Boss AW-3

Getting used to the different settings and the appropriate use of the various settings can be a little bit of a hassle, but it's nothing that you can't figure out in a few minutes fiddling with the knobs. The manual was mildly helpful, but this is one product where messing around and trusting your ears is the quickest path to a good result.

I love the sounds that I get out of this thing. Having a wah with multiple parameters is nothing new, but the versatility and quality of the tones from this little box are astounding. I use it in both live and studio settings and I've always found the right sound on either guitar or bass. From creating unusual synth-bass effects with the humanizer (which sounds great, IMHO) to the nice variety of more traditional wah tones, this thing can deliver. I use it both as an auto-wah and as a manual-wah with the expression pedal and in either mode, this pedal is a treat. I can't say enough good things about the sound here. You may be able to find better sound with a half dozen pedals, but for the price, you can't beat it.

Boss pedals, Toyotas and SM58s have a lot in common. The Energizer bunny wishes he could keep going like these things.

I have no idea what Boss customer support is like. This is my fourth Boss pedal, the first was back in about 1994, and I've never called customer support. That says something about how dependable these things are.

When I play a RHCP tune, I can get a Flea style wah, when I play Black Sabbath, I can get Geezer's wah. When I play funk, I can get a snappy auto-wah effect with my Strat-style guitar.

As a player who doubles on guitar and bass and gigs on both in many styles of music (from metal to country to jazz) I can always find a sound that works from this pedal. If you're looking for a specific wah sound, don't bother with this thing, but if you're looking for a jack of all trades wah with a quirky humanizer setting, there's nothing better on the market.

Takes a little dialing in to find the sweet spots. 2-3 jams to really understand what it can and can't do.

I dig the pedal for 2 sounds. It has a good auto wah to it and the humanizer is very synthy in nature.

For an Auto Wah/Synth humanizer+, it pretty damn convenient.
I was itching to get a wah tone back into my rig but dread sticking to many things in line. However, I wanted a lazy man's wah solution. Rocking my foot around on a pedal is archaic and lame to me and I always felt it detracted from my chops, since one is busy rocking their foot, the wah sound is cool though. Its much better to have a wah effect pedal that is able to detect my pick attack on the strings and react, in turn, with wah effect. It tracks pretty well for not needing your foot.
Second thing about the traditional method is that rocking a real wah never looks good from an audience perspective. Looks retarded and distracting actually.
You MUST use TOP quality cables in line with pedals, unless you like your tone and sustain to gradually water down as it makes its way to your amp. I run my guitar to this pedal like any wah, in front of my rack gear, with Monster cables. My sustain remains! However, the wah effect, by its nature, pulls from my sustain when its activated....quite a bit of sustain loss 30%. Fortunately, legato licks and wah do not mix anyway...bluesy chops and funk are sticcato driven in nature and therefore no need to panic because you must constantly pick for those styles, whcih keeps your strings ringing.
When its off, I lose very little tone...maybe 2% at most?
As stated above, I dig the pedal for 2 sounds. It has a good auto wah...its set to the widest spread on the middle 2 knobs with the sharp setting and the humanizer is very synthy strange interesting in nature. Yes there is a touch of fuzzbox in the humanizer mode which people are describing, but its Hendrixy usable and musical in nature. He most likely would have loved tinkering with this BOSS technology.

If your looking for a funk toy, this will keep you funky.

BOSS=TANK

Had a drum machine screen go blank on me once....They took care of my issue and it was repaired! This is a pedal, so I most likely will never need them.

This pedal is fun.

much twiddling involved. not all modes will be good to peoples ears, so finding the correct tone shouldn't take long, especially if you LIKE twiddling knobs.. never needed a manual, just like playing with it.

gotta say while sometimes i really love the tone this thing gives me [it is very good for vocals as well] there is a lot of unwanted distortion on some settings, especially the 'humanizer' [though i love the sound of the wah knocking from one humanizer to another you can make it sound like a random step filter]. the thing that really bugs me though is the digital noise that is really hard to suppress when plugged in certain areas on a daisy chain. when played by itself or through a seperate fx loop it works all right. shame because the tone is very full and warm when you can get it right.

no contest. boss makes the most durable tanks, metal casing all that.

never needed it! own a lot of boss!

the options for the tone on this pedal outweighs the distorted aspect of some modes on this pedal..i love twiddling the knobs. ive owned this for a long time and i dont want to get rid of it but i have to use it with caution, this isnt a typical wah, or auto wah. it is one of the stranger pedals i own in that i can use it for a variety of instruments, and vocals.

Generally fiddly, but I have the PW-10 so I know how to get the sounds I need.

One problem is something I have encountered with several Boss pedals: The power socket is too high up to work with the plugs in the Boss BCB-6 pedal case, and often with multi-socket pedals, one socked is too low down and it prevents the pedal being inserted in the receptacle for it. The external control input on this pedal is a case in point. (The new BCB-60 pedal case is fine, but it's so BIG, and not as well built - made in China.

The Humanizer settings distort if your guitar has slightly hotter pickups. This is especially noticable on settings like "i". On the normal Waa settings it does not distort, so it cannot be a faulty input stage; it must be happening after the A to D converter, inside the processor itself, and since another user had the same experience, I would say this is a design fault. Note: My Boss PW-10 pedal (same humanizer concept) does NOT distort on these settings.

I've had it 1 day and it's going back anyway, so...

I order from Thomann in Germany, so far they have treated me well. But of course, they are not Boss.

Experimental Irish folk rock, 50-60's style beat and rock. Pretty irrelevant to the problem in hand. Overall rating pulled down by distortion.

This is probably one of the hardest boss pedals to get good sounds out of initially, but once you spend about 10 minutes fooling about, you'll find just the sound you want and find it pretty easy to use after that.

I love filters, so i decided to try this one out in the music store. I tried it with several guitars and basses, and it seemed to be pretty consistent with all of them. After a little while, i was producing some insane sounds, and a bunch of guys were curiously looking over to see just what i was doing. if you put it in front of some distortion, the frequencies really stand out nicely and you can get quite a range of different kinds of sweeps. It tracks your dynamics VERY well, much better than i expected. Also, it works as a good filter if you turn the sensitivity all the way down, so you can get really bright or dark sounding tones, depending on what you want. I found the humanizer effects to be somewhat strange, especially with the disortion that seems to come with it. nevertheless, you can still get some useable sounds with it (although, my philosophy is that you can get useable sounds out of anything; you just need to know how to use them). overall, after several months of having it, i'm still very impressed.

very reliable, of course.

n/a

Most people don't like this pedal because they expect it to sound like a traditional foot control wah pedal. they want those kinds of sounds. the thing they should realize is that it goes way beyond that. I play dance, house, and middle-eastern fusion, so getting new sounds is part of my obligation as a musician. For some, it might not be traditional enough. Just try to have an open mind when you use this pedal.

This is a bit complicated, but the range of sounds is large. Manual is good, if a bit sparse.

I use a PRS and a Tele. Sounds is very good. I bought it specifically for the quasi-Talkbox ( vowel ) setting. My band is doing Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do", and I didn't want to get involved in the true Talkbox set-up. I had to fool around with the controls a bit, but got there fairly quick. Am using it with a Hot Rod Deluxe, and it works. I am not using it for the wah sound, which is a little canned for my taste.

Except for going through batteries like crazy ( iI bought an adaptor), seems well designed -very solid.

No idea. website was good, though

I play classic rock and blues. Very good match for the limited purpose I bought it for. I would buy it again. It gives me about 75% of the Talkbox sound, which is fine.

Not too difficult to learn if you put some time into it. You have to experiment with each control separately to learn their effect on your tone. No more difficult than other effects with multiple controls but not plug and play either.

The sound quality for most settings is quite good. However, when using the Humanizer the tone was distorted. Why has Boss done this? I reduced the volume on the guitar but it didn't help. If I want distortion I'll get it from my amp.

Setup is LP Studio - Wah - TSL 100 with 1960AV.

Overall, It nicely tracks playing dynamics. But the distortion is un-wanted for me.

I returned it for a Dimebag Crybaby.

Seems built very solid, no problems but did not have it long enough to have problems. I treat my gear carefully though.

Did not call them.

Nice effects but again, distortion when using the humanizer was very dissapointing.

It's pretty easy to use. Just keep in mind that depending on the guitar/pickups you're using, you may need to make very different settings. Manual was a nice touch, because I don't think I'd have easily figured out some of the stuff that it can do without it.

Strat and some weird pawnshop-type guitar played through various amps or direct into a recording console. I use a 5-string bass into it.
Sounds good with all of the above, given the right settings.
I like to use a fuzz box with it when playing a guitar with it. You can get some really trippy sounds out of this. I especially like playing around with the "filter" settings. One can get all kinds of synthesizer tones that way.
I like to get alot of unusual guitar tones; often I try my best to make my guitar sound like something completely unlike a guitar. Now, I sure as hell am no Tom Morello, but I can still get some really wild sounds from time to time, and this thing definitely helps.
I was jamming with a drummer and another guitarist at one point, and using this thing during one of my solos, and the drummer just stopped and stared at me for awhile. after awhile I asked him why and he said "how the hell did you do that?!" When I get this sort of response from someone as moronic as a drummer, I consider this a good thing.
It also works very well in the "up" mode when used as a dynamic wah.

It's a Boss. obviously it's gonna be a brick. The only thing bad is that it crunches through batteries pretty damn quickly.

I jam with various local metal and acid rock bands, and this thing helps to add some really crazy parts to the music. I also play bass in a different band, and when I feel like a line needs that uber-funk sound, this thing delivers.

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!

?

?

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.

Getting this thing to fit to your sound may be a bit tricky, but for me it wasn't too rough. I just turned the decay knob all the way counterclockwise, and the other two knobs totally clockwise. Works good enough for me.

Humanizer sucks, but for the price this still a great buy. I am playing it on bass, my effects as follows: Ibanez sdgr 5-string -> GEB-7 -> DOD Envelope Filter (FX25B) -> Ibanez ToneLok Bass Overdrive (PD7) -> PH-3 -> AW-3 -> Dod Bass Flanger (FX72) -> NS-2 -> Roland DB-500 Amp.

As you can tell I'm a bit of an fx freak. Oh well. Anyway I've compared this pedal a lot to the DOD FX25B and overall I think the AW-3 is better. For normal "up" mode on the AW-3 compared to the envelope filter, I think the filter does a better job, it is more pronounced, and the AW-3 makes high notes on the G string sound twangy. However, the AW-3 always responds, whereas to crank the sensitivy up so that the DOD would always respond and "pop through" for the effect to commence as it should, it totally changes the sound of the pedal. Also, the AW-3 keeps your tone relatively intact, whereas DOD sucks a lot of the low end, it has no balls. You can keep it from doing so a bit by turning the blend to about 9:00 but who wants a pedal for a dry tone? Also, the AW-3 has 4 useful modes: Up, Down, Sharp, and Tempo. I find that I like to use the tempo mode on the fastest setting (changing the tempo is very easy to do), and it sounds like a cross between wah and vibrato. It's very nifty. Sharp mode sounds like nothing like a wah, more like a synth, but it sounds a little thin - not that it sounds bad, just very different. Would be useful for intros combined with another effect, such as a phaser or flanger. The best mode in my opinion is the 'down' mode, which is very responsive all the way down to the B string, and sounds just downright funky. However, I purchased both this and the DOD because the DOD has a neat sound that you just can't get from the AW-3.

It's a Boss. I've heard many stories about DOD pedals breaking, and in two days the cap of one of the knobs on my DOD flanger fell off.
Boss == tank

Never had to deal with them.

A little bit expensive, should've got it used but oh well. I'd buy it again if it were lost or stolen, probably. I play mostly older rock songs for school pep band, but I listen to emo, metal and funk.

This pedal takes some time to get a good original sound out of so patience is key. The manual is fairly useless as are most pedal manuals.

I'm using an Ibanez S470 with DiMarzios in the neck and bridge and a Mesa Dual Rectifier Solo head mainly. The unit is very quiet on clean settings but with the overdrive on it can get slightly noisy. The effect ranges from weak on the "down" setting to very strong on the "sharp" setting. I would suggest the "up" setting.

It's backed by legendary Boss reliability. I have used it without a backup but I wouldn't if I had to rely on battery power.

I play in a rock band and I use a lot of effects. The auto wah adds some color to my sound and is an original thing to use. I personally think that every effects pedal can be of some use in making an original sound. My loop goes: Boss DD-3, Ibanez CF7, Boss Auto Wah, Boss Octave, Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere, MXR Phase 90, Electro Harmonix Memory Memory Man, Boss Compressor, Boss Noise Suppressor

It takes some tweaking but you don't need to be very intelligent to figure the thing out. It's got four knobs so moving one affects the others, but good grief, there's not that much to it.

I don't know what the last two reviewers expected from this pedal but have any of us ever really heard a "good" humanizer from a pedal? If you really want one be prepared to spend the bucks. That being said, the AW-3 sound very good, better than the Mutron III that I kept for a week which totally sucked (tone and money). It's clean sounding and provides a versatility that most other auto wahs can't. It's also way more reliable than the Electro Harmonix Q-Tron (although that had a great tone) and it's comparable to the line 6 filter modeler for sound quality. The up & down modes are the best sounding and while I agree that the humanizer doesn't really form the best vowel sounds, it does provide a cool variation to the standard wah. I've played it through a Takamine acoustic/electric and a Parker Nitefly with good results. It sounds really nice with some distortion but does well clean also. I don't understand the crappy reviews: maybe just some disgruntled impulse buyers who were looking for some "miracle" to improve their playing ability.

NEVER had a problem with a Boss pedal. So far. Can't say that about any other company out there, except maybe Lexicon.

Never needed 'em, yet.

I do a lot of different stuff, mostly in the context of extended jams and I like the AW-3 a lot. In 25 years of playing I've had plenty of gear including: Q-Tron, Mu-Tron III, Akai Variwah, AW-2, Line 6 Filter modeler. Now maybe I got a bad Mu-Tron but the one I had sucked. The switch on my Q-Trons kept cutting out my sound which was a bummer (I had two different ones) but when it worked it was probably the best auto wah I've used. The Variwah was pretty good but a little noisy. I still have the Line 6 and the AW-3 so, for what my opinion's worth, I keep them because I'm most satisfied with them. They're both reliable and good sounding and versatile.

4 Knobs and painfull Days turning them shearching one good sound. Its not Possible ! Give Up

I tryed the pedal with a fender strat and a Roland Amp.First I was looking for a good auto-wha wha , and the hours passed with no results , what let me very disapointed,Then I tryed the Humanizer because Boss really make a promotion out of it - But please Listen:
THE HUMANIZER ITS TERRIBLE , it's nothing .

It's Boss.It's sure reliable

Please do not Buy this pedal. It's weak , it's useless.
Dynamic Wha it's the worst pedal I've ever heard from Boss.
If you're lookind for a auto-wha , this is not the pedal you want.
If you are excited with the Humanizer, you have to know that they are lyeing to you ,it's only a really bad overdrive along with a bad envelope. Try one out and you will Know.

It took a while to figure out what kind of tones you can get by fiddling with the knobs, but eventually I got it down. The manual isn't very specific about the functions of each knob, which is why I had to spend time figuring it out. Once you know how to work it, it becomes pretty easy to find the sound you want, which I think doesn't make very many.

I use an Epiphone SG Standard through a Peavey Envoy 110, and I played through all the pickup settings on my guitar (which has two humbucksers, just so you know). I couldn't really get too much out of this pedal, it provided simple wah and threw in a whole bunch of bells and whistles to make you think you can get more than that. The Humanizer sounds really stupid and is a real disappointment. I listened to the sound samples on the Roland website and I thought it sounded really clear and fun to use. Boy, was I wrong. Trust me people, the Humanizer is a huge waste of time, money, and interest. If you're still wondering what it sounds like, I urge you to try it at a local music store for yourself so you can find out first-hand how wrong you are. And so you don't waste your money.

I could build a bomb shelter using my Boss pedals. And I would feel very safe.

I own three other Boss's, and I've never had to deal with them.

I mainly play rock/metal/nu-metal stuff, so I like a really sharp and unique sound when I'm composing riffs. This pedal only dumbed down my tone and blocked me off from much of my creativity. I really don't recommend this pedal to anyone, and suggest that you try it out first before even considering buying it. If you're looking for a good wah, go look at Morley or Dunlop, maybe even Snarling Dogs to get a real great sounding tone. This one, even with the Expression pedal, just falls flat. And trebly. I was really disappointed in it, and should've followed my instincts to try it first. It did give me a wah sound to work with, so I'll give it that much credit, but it's really not worth buying in my opinion.

Takes some thought to figure it out. I've had it for about two weeks and I still don't know what all of the nobs do.

I play a fender strat into a fender super chorus. It doesn't make much nois when it's off but on the tempo setting, it makes "up and down" wah sounds with the feedback. The effects are great and I love 'em. I got it to play voodoo chile with out having to spend time with a foot pedal. It's almost better with the auto-wah. The humanizer sucks.

It's a boss. It can't brake. I would have it at a gig without a back up.

I got it off of ebay.

I play anywhere from blues to heavy metal. I use it on almost every song I play. I've been playing for about two years. If it were stolen I would buy a new one and find the guy who stole it and tell him it's a great effect, and a good choice for stealing something. Then I'de beat the crap out of him. I love this effect so much. It sounds great and just plain looks sweet.

It's fun to start off with, getting amusing noises but it's really quite difficult to find a practical, useable sound out of this unless you read, and re-read the manual, then sit and fiddle for ages. It took me a couple of days to get something really cool out of it.

I'm using this after two distortion pedals and a compressor, but before my DD 3. It's not noisy unless you have it on the humaniser and that tends to add abit of noise to your sound. The effects do just what you want and a heck of a lot more. If you're after a pedal just to make your guitar go quack, then for GOD's sake, buy the AW 2 because this is a lot more difficult and exciting. The humaniser does great things to my guitar sound, both clean and with a bit of crunch. The tempo setting is definetely great, and sounds different and cool. The wah settings are typical auto wah, but that's not what I bought it for. This sounds like one of the craziest pedals I've got.

I would depend on it like it was my best friend. But a friend that went WAH instead of HI.

Well the shop I got this from were a good customer support cause I swapped a broken danelectro for credit on this, thanx shop. Wouldn't know about Roland though.

For my rocky music this is hard to find a use for, but I want to make noises that don't sound like a guitar and this is perfect for that. If I lost this I'd kick myself and save up for another. I like most things about it, I dislike the complicated ON/OFF clicking for the tempo effect though.. it hurts my head. If you're after FREAKY, then get this. If you just want wah, then get something less complicated.

It's pretty easy to get a good sound...lots of controls...'manual' lets you control the frequency range of the effect, the decay knob is quite useful (the DOD pedal does not have this). The different types of auto-wah are useful, although I usually use "up" or "sharp:" I looked over at the manual once, and then never looked back.

Some say it sucks sound...this is true to some extent, but it needs to reduce some frequencies in order to greatly exaggerate others, otherwise you overload the input of your next device (in my case, a POD).

It's pretty quiet...the humanizer does add a little distortion. There are a lot of great possibilities with this pedal, and the controls make it easy to tailor your sound to fit in the mix. It does not have the super-extreme resonance that I might have liked occasionally, but it does have pretty good resonance on the "sharp" mode. Unlike an all-purpose filter (like the Filter Queen), the sounds make sense in particular for electric guitar. It responds VERY well to my playing. I can control the wah position quite precisely just by varying my pick attack.

I just got it...seems as solid as all the boss pedals. I had a boss digital delay years ago, and never had any problem with it.

I am using this to make synth type noises with my electric guitar and POD, both for my own technoish music, and for corporate multimedia along with "real" synthesizers.. I would have got the line6 FM4, but this is much cheaper and more basic, and does exactly the things I need, without the extra stuff...and it's analog. By adding delay and some other effects from my POD, I have a good range of sounds to play with, and I'm able to fine-tune the sounds to a large extent by HOW I PLAY rather than by turning lots of knobs, which is definitely my preference. This is a very musical device.

After a few minutes of tinkering, and a cursory reading of the manual, you'll understand each knobs function and how to manipulate them.

My setup is a Gibson Les Paul Standard with a Mesa/Boogie Nomad 55 (2x12).
The pedal is not particularly noisy or or disruptive on any setting.
The Problem here is that the AW-3 completely drains ANY sense of tone you have. No matter the setting on the pedal, or if it is on a clean channel or distortion or which pickup, you lose all tonality. No bottom end is present, period. And the Wah effects themselves aren't particularly distinct or lofty. Just about any setting leads towards the same type of Wah sound. I sat down with the pedal (It was given to me free) for 4 days, and tinkered and toyed and mixed and mingled to no avail. Even the acclaimed "Humanizer" feature, which supposedly recreates human vowel sounds is pretty thin and dry. I absolutely refuse to use this pedal, I've even taken out the battery for a backup for my other BOSS pedals, which unlike the AW-3, are exceptional. I am not a tone freak, but I bust a gut laughing when all you hear with this pedal is a trebly pseudo-Wah.

Hey, I hate to fall into a cliche, but... It's a Boss.

N/A

I play a wide range of music, but generally play rock and metal.
I've been playing for 4 years now (damn where does the time go...) and I own three guitars; a Fender Strat, an ESP M-200, and a Gibson Les Paul Standard. My main amp is a Mesa/Boogie Nomad 55, and I use an array of pedals, the most notable being Boss BF-2 Flanger, and DD-3 Digital Delay. The AW-3 is the worst Boss product I have ever used, the only bad Boss product yet actually. If the AW-3 was stolen, I would laugh for about 10 minutes until I ran out of breath, for 2 reasons. 1- I got the AW-3 as a gift. 2- Ha Ha, this is the most pitiful pedal... Poor thief...

Easy, just plug it in and play around with the settings until you find what you like. (Lots of different settings to play with)