Wah pedal tone suck?

ElectricXII

For the first time in ages, I've been playing with my Vox V847. It's a stock model, so no true bypass switching.

I've often read about the need to mod these for true bypass due to the stock pedal's propensity to "suck tone", more specifically to roll off the highs. 

Now my ears are nearly 6 decades old, but for the life of me, I can't detect this fabled "tone suck" of which they speak. Is it more of a Cry Baby thing maybe?

smudge_lad

Na, definitely happens with the Vox one’s. I had one for a while and like you, didn’t really notice it until I upgraded to the CAE wah, and instantly heard a glorious difference

Sporky

It will likely be more audible if you put it in a TB loop and switch the bypassed wah in and out.

thermionic

Years ago I did some a/b testing with my Vox V847 and there was a noticeable difference - just plugging into it, playing something for a few seconds, then repeating it plugged straight into the amp. Shortly after I modded it for true bypass!

susbemol

One man's "tone suck" is another man's "secret sauce".

There are people who use always on pedals like klons, etc to achieve a very similar result.

Cirrus

It's quite context dependent

the_pman28

Cirrus said:

It's quite context dependent

Exactly...I make sure I run a buffer in front of my V847 and the tone suck is negligible. Without the buffer the impact is quite significant.  

Also, the mod for true bypass changed the sound too much for my liking. Admittedly, I didn't do the gain mods which may have addressed the weakened effect after the TB mod.

ICBM

If you can’t hear it, don’t worry about it.

hollywoodrox

I had a GCB95 & had the same problem , my Slash wah sounds a lot better but I didn’t like the narrower sweep of my GCB95 . I guess the nature of wah’s  can suck tone but I do like my Slash one better . The Kirk Hammet I’ve heard on videos sounds nice too

ElectricXII

ICBM said:

If you can’t hear it, don’t worry about it.

FOMO perhaps! I've just checked again, and the drop in treble is there but it's very, very slight. Definitely not worth modding the pedal, which incidentally has no effect whatsoever on my Boss FZ-1W which is placed after it.

It looks like I've dodged a rabbit hole.

ICBM

ElectricXII said:

Definitely not worth modding the pedal, which incidentally has no effect whatsoever on my Boss FZ-1W which is placed after it.

That's because it's not buffered, which is why it sucks tone (a tiny bit). More modern Cry Babys have a buffer, but it's not for the whole signal path, it's just an input buffer for the wah circuit - so they're still unbuffered from the point of view of a following pedal, and they don't affect fuzzes either.

soma1975

If it knocks off some treble and is always in the chain, then just add some treble. 

ElectricXII

soma1975 said:

If it knocks off some treble and is always in the chain, then just add some treble. 

It's so slight it's not worth touching the treble controls on the amp or my pedals to be honest.