's broken now - never liked it much - huge, heavy clunking thing. Also picked up a Budda wah but I don't use it - it also suffers from a special power plug/socket arrangement which makes it a nuisance on any board.

[dweebking]

some fuzz pedals are eq'd so heavily, the wah disappears if it's ahead of it

i ended up with a fuzz before and another after, fix'd

[kr236rk]

Wah is ok in this set-up, just wish I was using my full size one

 

[mambosun]

As someone stated it before, it all depends on the wah you use; some years ago, I stuggled to find a wah which could cope with distortion and fuzz placed after it, which could bring expressivness to my tone. My quest has ceased as soon as I tried a Geoffrey Teese RMC 6 WoF wah and I still use after 10 years.
As a matter of fact I'm now gassing a second wah, a RMC 10.
To my hears, a wah placed after the dirt usually mud your tone, bluring definition and harmonics, and the effect is far from being subtle . But it's a matter of taste.

[mikesr1963]

Whatever works.