Recently, Electro-Harmonix came out with the Crying Tone Wah. This is a wah design where they wanted to eliminate the common failure points with traditional wahs. Namely the rack and pinion connection and the potentiometer failures that happen over time. Wahs in general get a lot of abuse and use so they do wear out eventually.
The Crying Tone Wah avoids these problems by eliminating them all together. No rack and pinion, no tone pot. What they do use is some type of proximity sensor (my guess, something similar to what smart phones have) and the entire enclosure is rocked. To define up and down positions, you would calibrate the wah every time. This would avoid non-level stages, etc. One concern that I see, and if you have a Crying Tone, please comment, is that cable is free to move around. I would be sure to use a patch cable that is sturdy with good plugs. The other concern is that this cannot be mounted to a pedal board, so it would either have to be first in line or last, which might not be ideal placement for you.
Electro-Harmonix (EHX) just posted this video showing some bonus techniques to achieve some interesting sounds beyond the traditional wah tones.
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You can pick up a Electro-Harmonix Crying Tone Wah for $87.00 at Amazon.com. If fact, here is a bundle deal where you get two 6″ patch cables with your purchase!
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12 years ago
Would guess that it uses accelerometers and not a proximity sensor, this would eliminate the need for calibration. You’re right though it is not practical for pedal board users.
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12 years ago
I just picked one of these up thanks to your post and some youTube vids demoing the thing. Cable movement isn’t really a problem. They’ve placed the input and outputs fairly close to the pivot point of the thing. Haven’t plugged in an AC adapter so I don’t know if it’ll tangle, but using patch cables works pretty well.
Thanks for the heads up! I totally dig it!
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