How to Choose Your Cry Baby Wah

by Dunlop Staff Contributor
// Brand Spotlight
06-19-2017

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by: Dunlop Staff / 06-19-2017
Brand Spotlight

So you’ve spent some time with the Cry Baby® Standard Wah, getting a feel for how its sweep works and when to use it to season up your licks. The time has come to step up your Cry Baby Wah game, to branch out and explore different tonal possibilities. But there’s so many to choose form—where to begin?

We put this cheat sheet together to help you find a starting point. This guide is broken down by musical genre/style. It’s meant to be a general overview—your personal tastes and playing style will, and should always be, the deciding factor when you choose your next Cry Baby Wah.

Classic Rock

Cry Baby Classic Wah: This wah has a sweet midrange voice and a subtle response that’s perfect for old school rock.

Vintage Hard Rock

Jimi Hendrix™ Signature Wah: If you want the dark, thick, and focused sound Jimi Hendrix made famous, put this wah on your board. It’s perfect for gnarly distorted leads.

Joe Bonamassa Cry Baby Wah: This wah’s Halo Inductor-driven vocal growl sounds great when you’re pushing a moderate-gain tube amp into the gritty zone.

Modern Hard Rock

Jerry Cantrell Cry Baby Wah: This wah is very expressive and throaty with just the right amount of tone and response versatility thanks to a knob on the side that allows you to lower the frequency of the toe-down position.

Cry Baby 535Q Multi-Wah: This is the Swiss Army Knife of wahs. With an adjustable Q, six different selectable frequency ranges, and an adjustable output boost, the 535Q is perfect for players who like to tweak and tailor their sound from rig to rig and song to song.

Blues and Blues Rock

Buddy Guy Cry Baby Wah: Smooth, warm, and voiced like a bell. For straight up electric blues, what more could you want?

Clyde McCoy® Cry Baby Wah: This is our tribute to the very first wah pedal. Its super throaty and super expressive thanks to its Halo Inductor. This wah is great for blues and blues rock, but it sounds just as great when used for vintage hard rock.

Metal

Dimebag Cry Baby Wah: This is actually our most versatile wah pedal, featuring six selectable frequency ranges, adjustable Q and boost, toe -down voicing trim, and stereo outs. This thing lets you sculpt your tone into downright nastiness, especially when using high-gain amps.

John Petrucci Cry Baby Wah: If you want unprecedented control over your wah’s tonal spectrum, this is the wah you need on your pedalboard. It’s got all of the controls of the Cry Baby Rack Wah: Q, Volume, and six EQ controls. Right out of the box this wah is set to John’s own rack wah settings, but all you need to do is remove the bottom plate to re-tune the pedal to your own shredding delight.

Wild Cards

MC404 CAE Wah: This wah is great if you want to go back and forth betweeen vintage and modern sounds thanks to its switchable red and yellow Fasel Inductors. Quite handy if you play in a cover band. It’s also got a built-in boost so you can put your signal right in front of the mix.

Cry Baby 105Q Bass Wah: This one isn’t just for bass players! It has the deepest and broadest range, so if you’re a guitar player who wants a wah tone that’s rich and dark with a wide sweep, do yourself a favor and test this pedal out. It doesn’t use an inductor like most wahs. Rather, it’s voiced more like a classic envelope filter, which can get quite heavy! And with auto-return switching, you can step in and out of the effect for a seamless live experience.

Go Small

Cry Baby® Mini Wah: If you’re really tight on space, or you’re putting a down-sized travel board together, get yourself a Cry Baby Mini Wah. It’s got three different voices—GCB95 for the Cry Baby Standard Wah sound, Vintage for a subtler sound, and Low for a dark and throaty sound—in housing that’s half the size but can still take all the beatings on the road.

Jimi Hendrix™ Cry Baby® Mini Wah: This pedal has the same dark, vintage tone as its big brother with a more real estate-friendly footprint.

Cry Baby Mini Bass Wah: Get the wide, responsive range and auto-return switching of the Cry Baby 105Q Bass Wah with the Cry Baby Mini housing.