Vox 847 & Dunlop Cry Baby GCB-95
The wah sound is based on the early jazz trumpeters using mutes to give a more vocal effect to their sound but today guitarists have claimed the wah sound as their own. It’s one of the great pedal effect sounds of all time thanks to a couple of virtuoso guitarists but the modern Wah units are seriously deficient in capturing that classic tone we all want from the simple Wah Circuit. That’s fine if you are doing a soundtrack for a 70’s porn movie, but you’re probably not. So we need to fix it. Thankfully it’s easy to put this right.
There are a number of tweaks that I’ve experimented with over a long time and I always come back to the same point – there is one wah sound that really cooks and it’s the sound Jimi Hendrix uses on Voodoo Chile.
Modern wahs need work to get back to that sound, the voicing needs to be fixed and the sweep filter in new wahs is all wrong. The input sucks tone like no other effect pedal I’ve used, so that needs radical surgery as well.
There are more advanced mods that can be done that make sense, but the key mods are contained in the Dexter Mods Voodoo Chile mod*and True Bypass mod*.
- Voodoo Chile Mod
- True Bypass Mod
- Red or Yellow Fasal Upgrade Mod
- Vox Power Jack and L.E.D Mod
I also have some spare wah parts if you want to fix some parts on your Vox 847 or Dunlop Cry Baby GCB-95
- Wah Parts
I found a great article on using the wah effectively with some sound samples, check it out here.
*These mods apply to the following Wah pedals:
Dunlop GCB95 (Standard Crybaby), Dunlop Hendrix JH1, Dunlop Hendrix JH1-B, Dunlop Zakk Wylde
Vox V847 (Old standard Vox), Vox V847-A (New standard Vox) , Vox V848 (Clyde McCoy)
I don’t do these mods on the following wahs:
535Q, GCB95F (Crybaby Classic), Dimebag Darrell Crybaby From Hell, Slash Wah, Hendrix Fuzz Wah, Mr. Crybaby Volume/Wah, Rackmount Crybaby,95Q.