wha-wha

[ManuelBreu]

Hallo!
Saturday night, I've seen a cool guitarplayer on TV, with an excellent rhythm-work. He played a lot with wha-wha. It had such a great sound. If I'm playing rhythm-patterns with wha, it just sucks...the sound isn't really good. I'm owning a vox wha. Can you give me some tipps/"patterns"/licks, or maybe a book, which explains using a wha-wha in detail...Thanx...

[Koala]

Hey Manuel, theres a couple good tips on using a wah...but i really do doubt theres literature on using it, but i may be wrong. First of all i must say that using a wah is much about practicing a helluva lot to get it right. You should use the wah to give your playing a bit more of a vocal expression.

#1 Try not to open and close your wah with the beat, instead try to rock the wah according to the lines youre playing.

#2 Lots of muting the strings between chords sounds really good, as it gives a nice chug chug sound.

#3 Listen to lots of 60´s 70´s funk for great wah, rythm work.

Hope this helps,

[EricV]

...and don´t use all that much gain / distortion, cuz that might take away some articulation and color the sound too much.
You can get a really nice, funky, scooped Wah-sound if you use a clean to crunch sound, instead of using big time heavy gain.
Eric

[Stephen]

Eric's the man...

[Bongo Boy]

Of course I totally suck at playing with or without the pedal, but the advice Eric gave for vibrato applies to wah as well...you'll tend to overdo it at first (at least this is my own Personal Challenge). I find it can be wonderful with very, very little pedal movement at all (long-period phugoid oscillations :D), and even with no motion. Use with discretion I guess, is one key to success.

I also agree with the on-the-beat comments; that seems to be either a very special case, or not to be done for very long.