Reproducing Petrucci's Wah

[flying_walrus]

as a huge fan of Dream Theater* and John Petrucci's playing, I decided to see if i could reproduce his custom Crybaby Wah with my FX8.

looking at the Dunlop web site, i find that they include a picture of his preferred settings in the manual for the JP95.

so i started out with a "Cry Babe" wah, and changed the following settings

• the manual says that the "heel down low-pass" is 200-240 hz, and i see that the "Q" set screw is set to the middle, so i picked 220hz as a starting approximation for "Frequency Min"
• the manual says the "toe down high pass" is 1.2 to 1.5 kHz, so i set "Frequency Max" to 1350 hz.
• i left "resonance" alone.

the other big feature of the JP95 is the 6 band EQ, so i put a graphic EQ after the WAH, and luckily, the first 6 bands in the 7 band GEQ are identical to the bands in the JP95. I chose to use a Variable Q EQ, although i don't actually know what's in the pedal.

It's hard to directly turn the pictures of the set screws into numbers - I don't know how far the screws turn, and we don't know how much range each band has, so take these settings with a grain of salt:

• 100 hz: -9
• 200 hz: -4
• 400 hz: +3
• 800 hz: +4
• 1600 hz: +8
• 3200 hz: -8
• 6400 hz: 0

next the tricky part: getting the two effects to come on at the same time.

• I'm controlling the WAH with an EV1 pedal plugged into the Pedal 1 jack, so I set the control source to extern 1, the "auto engage" parameter to "medium position" and the off value to 5%. (this is straight out of the manual): update: i've changed the curve so there's more difference near the tow-down position by setting the slope to 40% and the mid to 33%

​

• i want the EQ to come on at the same time, but i don't want any of it's parameters to change as the pedal moves (and there are only 2 parameters to choose from anyway), so i attach the EV1 to the balance, and set the start, middle, and end values to 50%, auto engage to "medium position", and off value to 5%:

​

I've attached my preset, and the WAH and GEQ blocks for people who aren't using the mighty FX8.

enjoy!

edited - i've changed the curve in the wah modifier so there's more change near toe-down.


* although not so much the lyrics in The Astonishing

 

[alboz28]

wow - thank you for doing this - can't wait to try it

 

[reilly]

Nice!!! I will try this tomorrow, can't wait

 

[Davus PG]

Amazing.

I posted about trying this a whike back but never got anywhere with it. Was even tempted to buy a Petrucci wah. Can't wait to try yours. Thank you.

 

[ATR1]

Go to the 4:10 mark and start.

 

[flying_walrus]

updated the original post with new "slope" and "mid" settings in the WAH modifier, so there's more change in sound near the toe-down position

 

[rich_b]

 

[rich_b]

I was gonna do the whole tweaking thing to try to get the sweep and tones close from the JP95 which is essentially a crybaby rack Wah (had one in my big rig),then asked myself why?
The JP95 is Boss!!
Richb

 

[flying_walrus]

I was gonna do the whole tweaking thing to try to get the sweep and tones close from the JP95 which is essentially a crybaby rack Wah (had one in my big rig),then asked myself why?
The JP95 is Boss!!
Richb

I thought seriously about this, but I'm out of room on the pedalboard, and I love auto-engage.

 

[rich_b]

I thought seriously about this, but I'm out of room on the pedalboard, and I love auto-engage.

So how was your effort resulting in reproducing the Crybaby rack wah sweeps?
Richb

 

[Chas]

This is super cool! JP's wah sound is great! Looking forward to trying this out. Thanks!

Chas

 

[armyguyenglish]

It's hard to directly turn the pictures of the set screws into numbers - I don't know how far the screws turn, and we don't know how much range each band has, so take these settings with a grain of salt

Hopefully this can help approximate settings. The rack has +/-15db eq knobs. The pedal has +/-18db eq knobs.
We don't know where the pots start/end on the pedal, but we can see min/max on the rack knobs. We know middle is 0. The rack wah seems to have different settings to me, I would think it would be more accurate as seeing as it's what i assume to be his show rig. The Q seems almost maxed on rack, which might be the default middle position for the pedal. 1.6khz is what the range is set to on the rack.

 

[Tahoebrian5]

Nice work! What strategy did you come up with for activating the eq along with the auto-engage for the wah?

 

[brokenvail]

well has any of you actually tried these setting??? Would love to hear other's thoughts

 

[Danny Danzi]

And you guys just keep on innovating and coming up with cool stuff.....awesome work flying_walrus!

 

[Olli Happ]

Hi everybody, hi rich_b,
I´m thinking about getting the JP wah and was wondering, how your experiences are with analog wahs (especially the John Petrucci) in front of the Fractal FX8 (input 1 of the Fractal FX8). Does it take analog wahs well, is there any clipping or other kind of trouble?
Thanks for helping out!

Regards,
madcap

 

[yek]

• the manual says the "toe down high pass" is 1.2 to 1.5 kHz, so i set "Frequency Max" to 1350 hz.

Yes, for a cutting Wah tone into an high gain amp, turn down Freq Max.
Jerry Cantrell's wah sound is still one of my favorites, and that's also a dark wah.

 

[Chiguete]

So who has test this out and can comment on how well this goes next to the real thing?

 

[Olli Happ]

Hi,
I have a real Petrucci wah for a few months. The onboard wahs are surprisingly good in comparision. But still the real thing has a bit more
depth and warmth, but you can get pretty close with some eqing. What bothers me is, that it seems like the Petrucci wah is clipping the FX8 a lot on distorted patches. I sometimes get a horrible loud noise, that somehow freezes and won´t go away.
I still have to figure out how to get rid of it. It´s a pain!

Regards

 

[6L6C]

Hi,
I have a real Petrucci wah for a few months. The onboard wahs are surprisingly good in comparision. But still the real thing has a bit more
depth and warmth, but you can get pretty close with some eqing. What bothers me is, that it seems like the Petrucci wah is clipping the FX8 a lot on distorted patches. I sometimes get a horrible loud noise, that somehow freezes and won´t go away.
I still have to figure out how to get rid of it. It´s a pain!

Regards

How does the wah react on a clean patch, is it starting to clip?? Maybe increase the pad on the input setting of the FX8.
Have you tried the wah straight into the input of the FX8?
It's been a while but, "Rich_B" (a few post above) also had noise problems from his JP wah and ended up sending it back to Dunlop for repair after talking to them. It worked fine with the FX8 after it came back.

John