double wah

[jillybooty]

I dont have any effects for my guitar just and amp so I cant try this out for myself. I was wondering what would happen if you hooked up 2 wha peddles in a chain; would it have a really wide sweep when they were both moved in sync?

[petemoore]

Nope...but it can be wierd and unworthy.
Haven't checked out why, but I'd look at the input/output impedances.
And surmize that running the guitar through two bandpass filters, each tweeked to be 'pronounced' enough to 'quack'...can be cool if say one is re-expanded outward so to speak [ie has less bandpass effect because a fuzz does that] by fuzzing, then run into the second wah...
2 inductors at once...seemed to want to squeal and pickup Lots of noise.
So...
Wider bandpass setting on one, perhaps an inductorless or 1 inductor
"2 x wah" approach..plugging one into the other [I tried] as is, for me was a 'turn it off/try again/forget that' affair.

[chipaudette]

I don't think that you want to hook up two wah pedals in series. First of all, it's tough to stand while playing both. You'd have to sit. Who wants to sit?!? That's so un-rocking.

Furthermore, I think that the sound would not be what you want. If the two pedals are not perfectly in-sync, very little signal is going to get through...not cool...the guitar will simply be really quiet and thin.

What could be cool is to put a distortion or fuzz pedal between the two wahs (as suggested by petemoore). The sound of a wah before distortion is very different than wah after distortion. Usually a person only has one wah, so they have to choose which arrangement they like best and stick with it. With two wahs, though, you don't have to chose...just put one in both places. Maybe you could do some interesting things if both are active, but I think that you'd only end up having one wah active at a time. Even so, you'll really like having the flexibility of having a wah available in either position.

Finally, if you're into building your own effects, you can put two wah circuits into a single pedal. Inside the pedal, the two circuits would be connected in parallel, not in series. In this configuration, you get the two resonant peaks of the wah adding to the sound...not like the series arrangement where they filter each other out. Yeah, two resonant peaks, that's nice.

What's really cool about putting the two circuits into one pedal is that you can control them both with the one foot pedal. You can have the two circuits slightly de-tuned relative to each other to get the two resonant peaks that, because they're connected to the same pedal, will always move in-sync.

Even cooler, though, is that you can wire the two circuits so that they respond differently to the motion of the pedal. This can get mind blowing. For example, you can wire one wah circuit to operate normally: the filter goes up when the pedal is pressed forward. Then, you can wire the 2nd wah circuit to operate backwards: the filter goes down when the pedal is pressed forward. Wow. One up, one down. Freaky. This kind of double wah would certainly have a really unique sound. BTW, I didn't make this up...I've seen it several places on the web.

Happy experimenting!

Chip