Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal Demo

The kind folks over at Electro-Harmonix sent over the EHX Talking Pedal. I was really curious about this pedal. First off, this is a ‘Next Step’ pedal which is Electro-Harmonix’s new proprietary design where the wah has no moving pieces. Normally, with wahs, you have to deal with a few failure points, primarily, the switch, and tone pot with rack and pinion mechanism. These parts definitely wear out, and with EHX’s new design, there is no switch, no rack and pinion.

Additionally, I was also curious about the Talking Pedal, since this is NOT a traditional wah, but uses a two filters that give the tone of vowel-like vocal sounds.

Now, let’s get back to the design. To activate the pedal, you simply rock the pedal forward, and then you rock it back and forth (similar to a wah). Prior to playing, you’ll need to calibrate the pedal, which is quick and easy, letting the pedal know what is level. The whole pedal moves while you rock, so your cables do move with the pedal, and having this pedal on a pedal board could be an issue (but I personally prefer my wahs ‘off-board’ as well, but you might not).

The Talking Pedal also has a fuzz circuit that dirties up the mid range giving some growl and grit to the tone. The fuzz level is controlled by a scroll wheel on the side of the pedal.

For this demo, we have Jimmy Rolle playing is American Fender Stratocaster into a Germino Lead55 Head through a Germino 4×12 cabinet. There is nothing between the guitar and the amp except for the Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal. It is important to note that the Germino Lead 55 is a non-master volume amp. Audio was recorded with a Fathead Ribbon Mic and a Shure SM7B, both close mic’d.

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You can listen to the high quality MP3 clips via SoundCloud

As you can see/hear, this is a very unique and interesting pedal. I definitely see this as great piece in the tool box for creating interesting tones.

Currently, the Electro-Harmonix Talking Pedal is available from dealers worldwide.