Internal or External Wah?

steve_k

steve_k

Inspired
I am undecided. Both have advantages/disadvantages.

What is some of the boards preferences? I kind of like my Dunlop Rack wah and have better luck on the higher gain presets with it. Still trying to dial up the internal one though.


Steve
 
I sold all of my wah pedals and am completely happy with the axe-fx wahs. I usually start with the 'mortal' for high gain presets and tweak from there.

Sent from Moto X
 
I haven't used wah in almost 20 years, but I'm about too again.

Do I have to push in a button on my controller first, and then go to the expression pedal when I want to use the Axe Wah's?


Jan
 
Jan Geerts said:
I haven't used wah in almost 20 years, but I'm about too again.

Do I have to push in a button on my controller first, and then go to the expression pedal when I want to use the Axe Wah's?


Jan
Click to expand...

You can set The wah block to auto engage, then the wah turns on when you move The expression pedal, or you can have an IA turn The wah on/off if you prefer that
 
Ok, followed the instructions from this clear vid (thank you, mister Katsukuri) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vip2op6TWkc, and now I have excellent wah.

The only downpoint is that when I want to switch the wah off, I need to press the preset pedal again. Which requires some dancing. And the fees for my moves are high.

Seriously, an expression pedal with a toe switch would be handy. Any out there?
 
Jan Geerts said:
Ok, followed the instructions from this clear vid (thank you, mister Katsukuri) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vip2op6TWkc, and now I have excellent wah.

The only downpoint is that when I want to switch the wah off, I need to press the preset pedal again. Which requires some dancing. And the fees for my moves are high.

Seriously, an expression pedal with a toe switch would be handy. Any out there?
Click to expand...

With auto engage you can set a zone (toe or back) to turn off the wah.

For expressions with a pedal switch look at mission engineering.
 
acidfrost said:
With auto engage you can set a zone (toe or back) to turn off the wah.

For expressions with a pedal switch look at mission engineering.
Click to expand...

Yeah, excellent feature. I set mine to off at 5% so at heel down, wah is off. I tried the Misson pedals but like my Ernie Ball JR´s longer "range/sweep" better so sticking with EB for my wah and other pedal features
 
You can also get a mission with a spring to rock it back to heel position as soon as you step off of it. I used to have a toe switch based what but like this setup much more. Just step on and push down and the thing is active. Rock back to heel or step off and it is off.

HTH
Kevin
 
Spring based pedals are worth their weight in gold for Wah. So nice just stepping on the pedal and having it engage and then when I'm done, just step off and it turns off, 100%. So much easier than the days of a toe switch not catching and having to step on it again harder etc to make sure its off.

I think the spring option adds $15 to a mission pedal and well worth it.
 
steve_k said:
I am undecided. Both have advantages/disadvantages.
Click to expand...
I can't think of one disadvantage the internal WAH block has. Or one advantage that an external wah would have over the internal WAH block.

What do you think those advantages and disadvantages are?
 
iaresee said:
I can't think of one disadvantage the internal WAH block has. Or one advantage that an external wah would have over the internal WAH block.

What do you think those advantages and disadvantages are?
Click to expand...

More than likely operator error on my part and set up. I use a spring loaded Mission pedal which is convenient with the auto engage. My biggest problem so far with the models is really getting the wah to hit hard like it does up front with an external wah. Seems with the models that the wah is running to homogeneous with the preset and not up front of everything. Know what I mean? Probably need a bit more time with it. Tones are fine, just tweaking the impact of the model.

Steve
 
iaresee said:
Or one advantage that an external wah would have over the internal WAH block.
Click to expand...

one advantage can be that you free up one expression pedal for other stuff. If you are a heavy wah user you want your wah in every preset. Therefor one ep has to be reserved purely for wah. An external wah can be used any time so you don't have to decide beforehand if your preset needs a wah. Better for spontaneous jams.
Other advantage can be the sound of a specific wah pedal. Some are hard to emulate or just sound better.
Other big advantage can be better real time control. Wah frequencies and volumes are very sensitive to room acoustics so they need to be adjusted every time when you are playing in another situation or room. If you have a pedal wah with more knobs it is much easier to adjust on a gig than going through menus on the front panel.

Also personally I don't like auto engage because it jumps off too quickly for my taste even in the slowest auto engage setting. Wish they included longer auto engage time.
 
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steve_k said:
More than likely operator error on my part and set up. I use a spring loaded Mission pedal which is convenient with the auto engage. My biggest problem so far with the models is really getting the wah to hit hard like it does up front with an external wah. Seems with the models that the wah is running to homogeneous with the preset and not up front of everything. Know what I mean? Probably need a bit more time with it. Tones are fine, just tweaking the impact of the model.

Steve
Click to expand...

Here's a collection of Wah blocks: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/870088/AxeFx/blocks/wah-blocks.zip

Those are all the blocks I've collected over the last year or so that I thought were worth keeping around. Most of them come from the Mother-of-all-Effects-Emulation thread (MOAEE in the zip file) but some are from Yek, Scott Peterson, Voes, javajunkie, etc.

I use the Trey A Crybaby -- that's my personal wah block tuning and go-to wah for all my patches.

Just drop those .blk files in to your Axe-Edit blocks folder and they'll show up in AE as saved blocks when you drop a WAH block on the grid.
 
Bodde said:
one advantage can be that you free up one expression pedal for other stuff. If you are a heavy wah user you want your wah in every preset. Therefor one ep has to be reserved purely for wah. An external wah can be used any time so you don't have to decide beforehand if your preset needs a wah. Better for spontaneous jams.
Click to expand...

Given an external wah is an expression pedal, why not just run another expression pedal to your MFC or whatever controller you're using? You're hauling along the same number of pedals so there's no weight or space gains having the external wah.

And, using scenes and some magic, you can control multiple effects with one expression pedal. See: Axe-Change - Download Preset - 8:1 Controller - by iaresee and http://forum.fractalaudio.com/news/72486-axe-fest-ii-18.html#post929309 -- that's 8 parameters tied to one expression pedal, selected by scene!

Other advantage can be the sound of a specific wah pedal. Some are hard to emulate or just sound better.
Click to expand...
Can't argue this. I find the WAH block hard to tune. I posted a collection of blk files above that I've saved over time that represent good, tuned WAH block settings. Though I pretty much use my Trey A Crybaby tuning 99% of the time now. Once you get it tuned...
 
Huh. I consider myself a WAH-Whore. I lurve the WAH and the wah block in the AXE II is crazy-awesome-powerful. I don't think there's a wah sound it can't replicate and take to another level.

Dig into the wah block, I think you'll like it. Oh - another vote for the spring-loaded Mission pedal.

One AXE II Wah quibble: I'd like an option to delay the wah auto *DIS*engage a bit (immediate, slow, medium, long).

BC
 
I use the internal wah mainly to avoid the impedance issues with my vintage wah pedals.

A total pain the arse without true bypass etc. They still deliver awesome tone but for the shows I do the built in wah is great.

I recently started using envelope to slight lower the wah block level with a modifier. That way I can get some serious quack and also keep the overall level within the range I want.

I'm not completely sold on the level modifier yet it's a work in progress but I got some pretty cool stuff with the funk wah using that technique.
 
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