Fuzz Face Distortion & the Gypsy Fuzz

With a Fuzz Face^® Distortion, Hendrix could elicit an endless variety of tones by using different pickup combinations, manipulating his guitar’s volume control, and picking at different areas of a string. This unruly stompbox not only gave him a full-on primal howl with its burly, fat-sounding fuzz tones—it afforded him remarkably detailed clean textures as well.

The Are You Experienced album remains a shining example of Hendrix’s ingenious use of the effect. The song “Manic Depression,” for example, has Hendrix veer in and out of grainy yet-almost-twangy tones during the verses only to go to full-on meltdown during the solo with howling sustain and thick-as-a-brick midrange. By backing down his guitar’s volume control, Hendrix used the exaggerated treble bite and hyper-sensitive attack the Fuzz Face Distortion offers to enhance clean tones and make them really speak. Another example of this sonic yin-yang is, among others, “Third Stone from the Sun,” as it features some amazingly jangly chordal work as well as the insane sonic equivalent of WWIII, all achieved with help from the Fuzz Face Distortion.

Over the course of ’69 & ’70, Jimi Hendrix played several famous shows  using a particular Fuzz Face Distortion, red with  white knobs, that sounded completely different from the others in his arsenal. Whereas standard Fuzz Face Distortions tend to sound smooth and girthy—to varying degrees, depending on the transistor, of course—this mysterious pedal was snarling and aggressive in character.

The song “Machine Gun” from Band of Gypsys and the rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from Woodstock demonstrate the uniquely biting tones of this particular Fuzz Face Distortion. In both examples, Hendrix combined the fuzz effect with his Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato to imbue his notes with an ethereal chainsaw quality.

That mysterious prototype has been lost to history, but our engineers pored tirelessly over all of the different customized circuit designs Jimi used over the years. They narrowed it down to a version of the Octavio® circuit that didn’t have the octave up signal. After making a few tweaks, they nailed the elusive sound heard on the aforementioned live recordings. For this series, we have dubbed it the Gypsy^™ Fuzz.

Cry Baby Wah

Released in August of ’67, “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” is the first recorded example of Hendrix using a Cry Baby^® Wah. From then on, Hendrix used the effect often. “Up From the Skies” from Axis: Bold as Love shows Jimi’s jazziest and most subtle use of the wah wah, adding quick, throaty sweeps to the tune’s hip chord voicings.

For the most part, Hendrix’s wah technique was extremely bold. Whether it was for propulsive rhythmic accents, as on the stinky funk of “Little Miss Lover,” or as a constant force on tracks such as “Still Raining, Still Dreaming” or “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” Hendrix managed to use the wah wah in cavalier, over-the-top ways without ever wearing it out.

Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato

With the release of Band of Gypsys in 1970, Hendrix managed to elevate another effect to hallowed status—the Uni-Vibe^® Chorus/Vibrato. With its thick, smoky swirl, this effect’s complex “phasiness” throbs and undulates throughout the entire live album. Although Hendrix used the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato on a handful of studio recordings late in his career, the track “Machine Gun” from Band of Gypsys stands as his ultimate statement with the effect. From the tune’s outset, Hendrix’s use of space enhances the spookiness of the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato’s hazy modulation. As the tune ramps up, Hendrix ups the intensity and keeps it there, starting his solo with a single sustained note that tears right through your soul.

Hendrix’s legendary rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Woodstock stands as another iconic example of the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato in action. As previously mentioned, he combined the swirly, chewy goodness of the Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato with the snarling fuzz of his prototype Fuzz Face Distortion, sending millions into a psychedelic trance that some have yet to return from.

Octavio Fuzz

Hendrix used the Octavio^® Fuzz for some of his prettiest passages as well as for some of his gnarliest. The song “One Rainy Wish” from Axis: Bold as Love definitely falls into the former category as Hendrix uses the Octavio to add a dreamy otherworldliness that enhances the tune’s sweetness.

However, “Who Knows” and “We Gotta Live Together” from Band of Gypsys find Hendrix eliciting barks, belches, and skronks as he unleashes a veritable clinic on using the Octavio Fuzz while playing double-stop 4ths and 5ths—he even throws in some wah wah for good measure. Listen to the end riff of “We Gotta Live Together” for even more stony low note howl.

The most famous Octavio Fuzz track, however, is undoubtedly “Purple Haze.” You can hear how Hendrix uses his pickup and volume knob settings as well as his picking attack to vary between different flavors of effect on different parts of the tune.

Jimi Hendrix was a master composer, interplanetary blues man, and sonic visionary. Without his assertive and groundbreaking creativity, the art of playing the electric guitar would look very different than it does today.

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.

1982: GCB95 Cry Baby Standard Wah

We introduced the GCB95 Cry Baby^® Wah, our first, in 1982. Music had changed a lot since 1967, and players had different tonal tastes. Our engineers designed the GCB95 accordingly, raising the frequency range and giving it a more pronounced wah effect. The result was a more up front and aggressive modern sound.

Once the GCB95’s sound was dialed in, the next task was to standardize production quality. As with many other pedals in its day, the original Cry Baby models varied quite a bit when it came to circuit components—builders didn’t always use the same parts from batch to batch. That made sound quality inconsistent from pedal to pedal.

Dunlop’s engineers created new quality standards by carefully scrutinizing every component, from potentiometers and switches to inductors to find the parts that created the best overall sound. Components have changed over the years, most often to improve performance, but our team always ensures that they adhere to the pedal’s sonic profile. Important changes to the GCB95 over the years have been to reduce RF interference and the replacement of our original custom inductor with the classic red Fasel Inductor in 2004 to take advantage of its lush, expressive character.

The takeaway? The GCB95 is a modern interpretation of the original Cry Baby sound, and it’s for players who want a straight-up, no frills wah pedal that cut through the mix and make itself known.

1994: Cry Baby 535Q Multi-Wah

The Cry Baby^® 535Q Multi-Wah is the Swiss Army Knife of wah pedals. Released in 1994, a time when guitar players were becoming more involved in shaping and personalizing their sound than ever, the 535Q gave players unprecedented control over the most important wah parameters do they could make the Cry Baby sound their own.

The 535Q’s first innovation—the Range Selector control—allows you to select the pedal’s frequency range. Early versions of this pedal provided four frequencies, but two more were added later on. All six ranges are based on the unique tonal characteristics of the best sounding wah pedals we could get our hands on, with input from some of the best guitar players on the planet.

Next, our engineers added the the Variable Q control, which allows you to adjust the 535Q’s response from an extremely sharp quack to a subtle broad bandpass sound.

Finally, the 535Q has a switchable boost that can add up to +18dB with its Volume control. The boost was necessary because, at lower Q settings, there is a reduction in output volume. To compensate, we added a very low-noise Class A op-amp.

Since its release, the 535Q Multi-Wah has become our flagship Cry Baby pedal, and its roster of users has grown since its inception to include a diverse selection of the world’s top musicians, from Soundgarden and Tool to the Allman Brothers and Marcus Miller. If you like always having the option to tweak and adjust your sound, this is the Cry Baby Wah for you.

1999: Cry Baby 105Q Bass Wah

In 1999, we released the Cry Baby^® 105Q Bass Wah, the first wah designed from the ground up specifically for bass players. Its sound is based on an iconic 1970s envelope filter used by many rock and funk bass players.

Unlike that pedal, though, the 105Q Bass Wah is optimized for bass frequencies. When you step on the rocker—which engages automatically with auto-return switch so you can step in and out of the effect with ease—the wah effect is applied only to the high and midrange frequencies of your signal. This leaves your low end intact so you can hold down the fundamental while taking solos or fills. With controls for Q response and boosting gain, you can dial in just how expressive and in your face your wah sound gets.

Bass players—when you step on the 105Q Wah, you’re going to sound big, deep, and groovy. But this pedal isn’t just for you—its broad, deep range has earned it a home on the boards of many guitar players who tune down or just want a thicker Cry Baby sound. If you’re a bottom-dweller, this is the Cry Baby Wah to have.

2000: Cry Baby 95Q Wah

The turn of the millennium saw the release of the Cry Baby^® 95Q Wah—it combines the circuitry of the GCB95 Cry Baby Standard Wah with the features and functionality of the 105Q Bass Wah.

If you dig the more aggressive frequency range of the GCB95 but want more control over the effect’s intensity and the ability to boost your signal, this is the wah for you. Use the Q control to dial in the wah response to your taste and use the Boost control to dial in your desired amount of gain, up to +15dB. Kick the red switch on the side to activate the boost, and step on the rocker to engage the effect—like the 105Q, the 95Q Wah uses convenient auto-return switching.

2003: GCB95F Cry Baby Classic Wah

In 2003, we released the Cry Baby^® Classic Wah, which interprets classic wah sound through the circuitry of the GCB95, with some key adjustments to give it that vintage tonal flavor.

First, Dunlop’s engineers lowered the pedal’s frequency center and softened the response of the effect to give the Cry Baby Classic Wah the darker, more subtle sound associated with early wahs.

Next, they added the famous red Fasel Inductor—also later added to the GCB95, as previously mentioned—to give it that lush, vocal sound. Finally, for tonal purists, the Cry Baby Classic Wah features true bypass switching.

2014: CM95 Clyde McCoy Cry Baby Wah

The very first wah wah pedal available to the guitar playing public was called the Clyde McCoy Wah. Those models are known for their distinctly throaty sound and expressive sweep, which was provided by the Halo Inductor. Unfortunately, original pedals are rare and expensive. For years, if you wanted that sound, you had to have some time and money to spend.

That changed in 2014 when we released the Clyde McCoy Cry Baby^® Wah. It makes that throaty voice and expressive sweep available to all players—not just the collectors—while offering gigging players the performance and convenience they need both on the road and in the studio.

The first thing we had to do was address Halo Inductors’ nasty habit of generating unwanted microphonic noise. Using those vintage examples as a blueprint, our engineers identified the unstable cup core as the culprit and designed a new Halo inductor from scratch. With a stabilized cup core, the HI-01 Halo Inductor sounds as close to the originals as you can get, only more controlled and more musical.

The originals usually, if not always, had to have the felt removed, the switch lowered, and the rotation of the pot adjusted to get a wider sweep range. The CM95 has this taken care of right out of the box. Next, we made sure to include true bypass switching for tonal purists and an AC jack for pedalboard convenience.

These efforts made the Clyde McCoy Cry Baby Wah the definitive recreation of the Clyde McCoy circuit and sound, and now it’s available to all players to suit their modern needs.

2015: CBM95 Cry Baby Mini Wah

In 2015, we released our first of our Cry Baby^® Wahs—the CBM95. At half the size of a standard Cry Baby Wah, this pedal is perfect for players with downsized travel boards or players who have wanted to try a Cry Baby Wah but were reluctant to do so because of the footprint.

And even if space isn’t an issue on your board, this pedal sounds great in its own right thanks to its tonal versatility. Equipped with the red Fasel inductor, the CBM95 comes with our three most popular frequency ranges, which you can select by removing the bottom plate and using the internal 3-position switch. The High setting (H) gives you the same sound as the GCB95, while the Mid setting (M) gives you more of a classic or vintage sounding range, and the Low setting (L) gives you a darker sound. The CBM95 will get you close to the voice of your favorite standard-sized Cry Baby Wah and save pedalboard space at the same time.

The CBM95 retains the physical sweep range of its larger brethren so that you have just as much control over the range of the effect, and this pedal’s high quality construction mean that it can take a beating on the road. We designed the CBM95 for serious, rigorous performance—it’s not just a cute little afterthought. Since its release, the Cry Baby Mini Wah has been joined by the Cry Baby^® 105Q Mini Bass Wah and the Jimi Hendrix™ Cry Baby^® Mini Wah.

After 50 years, the Cry Baby line offers players more ways to express themselves than ever. There’s no better place to start than these seven Cry Baby Wahs.

Players and fans alike were captivated by the Cry Baby Wah’s expressive sounds, but the original pedals produced by Thomas Organ showed remarkable inconsistency in their components and quality control. This led to significant sonic variations, forcing players like Hendrix to go through six or seven pedals before finding one that sounded right. In 1981, Thomas Organ Company went out of business, and production of the Cry Baby Wah ceased. And that could have been the end of it.

History would prove otherwise, thankfully, as Dunlop acquired and resurrected the Cry Baby brand the following year, ushering the wah wah effect into a whole new era and introducing a level of quality and consistency that never existed before. Dunlop’s engineers carefully scrutinized every component—potentiometers, switches, inductors, and more—and their efforts culminated in the GCB95 Cry Baby^® Standard Wah: a high-quality, ultra-reliable wah pedal for a new generation of guitar players.

The innovation didn’t stop there. The Cry Baby line has grown to include a range of unparalleled tonal and functional diversity, from the straightforward plug-in-and-play Jimi Hendrix™ Wah—painstakingly researched and crafted for sonic authenticity—to the super-flexible Cry Baby^® 535Q Multi-Wah.

The 535Q was a result of listening to all of the guys I was working with.

Known as the Swiss Army Knife of wah pedals, the 535Q design was based on feedback CEO Jimmy Dunlop received from numerous artists.

“I was doing artist relations at the time,” he says, “and the 535Q was a result of listening to all of the guys I was working with and trying to come out with something that would satisfy them all.” With the 535Q, players can choose from six different frequency ranges, with controls to shape and boost the effect for even greater flexibility.

A recent release brought Dunlop’s commitment to both legacy and innovation full circle with the creation of the Clyde McCoy^® Cry Baby^® Wah. Inspired by the very first production wah pedal, it synthesizes more than 30 years of Cry Baby engineering to bring modern quality and reliability to the classic Halo inductor sound of the coveted original.

Further enriching the Cry Baby line’s diversity are the signature pedals. These wahs, which are designed to meet the specific gigging and recording needs of the world’s top players, give all guitarists the ability to grab a piece of their favorite artist’s sonic mojo. Guitar legends from Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa to Dimebag Darrell and Eddie Van Halen have worked closely with Dunlop to develop their own custom Cry Baby pedals. The most recent addition, the John Petrucci Cry Baby^® Wah—designed in conjunction with its masterful namesake—is a modern tone tweaker’s dream come true, combining all the fine-tuning abilities of the Cry Baby Rack Wah into a standard Cry Baby pedal housing.

Dunlop continues to respond to players’ needs with the introduction of the Cry Baby Mini series of pedals. With a housing that’s half the size of a standard Cry Baby pedal—though its full sweep is retained—the Cry Baby^® Mini Wah gives guitarists three wahs in one, including the standard GCB95, without sacrificing precious pedalboard space. Likewise, the Cry Baby^® Bass Mini Wah packs a ton of toneful expression into the mini housing, while keeping all of the original 105Q’s functionality and low-end thunder. The newest member of the line is the Jimi Hendrix^™ Cry Baby^® Mini Wah, crafted to deliver the same dynamic tonal sweep of Jimi’s original Italian-made Thomas Organ unit with half the footprint of a standard wah.

When you step on a Cry Baby Wah, you exercise your freedom of expression, loud and clear. The world’s top guitar players, past and present, have relied on it since its inception to sharpen and hone their musical voice and make themselves heard. You’ve got something to say. Say it with a Cry Baby Wah.