Boss AW-3

Fairly simple, however, adustments are made based on the playing style. For instance, a wah for a funk rhythm will require a different setting than that for a vowel-based picking wah. I hope that makes sense.
Settings can be made fairly qickly once you get the hang of it.
The wah speen can be set by holding the pedal down and then tapping for tempo. I do plan to get a EV-5 expression pedal for more dynamic variation on the stage.

I have used this unit with a strat, tele and more recently a Line 6 variax (at Church, where single coil hum is unholy!).

I have a Vox wah and it is way too noisy, particularly with distortion.

This unit is way quiet. I played through a POD set at medium distortion and yoy couldn't tell it was on until played.

The rhythm wah (continuous setting) is great.

The wha effects are on par with anything that I have used in the past, and the quietness is something you can't get with any conventional wah. Your new Vox or Crybaby may be quiet at first, but eventually it will buzz like a beehive.

I have also used the effect with a strat or tele though a vintage Vibrolux. The wah is still impressive.

Do you honestly think that I would be the first person in world to diss a Boss. I have never had one crap out.....ever!

N/A...see above

I play everything from vintage rock to black gospel. This pedal is absolutely perfect for those applications.
I have been playing professionally for over 20 yrs.
This pedal would be replaced if stolen or lost.
The noise issue is a key component of my love for this pedal, but the footprint is a plus as well. I mean that You don't have that bulky wah taking up valuable floor space in a small club environment.

I will buy an EV-5 expression pedal so that I can maximize the uses for the pedal, however, it works fine for most applications just as it is.

Any player would find this a useful addition to his gig bag.

there isn't anything here that needs too much explaining. I figured it out my toying with the knobs, though it did take a while to discover everything it had to offer.

Awesome! The first three setting I found fairly useless, but they're great sounds none-the-less. The humanizer works real well and I love the fact that I choose the the vowels that the wah pedal will make. I usually set the pedal with the decay at 10:00 and the first vowel at A and the second vowel at I. When you pick a fast solo, you get a crazy cool sound. Definitley made heads turn. The last option tries to imitate the sound of a crybaby moving at a regular tempo. I use it more than I should because I can keep a steady tempo and play around with other pedals. I say i use it more than I should because it doesn't get anywhere near the great sounds that you can get with a good crybaby.

indestructable...almost.

don't use it

AMAZING, THERE IS NO BETTER AUTO-WAH PEDAL OUT THERE.

Turn the knobs and play some notes. If you've had any experience of this type of unit before, it speaks (quite literally folks) for itself!
I did read the manuel; I always read manuels but you shouldn't have alot of trouble working with this thing.
You do need to experiment with that Humanizer, some of the vowel combinations sound slightly shabby. The tempo feature is wonderful, and can sound like the worst phaser you are likely to ever hear.

Depending on the situation my set up can be anything from a Pod, or a Peterson or Yamaha Amp; my effects are pretty minimal at present, no modulation effects generally speaking, Carl Martin compressor, Boss DD-20 delay, occasionally a T C Electronics G-Major (I rue the day I bought that piece of #@*t), and let's see, oh yes a Boss AC2. I play a Patrick Eggle LA Plus with EMG pick-ups, a Yamaha Pacifica 821D, and a Steve Beaney Bass Guitar.
I have not had as much fun with an effects pedal for along time before getting the AW3. Most settings sound good and I've found a use for alot of them but... some of those Humanizer combinations are abit "crunchy" as they cross-fade from vowel sound to vowel sound; I stick to the "OI" setting myself as it sounds sort of vocal-like.
In the shop I tried it against some Electro-Harmonix thing; for sound quality and funky vibe the AW3 had it. In fact I don't even bother with a wah pedal any more, the AW3 is it.
It works well in all situations I find myself in and as long as you don't mind twiddling between songs it will do more than most similar units out there and yes, oh yes, it is a whole lot better than a V-Wah.

IT won't go wrong.

I haven't been introduced so I don't know.

Well I like so it must be good! I would definitely replace it if I had to. It's fun as well as fulfilling it's role admirably; I particularly like the tempo feature!

awesome wah sound. i connect an EV-5 expression pedal to it for real-time wah-control and it blows other wah-wah pedals. it has more frequency range and more character than others. also has impressive humanizer and sharp (synth-like) modes. an overdrive mode would have been nice.

never had a problem. 2 years old and has seen many gigs

got it at a roland truck sale so everything was cheap for customers on the day, so in that respect, they are helpful and friendly.

covers most wah sound scopes, and when used with an expression pedal, it blows the likes of the crybaby and v-wah and co.

It can take some getting used to. None the less, its a great pedal, and you may not even need the manual!

The pedal is completely noiseless. I use my 62 Jazz Bass or my Warwick Thumb though 2001RB Gallien-Krueger header to my Peavey Pro 410. I put the AW-3 in last, as I found out the wrong way when I put it before an old Boss Chorus.
Soundwise, there are no noisecuts or sound losses of any kind. I tend to stick with rock or Jazz, put the band were messing round with some Funk, and it sounded great. I got the pedal second hand from someone who found it pointless in his style of music. I don't, and its a great buy.
The features are up, down, sharp (like a synth type thing, sounds cool), the highly criticised humanizer and tempo.

The humanizer is the most bizarre thing, and kind of serves as more of a crunchy distortion (if you set both dials to the same letter it usually just distorts). But it sounds out some crazy stuff. I don't use it, but I suppose you could use it for distortion...
Tempo is great, just hold down the pedal for 2 seconds, tap out a beat that you need to play to and, yes, it 'wahs' at that speed! Amazing!

Cliches, cliches. Yes, it is a boss, so look at every other 'reliability' section under the boss pedals, and I will bet you that every one (without exeption) has used the words 'tank' or 'Nuclear Bomb'. I don't gig it, I bought it for fun, but I wouldnt have any issues about not having a backup for it, plus I don't have the money at the moment. It eats batterys for breakfast though, so think about getting an adapter.

I find it hysterical that Boss have a customer support. Has anyone ever even rang up to see? I thing Boss pedals are built by the good people at Sherman tanks anyway.

Its great for funk. I'm a guitarist as well, and it plays great. I am primarily a bassist, though, and I've been playing for little over 15 years. I play Jazz, Rock, and soul. I recently bought the Dunlop bass wah 105Q as well, which I also advise. Its a great pedal, but I don't need it at the moment.

Easy if you know what your doing. I would say anybody can find out how to use this funky boss.

One of the better boss pedal's and auto-wah effect's.
It has a really cool funk tone in it. I use it with a boss PH-3 Phaser
and BD-2 blues driver. My amp is a Peavey classic 30. It is a nice set-up. I do have a jim dunlop original crybaby I love that pedal. I just don't use it as much. I put this pedal on tempo and it is like a crybaby. Overall great tone!

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Super cool pedal a lot better than an AW-2 auto-wah.

It's really easy to use, but it can take a little while for you to get the exact effect you want. It can be a bit frustrating getting the tap tempo to exactly what you want, if you're jamming along to a record. I havn't read the manual, because I havn't needed to. It's very straight forward, easy to just put into your effects loop and go. It is also very versatile - it has a bass input, and believe me it sounds seriously cool with a decent bass player.

I have a Epiphone Les Paul Standard (translucent green - beautiful!), and a Marshall G50RCD amp. I also use the Boss GE-7 Equalizer, and a DOD FX64 Ice box. You must be careful to put it LAST in your effects loop, because you don't want to add chorus to a wah, you want to wah the chorus, if you see what I mean. That was 1 little mistake i made ;-) Other than that, it sounds great for anything you want to do, whether it's slowly fading in notes with the Humanizer with max. decay, or setting up a Tom Morello - style solo, which I have to say it does amazingly! Playing the verses on Audioslave's Gasoline is really cool with this pedal, it's not quite what Tom uses, but it does sound very very cool. I listened to a bloke in the shop where I bought it using it with a bass, and it sounded great, some very funky sounds. It can be a little noisy if the equalizer is put after it in the effects loop, but you can just dial down your gain levels.

Obviously, being a Boss, it's built tankishly, and could be nuked and still work ok. However, I seem to be experiencing the same problem some people have with Boss pedals. Even with a new battery in it, sometimes the LED fades out after about a minute, and when you stomp it on, it gives a really high-pitched squeal, but still operates normally. It's just annoying not knowing whether it's on or not, and the squeals really hurt your ears :-( But I think it may be because of overdrive, I use quite a beefy tone, especially with the GE-7 in use. The gain levels may be a little too much for it, as it seems to work fine on my amp's clean channel. On a gig, I would have to get a power supply, because it seems to like it's batteries more than I like cake. (Btw I am the cake monster.)

Boss have customer support? What for?!

It's a great fun little pedal, definately worth the buy. If it was stolen, I'd get a new one straight away. The effects are really cool, and despite what other people say, I think the humanizer is pretty cool, and fun to use. It is very versatile, as it has the bass input, and the input for a pedal to control the tempo, although the pedal can do this itself.

This is the best pedal I have tried. Easy to use with very very minor complaints. The manual was fine, no problems there. The best thing to do is to play around with the sounds for a good day or 2, then you'll know whats what and every thing becomes alot clearer.

I play a Music Man Stingray though a Hartke B90 and WOW it sounds good! One titchy problem, I dont know how anyone elses works but the humanizer effect is not very loud. But I run a mild distortion (Electro Harmonix Big Muff) on a clean wah sound like the sharp or the up effect. Great for the Chili Peppers thing. Un like the boss bass overdrive (in my personnal experience) this thing is SILENT! Not a buzz or hum in the slightest when it is off or on.

Ive played a buskers night with it and it was fine, didnt play up at all, and that was with batteries in it. Yet to do a gig with it but I would use a power adapter. The first day I got it, it ate a battery in about 3hours!
Other than that, SPOT ON!!!

Im into the kind of funk thing but do like my rock, not bon jovi, more terrorvision/skunk anansie. An amazing pedal to play with. If you're after a first pedal, get this one. When you crank the volume up with new strings on, it really grouls! Especially in the lower end notes!

Although figuring out how to use the humanizer as well as the the manual wah was quite simple, it took a long time to figure out where to adjust the knobs for the sharp, up, and down sounds you really want out of this box. Although over a few weeks I figured out how to use the sharp mode, I still have not found a solid sound using up and down. VERY SHOCKING FOR A BOSS PEDAL!

I use a Peavey Bandit 112 Transtube Series Amp, along with a TS7 Ibanez Tubescreamer, a Boss RC-20 Loop Sampler, (occassionally) a DS-1 Boss Distortion Box, a Boss Super Phaser, and of course a Cry-baby Wah (every guitarist needs one). You can really get a lot of sounds out of this box: funk, techno, and metal (maybe). I LOVE the Sharp mode, especially when I'm in a mad funk jam. If your decay is all the way up the sound becomes a little trippy, but if you want that sweet funk sound keep your decay just at a level 5 and you get a SWEET sound. It is very much enlightened with the Tubesreacmer. But what sucks about sharp is that your vowels can only be in one mode (figure it out for yourself. Took me a while). I have yet to figure out the UP and Down modes but I'm working on it. The Humanizer is not as bad as people are saying. Although you do not want to use distortion with it, on a Cream-esque soft blues it sounds very odd- yet refreshing from you normal blues drive. The manual wah is sweet. If you make you decibals go at the fastest possible speed, you got a sweet techno sound, and it sounds amazing with all distortion, tube, and phaser, and of course the loop. NEVER USE A CRY-BABY WITH THIS PEDAL. ONLY IN EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES!

It's Boss. Enough said.

Never have used it Boss, hopefully, never will.

It's fun, it's simple, and if your into crazy Les Claypool- type sounds this is your pedal. This can really help you find your own crazy little sound.

I don't like stomp boxes that require extensive study of a manual... I'm too old to waste my precious remaining years reading about what knobs do. Maybe it's the benefit of three decades spent fiddling around with effects boxes, but I didn't need to crack the manual to figure out the AW-3. Here a twiddle, there a tweak, use your ears man, not your eyes. Had solid, usable sounds dialed in for three of the modes (up, down, sharp) within an hour or so. Might have saved myself a few minutes if I'd checked out what happens when you crank the sensitivity knob fully counter-clockwise (puts the filter in manual mode, so you can adjust to a specific frequency and leave it there, or engage the totally-necessary expression pedal to allow sexy heel-toe action). Stomp-on, stomp off, plus press-and-hold-for-two-seconds to engage the Tempo mode (an auto-wah with variable sweep rate); tapping in the tempo in this mode is simple and seems fairly accurate, provided that your toe is fairly accurate. The knobs are itty-bitty, and the labels around the knobs are nearly illegible for myopic old farts like me, so two points off for ergonomics.

I play a Conklin 7-string bass through this box and a Boss CEB-3 bass chorus, into an SWR Workingman's 15.

First things first: yeah, the humanizer sucks. Darn shame, too, because the way it's set up (you select the starting and ending vowel sounds, and the rate of movement between the two) is wicked cool. But the folks at Boss added a nasty, grating distortion element to the circuit, and it's the most unpleasant distortion sound I've heard since the famously bad Roland Jazz Chorus amp (GREAT clean amp, but the distortion effect was appalling). Wow, maybe Roland used the SAME CIRCUIT in this pedal! Scary! Anyway, two points off for teasing us with what could have been a groovy feature.

OK, so now that we got that over with, the wah sounds on this thing are simply impeccable for bass. Many envelope filters, even those supposedly meant for bass guitars, merely add a swishing, whistling sound to the top end. This baby makes everything from the low end of the midrange on up dip, swoop and growl. You can tweak the settings to get that chrirpy Funkadelic sound too, if you want. But where that's ALL you can do with Bassballs (for instance), this box has a much more extensive palette of USABLE effects. You can get subtle and profound wah effects, but not really any hideous noises. Since I don't care to make hideous noises, this if fine with me.

I strongly recommend to those who purchase this effect the simultaneous purchase of a Roland/Boss expression pedal. Then you've got an auto wah, a touch wah, and a traditional wah at your disposal. You can adjust the parameters of the wah sweep to your liking, and with good stand-on-one-foot balance and a bit of practice, replicate the bass sound from "All My Tears" on Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball." Mmmmrrrrrp bwwwwaaahhhp mmmmmmmrf.

The AW-3 does not seem to introduce much noise into the signal path, if any. However, when you are in down mode and you're not playing, the filter is cranked wide open waiting to be triggered (like having a traditional wah pedal rocked all the way forward), so at this setting every bit of line noise, fret noise and finger squeaking will be emphasized. This is not noise from the effect per se, just noise that's already there becoming more pronounced because the effect is doing what it's supposed to do.

One day I will take one of my least-used Boss pedals out to the driveway and run over it eight or ten times with my truck just to see what happens. I doubt it will make much difference. I've never, ever had a technical problem with a Boss stomp box. I've got a lovely brown Octaver from the year they came out... still works perfectly.

Dunno, never called them, never had to. Wish their web site had more detailed specs on their products, though.

I have played just about every style of music in my career. I'm playing mostly praise & worship now, occasional blues/oldies bar gigs. This pedal is good for chunky-funky stuff, and can be used effectively for up-tempo reggae in the down mode. The expression pedal adds a huge amount of versatility. But bear in mind, I'm a bass player, and there's only so much you can do with adding effects to a bass part before you start really pissing people off. So I am not a crazy-mad effects monkey. As a rapidly aging traditionalist, I see the bass as a support instrument, an essential element of the rhythm section. You gotta be bassy and punchy and rumbly in your tumbly... you want thin and trebly, go play guitar.

I chose the AW-3 because my bass still sounds like a bass through it. This was not the case with the Line6 FM-4, or the E-H Q-trons... these sucked way too much bottom out of the signal. The Line6 synthesizer patches were useless for bass, they didn't track at all well, and most just sounded like wet buffalo farts. I tried the DOD FX25B envelope filter, and found that it muddied the tone of the bass in all ranges. Didn't try any Mutron reissues or esoteric European devices costing in excess of $500. The Dunlop Cry Baby bass wah is simply unusable due to the way that the effect disengages at the back of the pedal travel (heel-down = effect off, with no detent to warn you of what's coming... who designed this thing?).

I love the fact that most of the modes on this pedal are usable and musical sounding. I hate the fact that the humanizer is so poorly executed... hard to imagine Boss engineers sitting around listening to a really cool filter effect and thinking, "Maybe we should add some unpleasant and grating square-wave distortion that can't be dialed out! Yeah, that'd be cool!!!" WTF?


Stolen or lost, I would buy another one. I don't use it a lot (I don't use any effects a lot), but it has transformed a couple of songs that we play, and everyone in the band likes it.

BTW, all you bass players desirous of a bit of filtered bottom: all wahs will sacrifice some low end, because the effect is dependent on the exaggeration of frequencies in middle and upper registers. The way to fix this in a real performance situation is to boost the bass on your guitar's active EQ when you engage the effect. Voila. I think the AW-3 provides the best balance between depth of effect and preservation of low frequencies of any wah device I sampled. Plus it's a Boss... I have a long history with these products and trust them completely.