you guitar players; where do you put the wah? before or after the distortion?

BEFORE the distortion gives me a smoother less prominent wah sound - a la prince.

AFTER the distotion gives me more of a Hendrix wah, where it's a warts-n-all kind of tone - harsh but HOO MAN you OWN Voodoo Chile! That's one of my all-time favorite tones - dunno why, cuz it's so lo-fi but DAMN when that song kicks in, makes you wanna slam into something.

So, for me, I put the WAH last - after compression, distortion, flange, microwave, self-cleaning iron and the multi-line-office phone.

What about you? Do you prefer the cleaned up wah, or do you go for the skull scrape?

i prefer after distortion too, i like the wha to reeeaaallly sing WHA WHA, i know you know what i mean

My (vox) wah is always first in line. I played through a Zoom effect board once and hated the way the wah was placed AFTER the distortion. Made it sound like donald duck.

I also use the wah after everything...but the only other thing i use is the Korg A5...Don't need nothin else...

I like wah-ing the distortion, not distorting the wah. Sounds very good like that, mmm-hmmm.

(Actually sounds closer to Prince's wah/distortion tone... one of my faves, but I can't seem to nail it exactly. I think he's got his Colorsound modified in some way, though.)

I've always plugged my guitar into the Wah first, but whatever works for the sound you're after!

Peace,

My chain was always Comp-distort-wah-delay. I'm going to try wah-eq-comp-distort-delay.

csharp57 said:

But - but - since the Wah modifies the EQ, wouldn't it defeat the purpose to run the wah INTO the eq - wouldn't it decrease the effect of the, uh, effect?
[This message was edited Thu Sep 25 7:17:19 PDT 2003 by otan]

otan said:

So where do you suggest my Boss EQ pedal?? (I thought about putting it on my Fender Rhodes)

csharp57 said:

I used to use an eq pedal and then decided that it added more noise than anything else to my tone - I'm a tone purist - the guitar HAS tone, why go muffing it up with an eq pedal? My amp's dials are usually all straight up - play using the tone that the guitar creates - but I run clean or slightly dirty most of the time - if you're playing metal or grunge or stuff like that, then yeah, eq is a necessary evil I spose.

I guess put it before the wah. But really man - it's up to you - whatever you like. There used to be a site that showed the signal chain of all great guitarists - Vernon Reid's diagram was huge, and Angus Young, conversely, ran straight into the amp - no tuner, no NOTHING... it's all about volume.

Nothing before or after, just straight into the Marshall.

Add effects after

otan said:

You might be right, because if one of my other pedals batteries run low and I forget to pick up new ones, the EQ pedals batteries are the first ones I grab. Deep down I hate kicking this pedal to the side. I bought it hoping it would make my setup sound sweeter, playing through those cheap amps. I really need to bite the bullet and get a GOOD amp.

I go: guitar->noise supressor (loop) -> compressor ->wah ->distortion -> noise supressor -> delay

wah after distortion is to quacky for me, i like it subtle...