Boss PW-10 V-Wah

Just a quick review this time. Ease of use? Not at all - if you want to use it for all of it's functions. The model I own was purchased in 2002 and the instructions are apalling! The distortion modelling takes some doing, and the presets aren't that easy either. It's too gimick really.

Bought this on the strength of the univibe sound, and the ability to get a cry baby and vox tone, Liked the morley tone the best though. Disliked intensly the distortion presets - mostly because you can't eq them - there's only one knob to control it - and that just affects the drive. Presets difficult to use as they involve rocking the pedal back. Plus there's a millisecond gap between pushing the pedal back and getting the sound to come out. I used the univibe setting on a Hendrix number at a gig and loved it, then thought "I'll add some wah to this to take me into real hendrix territory" No can do I'm afraid it's wah or vibe. Needless to say I've moved on and got a Deja Vibe and a Budda Wah now.

Had to return my first one to the shop, but I've had problems with Boss pedals before - the Taiwan ones.This is a generic Boss rating

Good if you you are on a budget and want different wah sounds without having loadsa pedals [ but most of us find a wah sound we like and stick to it]. Good if you want a univibe sound [ although Voodo Labs Micro vibes are cheap second hand on e-bay]Good if you want lotsa distortion presets - if you are prepared to fiddle about enough with it, and don't mind an in-flexibe amount of control of it. Forget the voice simulation gimmick that's on the pedal, but use the presets if you like, but not mid-song I'd suggest. I still use mine on my practice pedal board because it behaves itself better than my old crybaby gcb 98 in terms of being used with the poor quality tranny amps you get in rehearsal studios, and it does have the univibe

Pretty complicated, especially if you get involved with the distortions.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Boss effects, and I think their digital ones are, on the whole, pretty good, but I just couldn't get a good sound out of this thing, and I spent hours. I was using an Ibanez EDR170 with it, into a Marshall MG100DFX amp. When using distortion, there would always be a clear click when rocking between treble and bass, no matter what settings were used and even when using the built in distortion. Instead of going "wah wah", it went "pop pop". Sounded good in clean though.

Don't know, I sent it back after a couple of days.

N/A

I just don't understand this thing. Even the wah on my old Zoom multieffects pedals sounded better than this. Go for a Cry Baby 535Q, THE best wah out there, even if it is a bit old-fashioned.

Takes a while to get to grips with, especially when you're trying to sort out both distortion and wah...to be honest, if i were you i'd just leave the distortion alone. The AC input doesn't like carpeted floors either...not the best bit of designing there...

At the moment, the PW-10 is the only thing between my ESP and my Marshall TSL. It's pretty quiet, which is always a good start. I actually got rid of a crybaby for one of these things, and i don't regret it. Waaay more versatile, and probably a better option for the more heavily inclined players. I tend to use the Morley emulation with the wah range cranked pretty far up, which comes out with a pretty pronounced Steve Vai or even Zakk Wylde style sound. If you insist on using them, the distortions actually come out sounding pretty good.

Feels like a brick. I've never even thought about a backup, although they eat batteries, so use a power supply.

never had to deal with them

If i lost it, in fairness I would probably get a Zakk Wylde crybaby, although they cost a fair bit more. At this price, I dont really think it can be beaten. You probably won't use many of the different wah settings, just find one you like best and stick to it. I definitely rate it above my old bog standard crybaby.

I agree with the last poster. This pedal sounds great. I also do not use the distortion features.. and also did not use any settings.. just pligged it in and went through the different wah tones. I have a laney GH50 head and marshall cab.. the gain on the head is awsome so I need not mess with anything else. I really like the univibe as well, sounds great !! is not very hard to use at all.. I will probably read the manial for the hell of it and see what I can do to it, but I am more than satisfied with just plugging it in and go!!

Great tones out of this pedal !

just got it today.. seems sturdy.

havent had to deal with them yet so I can not elaborate .

I will give it a 10 because it realls adds great tone to my already great setup. I wanted to keep everything simple and as dry as possible.. I have my guitar going to the PW 10 to my boss sd-1 to a boss ns-2 right in front of the amp. I have finally found my tone after all these years !!

I didn't go through all the programming and stuff. I just plugged in and switched through all the modes and they all sounded good. There is no need to go through all the tweaking to get a good sound. Just take it out of the box. I guess it helps to have a good rig.

I don't need the distortions but there is nothing wrong with them. I use my 5150's distortion. When I use one of my cleaner amps I use a Boss DS-1, but like I said they're good if you want to use them.

Boss stuff doesn't break.

Never nead it.

Its a good box. I've been playing for 25 years and have a TON of gear. This is my favorite pedal right now. The guys complaining probably don't know what there doing or have crap setups.

Ease of use?... I guess if your the average lazy guitarist, you might have a little trouble with this. But if it takes reading the owner's manual to get good tone, I think it's worth it. The only real complication is setting the overdrives -- which I don't find all the useful...

Also it's not too hard to toggle between presets (which is nice). You just push down on the heal end of the pedal, and the LED changes colors. I think there's like 4 presets... I only use 1.

I'll start by saying I HATE digital effects. They suck tone like a biotch... but I've tried a number of wahs and held on to this one for a while. I've always had the problem of finding a wah with a decent spectral versitility between funk and metal. With most wahs I've always had to sacrifice some aspect of sound quality for the effect, so it really didn't bother me choosing this digital pedal.

You can toggle between pretty accurate emulations of CryBaby, Vox, and Morley settings. It also has a UniVibe setting (which isn't all that bad either). The only short coming that I dislike about this pedal is the distortion settings. They are all digital emulations of boss pedals (DS1, SD1, MT2...). I've pretty much limited my overdrives and distortions to rack preamps, so I just leave the distortion off. nonetheless, they are fully controllable distortions. You just have to read the owners manual to set them just the way you want them.

As far as the wah sound: the signal is very clear. In the past I've needed an eq before my wah pedals in order to get the perfect range and tone control, but this really sounds great just as it is. I've never had a problem with any ambient hiss or other annoying buzz sounds. This is the main reason I chose this over Crybaby or Morley (I never did like their LED wahs).

I haven't had any problems with it. I'm really not much for digital effects, but we'll see how long it lasts.

Boss is pretty good all around.

I've tried a lot of wah pedals over the years. Of the ones I liked include the Crybaby 535Q, an Ernie Ball (which was too expensive and I had to sell it within a month of having it), and I was "holding" my cousin's Fulltone Clyde for a few days. But again, that's too much money for an effect that I only use less than 2% of the time.

It's the worst pedal in the world for using alive or even in a studio. It's so complicated, the Manual it's so bad than i think anybody could sincerely says other thing.

Sound Quality! What Quality ... ? This pedal makes any, but any, amp seems like a peace of she..

Use it on a gig? You must be insane ...

Roland / Boss Corporation as any e-mail adress that we could even contact them. How can we now if they are bad or good?
This must be a single case in the music manufacturers.
It's Incredible but it's true.

Overal Rating.

Too bad to talk about that.

This must be the worst product of Roland / Boss Corporation.

I don't know how they could send this product to the market and keep in there nowadays.

Awful. It need's about three more knobs. The menu selection scheme requires you to hold buttons while plugin in the guitar chord. Totaly &^%$#@.

The range in the wahs are wide but the rocker action between the highed tone and the lowest tone is too sudden and way too dramatic as you rock the pedal to and from. It's due to the fact that it uses some stupid, poorly engineered light sensors to detect the foot rocker's positions rather than a traditional pot. This means the tone shifting isn't perfectly linear, not by a long shot.

The end result is that it's difficult or impossible to make it sound like a real wah pedal, the kind you hear in porn music. I only keep mine around for the custom sinus synth effect.

And a side point, the distortions all have fixed tone settings = completely useless.

Murderer of batteries.

The rocker becomes looser over a short period of time and has to be retightened often.

dont know

Avoid at all costs. Digitech released a similar product which is much nicer although it requires a power source.

It's easy to get a good sound from this pedal, but good luck getting that sound a second time! Seriously, I tried it out at the shop and was blown away by the available tones and the potential. Since it was used, I didn't get a manual. I fouind the manual online, and good gosh, could BOSS make it any more complicated?!

Some of the sounds are amazing. I bought it because some of the tones sounded synth-like, so it's like getting a wah and an envelope filter in one. There's supposed to be eight different classic distortions modeled as well. So far, I've only heard one, and don't ask me which one. Whatever it is, t does a good job beefing up the various wah tones.

I'd like to know why the Univibe setting sounded killer at the shop, but I can't get a decent warble out of it now. Maybe I reset something while trying to figure out the controls.

I do like being able to set the range for each wah. In theory, this is a very flexible pedal.

I've used it with my Strat through a few amps. The unit isn't noticeably noisy, even with the Drive cranked up.

I have over 30 different BOSS pedals, some of which I'd guess are older than many of the people posting here. I think I could depend on this pedal, but there's no way I'd risk using it live.

I've never needed the support.

I bought this pedal because it sounded killer in the shop, and the price was right. And the shop was offering a great deal on financing, so I plunged when I should ahve reconsidered. Like I said, I can get at least one really cool synth tone from this pedal.

However, I bought this pedal because I thought it had a ton of potential. It might, but I wonder if I have the patience to unlock it. I've never seen a more needlessly complicated pedal, considering that it's a freakin' wah! The BOSS engineers couldn't find room for an extra switch or two? For example, if I knew I had to switch the power off to access the distortions, I wouldn't have bought this pedal. Just put in a three way switch allowing me to choose between wah mode, distortion mode, and a blend mode, and I would sing the praises of this pedal. Maybe I expected too much from this pedal.

I own such BOSS pedals as the PS-5, PS-3, and SYB-3. These are what I'd call complicated pedals, but a glimpse through the manaul and I can work with these pedals. I'm only guessing at what I'm doing with the PW-10.

This pedal sells new for over $200. For that kind of money, I wouldn't recommend it.

A very intuative pedal. Plug and play, you will get a quality sound, I had this thing plugged in for less than ten minutes and had quality tone ripping through it no problem. The manual is ok, it was better for me to just play with it for awhile.

My setup is: Ibanes AX-82 Artcore hollow body - PW10 V-wah (crybaby setting) - Boss DS-1 distortion - DOD Compressor - Homemade Chourus Delay - Fender Blues Deluxe. Sounds great on almost all settings, although the distortion can get pretty hairy pretty fast if you crank it. The UNIvibe effect is great and so is the synth like voice setting, again get a distortion pedal that is seperate, these distortion settings are a little bit hard to work with.

Have been gigging activly (60 shows a year) with it for 3 years.....still fine despite a few cosmetic blemishes. I would and do gig without a backup.

Never Dealt...It's a boss these things are bulletproof

I play in a rock and roll/funk/jam band...perfect match for our style. I have been playing for 5 years, gigging for 3. If it were stolen I would buy a new one right away.