I've been experimenting with wah wah

[osiris]

I wanted to perfect my wah wah sound that I use on my Fantom X and I thought what better way than to plug my guitar into the Fantom's external input and play whilst I shape the filter.

I'm by no means the most knowledgable guy on this sort of stuff, but from what I do know, wah is a sweeping band-pass filter. When the lower frequencies are let through, you get an ooh sound, the higher ones give an aah sound. As you sweep from low to high this gives you a wah effect.

With all the things I've tried so far, I've used the Fantom's Super Filter in its MFX to create the filter sweep and create the wah sound.

I started by throwing together the settings I normally use and tweaking them to get a good sound, I then put an amp simulator after the filter which sounded odd, so I swapped them and had the amp first and filter second. The settings I originally used sounded ok on a clean guitar upto a mild overdrive.

I don't know who else has tried a similar experiment, but I wonder if anyone can relate to what I tried next.

I wanted to try and get a really high gain guitar wah, so I set the amp settings to what I liked, and found that using a band-pass filter was cutting out too many frequencies no matter what I set the cut off and resonance to. It just sounded far to hollow.

So I changed from a band-pass to a high-pass filter therefore letting all low frequencies through and then sweeping through the frequencies to let mids and highs in as well. After some more tweaking this sounded much better.

As I stated above, I don't know much, but I thought wah was a band-pass filter. Has anyone else found for high gain wah, band-pass doesn't work so well on their synths?

Hopefully someone will find this post mildly useful or interesting. Just thought I'd share some of the things I found.



Thanks,
Osiris

[mmichaelc]

Shouldn't it be a low pass filter? As you increase the cutoff it lets more frequencies through.
A high pass filter lets in less low/mid frequencies as you increase it.

I don't know much about guitar signal chain but you could try putting some distortion before the wah and then an amp sim after with not much gain.

[osiris]

Shouldn't it be a low pass filter? As you increase the cutoff it lets more frequencies through.
A high pass filter lets in less low/mid frequencies as you increase it.

I don't know much about guitar signal chain but you could try putting some distortion before the wah and then an amp sim after with not much gain.

Actually yes. It should have been low pass filter. My mind must have been elsewhere when I was editing the filter settings... Regardless of that though, I've actually got a better sound using the high-pass filter than a band pass with a high gain amp simulator...

[PinkFloydDudi]

lol, I gave up on that and just purchased a guitar wah pedal and put it in my signal chain. lol.

[osiris]

lol, I gave up on that and just purchased a guitar wah pedal and put it in my signal chain. lol.

I do actually own a dunlop cry baby pedal, but the reason I've been tampering with this stuff is because I want to make good wah effect for synth patches. I thought the easiest way to improve it would be with a real guitar as it's what I'm most used to hearing a wah effect on... I thought it would therefore be more obvious to my ears if it sounded right or needed tweaking. :smile:

[PinkFloydDudi]

I do actually own a dunlop cry baby pedal, but the reason I've been tampering with this stuff is because I want to make good wah effect for synth patches. I thought the easiest way to improve it would be with a real guitar as it's what I'm most used to hearing a wah effect on... I thought it would therefore be more obvious to my ears if it sounded right or needed tweaking. :smile:

Sounds like a great tip, I would never have thought of it. Most people likely are more familiar with the guitar wah.

My only concern would be that the guitar sound is not really the full spectrum of a keyboard. However I'd imagine it would be a good starting point at the very least.

[osiris]

Sounds like a great tip, I would never have thought of it. Most people likely are more familiar with the guitar wah.

My only concern would be that the guitar sound is not really the full spectrum of a keyboard. However I'd imagine it would be a good starting point at the very least.

Well I can confirm that it's definitely helped my understanding of wah and helped me to improve making it and adapting it to suit the patches. Might do more experimenting with other stuff soon... But what? :confused:

[PinkFloydDudi]

Well I can confirm that it's definitely helped my understanding of wah and helped me to improve making it and adapting it to suit the patches. Might do more experimenting with other stuff soon... But what? :confused:

vocals? Think that would get to a bigger range than guitar?

Just throwing random ideas at ya!

[Grey Loki]

But what? :confused:

Sidechain input level to cutoff frequency and then put drums through it for some interesting rhythmic effects.

Side note on the use of filters: I like to use a downward-swept lowpass filter as well as volume reduction when ending a song with a fade, just to add a bit more interest to an otherwise-boring ending :)

[osiris]

I'm currently in the process of recording my band, in which I do the lead vocals too. So might experiment with some multitracking stuff, and using delay and mild detuning to get a thicker sound.

It's metal vocals by the way. But that'd probably be a wortwhile thing to spend time playing about with.