Dunlop Wah Pedal

I use the normal straight "Original" Crybaby (the one you can get for $69.99 at Musicians Friend). I gig with it, and it's held up great. The sound is the one I hear in all those classic recordings from the '60s and '70s. I've played around with many different wah pedals, some very cheap, some costing upwards of $350. I have yet to find one that's sufficiently better than the Dunlop overall to justify a switch, especially at the prices they ask for. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Crybabys *do* need to be set up when you first get one. I find that out of the box, the "sweet spot" is too far towards the "heel" position of the sweep, and rocking the pedal forward just increases treble to painful icepick levels. This is a matter of personal preference, so adjust to *your* tastes. The pedals' "stiffness" may be adjusted by tightening or loosening the nylok nuts securing the pedal to the "fulcrum" on which it rocks underneath.

Here's a previous post where I and Witchdoctor describe how to set up a new Crybaby Original wahs' sweep.

http://forums.guitarnoise.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=35663#p334215

When adjusting a Crybaby as described, make sure to check that you haven't rolled the pot too far in one direction or the other, so that the pedal tries to rotate the pot past its' designed travel range. Damage to the pot can result.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Cheers!

Strat

Thanks much Stratman. I think I'm going to pick one up off of Ebay.

It's a great buy... I really like mine. I also adjusted the sweet spot and now i'm very happy with it. There are definitely better ones out there, but for the money, you get solid construction and great sound.

I have the original like Stratman, and it's a very good wah. I've also adjusted mine like he said , it's really very simple to do. Do not wipe the grease off, it's supposed to be there. :D

The Dunlops are good pedals. You can pick them up cheap and there are lots of mods that can be done to get the sound you want. Plus they have the filtered power jack installed unlike the original Crybabies.

I have a standard crybaby, I bought it 5 years ago or something. I like it, it really sounds great when played clean or overdriven/slight distortion, but when I really crank up the distortion to a heavy metal type tone, you have to be careful to NOT to cut the mids or else the wah sound starts to disappear, I don't think this is an issue with the pedal, I would imagine it has more to do with the fact that the wah is sweeping mid-range frequencies (if i'm not mistaken), and if they are all cut, almost no wah sound is present.

Anyways, It's so incredibly basic which i really like as well. I have also modded mine a little bit, and even though it sounds great stock, it is also an easy pedal to modify, if that interests you. I modded mine to have true-bypass, a fasel inductor and a moveable "Q" pot (which essentially controls how sharp or subtle the effect sounds).

I had a standard Crybaby for years. It broke a couple of years ago and coincidentally I finally got a new one coming, should be here tomorrow. It is the classic wah.