Manufacturer: MRB
$15.00
Included in the MRB Luxury Filter Bundle
DEMO SOUNDS ARE ON THE WahWah BUNDLE PAGE
This module is an emulation of the familiar guitar wah-wah pedal. It features emulations of 5 popular flavors of pedal as preferred and tuned by various artists plus my own special version. They are:
DN -- The original Vox / Dunlop pedal created in the 60s
HX -- Jimi Hendrix's rich, deep tone
JP -- John Patrucci's wide range
VH -- Eddie Van Halen's scream
TY -- The Tycobrahe Parapedal
MRB -- My own take on the effect
The main difference between the various styles is the frequency limit at the heel and toe of the pedal. There is also some variation in resonance, but this is secondary to the sound. Each style has hard limits no matter the setting of the POSITION knob or the control voltage. This is to keep true to each emulation. DN, HX, JP, and VH are all traditional wah-wah pedals which consist of variable 2-pole bandpass filters. TY is a wide range (especially at the low end) 2-pole lowpass filter. MRB is an 8-pole vocal tract simulation that actually says "wah".
{OPERATION}
This is a very basic module. Audio passes from IN to OUT. The POSITION knob traverses the range from full heel to full toe position of the pedal. The 2 CV jacks with their attenuverters modulate around the initial POSITION. Remember, the range is clamped to retain authenticity. The Q control can vary the resonance around the STOCK value to dull or sharpen the effect. Just like a real pedal, there is a BYPASS button. If a cable is patched to the BYPASS jack, the button is ignored and the bypass function is activated by a logic high signal (>1V). The BYPASS button will still light when controlled in this way.
Now, don't expect to sound like the artist's listed above just by using this pedal...module. There is more to shaping a tone than just a wah-wah pedal. Try experimenting with distortion pre and post pedal, and using a filter or two to simulate a speaker and do further tone shaping helps as well. Remember, there are no rules. Experiment, you can't break anything. Patch in a guitar through the AUDIO IN jacks up top. Learning to play like Jimi or Eddie couldn't hurt either.
{BACKGROUND}
I've got a little history with the Tycobrahe Parapedal. I was the line technician at Tycobrahe Sound Company back when they produced the now highly collectible (and very expensive) Octavia, Parapedal, and Pedalflanger. Anything that didn't work off the assembly line, I had to fix. I can't even begin to tell you how many trimpots I had to turn to calibrate all the Pedalflangers (which I co-designed with Jim Gamble).
As for the MRB effect, I've got some history there too. I authored the original Macintalk text-to-speech system for Steve Jobs, and when the Mac debuted in 1984, it announced itself on stage with my software. The MRB WahWah effect here is actually a more sophisticated vocal tract model than could be done on the Mac at the time. Witness the past here: