Like all the others above, I love the wah blocks. For the cost of a single expression pedal (highly recommend the Fractal offering, full size) you can setup dozens of specific wahs that sound exactly like the physical counterpart, no difference.
The default emulations are fantastic as-is and are all very close if not spot on, but these are so much better and off the top of my head a few additional benefits on top of being nearly indistinguishable from the actual pedals:
- It's very easy to go get the specs and settings for a custom/artist wah (for Dunlops for sure, lots to choose from), takes about 1 minute set your wah block to those exact specs, and instantly have an artist-spec Cry Baby. Fine tune from there, sky's the limit really. I about fell out of my chair the first time I setup a "Cry Babe" wah block to emulate a Dunlop Jerry Cantrell wah, incredible!!
@2112 gets all the credit for providing detailed tutorials on that subject.
- The ability to set how the wah is triggered (toe or heel), and set a range of motion as to when to engage/disengage. No more on/off switches!
- The ability to use a single pedal as a wah
and a volume
and something(s) else is easily achieved by assigning functions, especially useful in a "kitchen sink" setup where you have most of what you need in a single preset and don't want 3 physical expression pedals (
@Marco Fanton did a great job pointing that out in
a recent tutorial he made, also sells the preset for a few bucks, it's been immensely helpful in looking at what setting up a single preset to do it all looks like).
I wouldn't dream of implementing any of my physical wah's when the Fractal wah blocks are available. For the pedal itself I really like the Fractal offering, built like a high-precision tank and performs flawlessly.