Dunlop SW-95 Slash wah

Easy to plug in just like any other wah pedal out there. The distortion circut it tricky and hard to get used too. The distortion circut button is a little annoying due to how easy it's to hit accidently.

Manual was pretty lame to me. Told you what knobs were what and how to plug it in.

Pretty easy Voulme, Gain and distortion circuit button.

9 volt usage is easy. Need no screw driver or the sort its right on the top for easy access.

My setup is ESP Ltd. V and Marshall mg100 half stack. I also plug in a zoom multi-effect pedal in the amp.

The wah it self is pretty tame. Its doesnt have much bite to it. The wah is also a more quick wah. So the wah effect is quicker sounding than a normal cry baby.

The range of the wah isn't much better, especially for sweeps with your foot. Your not gonna find much of a wah sound, But if you don't want a loud overbearing wah sound you may like the more mid ground sound it has.

The distortion circuit is annoying really. It take's a lot of tweaking to get it right. Not just with the pedal, but the amp as well. If your using heavy gain don't bother. It will have a high pitch sound the will hurt your ears if the gain knob on the pedal is turned all the way up. Lower, cruncher gain the pedal is more useful, but again you aint gonna get a much of a wah out of it. It's there, but not a deep wah.

I actually find more use of the pedal in the clean channel with slow depressions of sweeps for it. Over all I'd reccommend a Orignal Cry Baby and a boost pedal.

Heavy, hard, and not fragile. It's reliable to take to gigs and to play out with. I like the hard metal frame on it than some wahs i've seen.

This is probably the best thing about the pedal is how durable it's been for me.

Just watch out not breaking the distortion circuit button. It's on the side and could be easy to break if your not careful.

Didn't have any issues, So I didn't contact them.

Overall not the greatest wah especially for the price. I've heard cheaper wahs a lot better like the regualr cry baby and some rockatron stuff.

Like I said before if you need a boost just get a boost pedal and a normal wah instead.

The wah is easy to use; the distortion can be confusing. There's a small button on the lower right side that looks like you're supposed to be able to "kick" it in to engage distortion. You can, but it's kinda hard, definitely not something you can count on hitting everytime in the heat of the moment to get some extra gain.

Also, there are two unlabeled metal controls on the right of the unit for volume and gain. Why are these unlabeled? They're right next to each other and identical.

The wah itself is easy to engage, and it's very intuitive how much pressure is required to engage it, that is, i never find myself accidentally engaging or disengaging it, which is not the case for other wah's i've used.

I believe this pedal eats batteries for breakfast as well, but I wouldn't know because I use a power brick.

Finally, the output jack is right next to the power adaptor jack, which is annoying and dumb.

The wah sounds good; the distortion does not. I'm using this with a strat and a Fender Blues Deluxe. Not Slash's setup obviously, so maybe it sounds good with a Les Paul and marshall stack. But hey, if I played through Humbuckers and a Marshall stack, would I worry about needing more gain? The distortion is loud (noisy loud) and digital sounding, also, when combined with the wah, the toe position gets very harsh and painful. I would never think of using this distortion sound.

However: The wah sounds nice. Not much to say for it aside from that. I've compared it to VOX, Snarling Dogs (garbage), and a few crybaby Wahs, and I prefer it. Sounds great clean or with gain (but not its own gain remember!), and you can do drawn out phrasing or quick funky CHICKA CHICKA stuff with it. I really wish I could rate the Wah separate from the distortion, but since the distortion gets a 2 and the wah gets a 9, i'm giving Sound a 7 (this is a WAH pedal after all)

Again, shame they had to put distortion in this thing, cause guess what broke down in the first few months? That's right: The distortion! Which actually worked out, because who would want to accidentally engage that awful screech? Now I just get the wah whether the gain's engaged or not.

Still, it doesn't speak well to the craftsmanship of the unit, so now I worry more about the wah breaking down someday too.

What's more: Wah volume doesn't work either now. haha. Maybe I'll crack it open and see what went wrong some day.

I have not dealt with them.

I'm giving this a conflicted 7. I mean: I wanted a Wah pedal, and I got one, and I like it. It's just all the other bells and whistles that sounded crappy and broke down, know what I mean?

One lesson I've learned about effects: never buy something that claims to do more than one thing at a time. It's hard enough to get one aspect right. How many dedicated distortion or wah pedals are out there? What makes you think Dunlop magically did a bang-up job on both at the same time and still kept a reasonable price point?

No hard feelings though Slash: you're still the man.

Well, of course it's easy to use, two 9V batteries, plug in the cables and you can use it. Whether you like how you activate it or not simply depends on what system you prefer for activating the wah.

BUT as someone else said alreay: the solution for implementing a gain and volume knob was a stupid one. You definitely can't see the setting while using it. Having all chrome knobs with just a small indentation dot doesn't make it any better, just looks good. The switch for turning on the "distortion" is simply ********, as it's on the side of the unit, which makes it damn hard to use it on stage.

So why still 8 out of 10? ... The distortion part of the pedal is useless anyway.

The Wah part alone:

Sounds quite good for soloing on the higher strings (G to e string, 12th fret and above). There it's very controllable and the sweep sounds very nice. I guess that's the frequencies it is designed for (Slash's singing solo sound).
On really low notes (E and A string up to 12th fret I'd say) it's okay, too. In the heel position I can't hear too much difference, but in the toe position the sound becomes runchy and rough (Powerchords, too). Short sweep the almost like on and off.
In the mid-frequencies the sound is just bad. The sweep is totally uncontrollable (like a switch in the middle). Heel postion makes it dull and toe position too harsh ... quite useless there.
So overall a nice wah for higher notes (Lead), chords (clean and crunch) and powerchords (crunch or lead). Quite useless in the middle.


The disortion (the bad part):

It's supposed to be what? Sounds more like the bastard child between and overdrive and a broken EQ. No bass, liveless mids and harsh screaming treble. Maybe ok for freaky sounds, but all in all just sounds bad (and is noisy). Actually not more to say about it, it's just terrible.


Equipment used:
Guitars: ESP SV standard (EMG 81), Fender Strat, Schecter 006.
Amps: Soldano SLO100, Marshall 2203, Line6 PODxtPro
Custon 4x12 with Eminence V30 and a 2x12 with Greenbacks

Built to last forever

Never used it and I guess I never will

The style of music I play is somewhere between Hardrock, Metal, Deathrock and Postpunk. It's a good match for playing high solos (slow and fast), not so much for mid-range melodies.

Playing for around 15 years now, had some wah pedals before, the best so far was a modded Crybaby built somewhen in the 80s, but that was stolen (along with the rest of my pedal board ...) and I like old Vox Wahs. Not so much a fan of Morley and Ibanez ones, because of the way you activate them. and that's actually at the same time the pedals I compared it to, before I bought this red thing here. For sound only I would have bought the weeping demon.
I only bought it actually, because I needed on for a gig and in the set I play only high solos and as I wrote before, it's really good for that.

Buy again if stolen? Nope ... mod a normal Crybaby.

Actually that's what I'm gonna do, I'll have a look at the circuit of the SW-95 and try to mod a normal Crybaby to have a similar sound but without the trouble in the mid-freq (and of course without this distortion ********)

Anything I wish it had? I just wish it didn't have the distortion part. How hard can it be to build a distortion unit? or at least a good overdrive?


Overall it's pretty and it did what I bought it for, but it's too limited in the long run.

It's pretty straight forward. You put in the batteries (2*9v) or plug in the adapter (not included), run two cords through it and you've got it workting. The wahwah part of the pedal works like every other wah wah pedal. To activate the distortion you have to press a buton, that way when you activate the wahwah, the distortion is activated too (and deactivated together with the wah too.) On the side you have 2 dials which control the volume and gain level.

I am very disappointed with the sound quality for several reasons:
1) The wah wah is prety harsh in the higher frequencies which makes is unplesant to listen to.
2) when you sweep from the lower to the upper frequencies, it doesn't go smoothly, you suddenly get a sort of click, making it sound more like twah-dah instead of wah.
3) the distortion isn't a distortion at all, at least you cant use it like one. If you would activate it on a clean channel, it would sound EXTREMELY harsh when you sweep the wah pedal. you could really shred someone's eardrums with it! If you use it in conjunction with another distortion pedal (or a distorted amp) it does sound good though

so what can you use this pedal for? if you play on an overdriven channel, and play in the lower register of your guitar (let's say till the 9th fret) which is defenitly not what this pedal was made for.

The pedal itself is very sturdy and could resist quite a beating. No criticism here. The quality could easly compeat with that of boss pedals.

If didn't have to repair it yet but once I requested that they added the manual to their site and they did. One other time i requested some information regarding the DC-Brick and they helped me out too. So I think they're very depenable and helpfull.

So first let me tell you what kind of stuff I play on.
guitars: Fender 1984 American stratocaster (with TBX) and a cusomised Stagg (also strat guitar) which I equiped with 3 EMG active pickups (Bridge 85, midle SA, Neck 81)
Pedals: Boss SD1 and of course the SW-95 Slash signature wah
amp: Peavey Valveking 112
I play all kind of genres of music and have been playing for 3 years

Now my conclusion about the pedal; it's sucks pretty bad. I wouldn't say it's terrible but it's not good either. I compared it with a VOX wah wah and it sounded better. All in all I would say, don't waste your money on it but buy a cry baby classic or original instead. If you really want to sound like slash buy the classic, it's the one he used (note that the sw-95 is also a classic but with a distortion integrated) Personally i would buy an original but the choice is yours.

Plug this bad boy in and get to rockin'. If you've used a Crybaby, you can rip right into this wah. The trickiest part (and it's not bad at all) is kicking in the dirty boost via the red button on the lower right side of the pedal.

This pedal is just like its namesake...loud and full of character. It comes as close as possible to getting that syllablic, almost vocal quality that Slash is known for. The wah has a pretty significant range over which it sweeps, which is good for single note annunciation (ala Zakk Wylde) or going for the wacka-chicka of funk artists.

The biggest selling point for me was the dirty boost circuit. When you kick on the boost, the pedal becomes (or sounds like it, at least) a runaway freight train. In a word, explosive. The sensitivy of the pedal feels like it goes through the roof and it sounds like the sweep gets extended even further with the added gain. You can control the volume and gain of the boost with two knobs located on the input side of the pedal. Note: if you kick the pedal in with the boost on an already dirty signal (i.e. heavily-distorted tone) you will get some squealing feedback when you are not rocking the pedal.

I demoed the pedal on a tube amp (a small Fender) and I play it through a Spider III and I can't really hear a difference in the wah tone (the amps, of course sound different in the ways they breakup...go tubes!)

I've had trouble with my last Crybaby, but I got it when I was just a young player and didn't really respect my gear (i.e. yanked cables out of pedals). I don't forsee any problems with this baby though...

Never talked to Dunlop...I hear they're nice

I play mostly metal and hard rock/blues and the SW-95 is great for the latter and works well for the former. I'm of the belief that wah wasn't made for metal anyway (except to lace over harmonic minor runs!) I've been playing for 10 years and a good wah with soul and character has been hard to find for me. I've tried about every Morley and Crybaby that they make and none have sounded as good as this one. I was against buying a 'signature' wah because I thought it would give me just one sound...that persons. The Slash wah is bold enough that you can use it to color your tone with some vintage flavor.

This pedal is easy as to get your head around. Just like any crybaby wah.

I have used this wah for probably 6 months now and it really is a great wah. Thats all i like about it tho. I cant say im a fan of that basseless tone it produces. It has a very sensible sweeping freq range however.
The overdrive is utterly useless and id prefer this pedal not to have it because it sounds horrible

Very reliable but i cant say id depend on it for one main reason. The batteries. I mean 2 9 volt batteries is just annoying and you cant just use one battery and not worry about the second one for the overdrive. It wont work and the fact that my pedalboard is tightly connected together with patch cables out of sight, idealy i was going to connect it to my 9v power supply with the rest of my pedals. However an 18 volt supply is needed. This is just stupid and wot really annoys me when i have to keep replacing batteries because i forget to pull out the imput cable.

never needed them

I play alot of 80's shred crazy metal aswell as some southern rock and ovcoarse zakks southern metal style. I play thrash metal and some numetal. This pedal just doesnt suit that style. I also play experimental music and alot of blues and fusion jazz. The slash wah actually sounds maad for fast blues. Not a good choice if ur looking for a fat SRV tone however.
I also play for hillsong united and the style of music we play, especially with the delay and the ghosting nd everything, ITS MAAAD!!
Overall slash fans will love it. Me, im gonna get rid of it as soon as my new cry baby arrives. It just doesnt do what i expected it to. The overdrive pisses me off insanely!!! especially the two control knobs down the side. Its just inconvenient on my pedalboard. I cant say it goes well with the majority of my pedals too.

Very easy to use!!!

The sound quality of just the wah alone is good. The built in distortion is pretty useless. But I didn't buy it for the distortion aspect. I really don't understand why they put it there, its not really a good sounding distortion at all. I haven't been able to dial in a good distortion sound with it, but to be honest I just bought it for the wah sound to run with my own distortion. This thing really does capture the sound Slash gets when he's playing those ripping guitar solos with his wah. Also this pedal is true bypass which is a big plus. I couldn't find anywhere on the websites if it was or not so I disconnected the power and still got a signal which tells me it is true bypass. One thing i did notice is that when you are pulling the pedal back it kind of cuts out because the range is really on the low end when you pull back. Has anyone else noticed this? It really doesn't bother me too much as I just don't pull that far back on the pedal anyway. They actually should sell this pedal without the distortion circuit, like I said I haven't really found any use for it, it just seems to clutter the sound. I may send the pedal to Robert Keeley and see if he can do something with the distortion to improve it and make it more useful. Other than that just as a wah it is good except for the distortion and the low end cut out with the pedal going back. I have to give it an 8 because of those issues.

The pedal seems to be built pretty well, I would gig with it without a backup.

Haven't contacted them yet. Although I plan to because of the wah kind of cuts out when you rock the pedal back.

Over all I have to give it an 8, the wah alone sound great and it does capture the Slash sound. I play mostly hard rock so it fits my style of playing great. I have been playing for about 25 years now. I have been using the Budda wah which is a great wah, but I have to say this pedal fits my style better than the Budda. If it were lost or stolen, I would buy another one in a heart beat. I wish they would make the built in distortion better and fix the cut out I get when I rock the pedal back. Other than that its a great wah pedal.

This is a Fuzz Wah. Dead easy to use. Two page manual card explains it all.

To the guy who thought he could use this as just a fuzz - take ass, remove head. The fuzz is only supposed to work IN CONJUNCTION with the wah. This does not replace your big muff.

That being said, great. I had an old Crybaby years ago when Fasels were stock and I've been searching for that tone ever since it broke. This is it. The LED's are great and the switchable fuzz wah part is nifty too.

Still new. Seems sturdy enough, these things have lasted me many years of abuse before and I don't see why this one would be any different.

Never tried.

For that classic wah sound this does the trick - I have Roger Mayer Vision Wah and Teese RMC3 and I prefer this. I haven't done much with fuzz wah so I can't comment if it's all that in that category, but I know wah and this is it. Great execution with the LED's too - Thanks Slash!!!!

I could use it right out of the box, after hooking it up, and giving it power; I could knock out some G'n'R and some Hendrix, with some amount of ease.

I do know there are people who would have problems with this and finding the distortion on and off switch; These are people who can't use coffee makers or set the clock on their VCR (watch out for them).

There was a lot of ads for other dunlop pedals that come with the pedal, but nothing that would show you "head" from elbows about the pedal or let alone how to use it!

The kid who has their first guitar and who buys this as their first pedal might need a little help getting the basics down; a few sugested settings (like how to get Slash's or Guns'n'Roses sound!)would not brake anyone ether .

The point of stupidity her was, seeing the little dots on the two knobs which controll the gain and distortion. They are on the top of the knobs, so you can SEE the position of the knob, and to make it easyer to find settings.
There is one problem with this... THE KNOBS FACE TO THE SIDE!! You never see them, when you are using the pedal, it's on the floor! When you need to adjust the knobs, you need to see this, so you can find the sound you like. I would love to meet the Geneticists who put that together and give them a Nobel Prize.
I would hope that they did this to make the pedal look better in some way, but I could never see how this would do that.

Or... This would only leave us with one other option; some one didn't get that "ah ha!" moment and plan ahead (like to when you use it).

I would love to be wrong here, OK.

I bought this, thinking that I could have a disortion and wah in one, thinking that it would do both jobs as well or better than my Jimi Hendrix Wah that I have used for over seven years and one of my distortion pedals.

I bought it and took it home, for a side by side test with what i already own, it's here now, as I write this.

I used my Boss BD-2 "blues driver" and a FZ-2, for my comparesent test. I ran everything though a Fender Blues Jr. and used my ESP ltd EX-100 as the guitar of choice. I wanted to see if I could get that Hendrix or Classic Rock Sound that I like. If this pedal could cut the mustard, it would make for less pedals for me to truck around, easyer setup, less noise, and I would have to power one pedal insted of two.

I find out that the same prize-wining scientist who fudged the knob design ran the distortion before the wah circut. I don't like this, at all. It makes the wah sound and act like a weird volume pedal.

The "distortion" is thin and tinny, at any setting. I think it is supposed to be a type of fuzz, but it lacks low end and could be a lot more full.

Our scientest was at work again! The distortion shuts off when the wah dose; can you hear the loony toons theme playing yet!?

I played, using the pedal, but got dumbfounded, as time went by.

I then ran my guitar through the FZ-2 that ran through the Jimi Wah that ran through the BD-2 and in to the Amp. (Note: the FZ-2 was used in boost mode, not for fuzz, and it was not on all the time)

I got a fuller sound for pedals you can get your hands on for the same price or less. The BD-2 put out the distortion needed for the sounds that I was trying to get out of my setup. The FZ-2 was used for some leads and songs like Jimi Hendrix - "voodoo child" and "all along the watchtower", although it was not a must.

Once again, if a begainer bought this, they would most likely not notice the thiner sound, but the distortion shuting off with the wah might create problems for them too.

The pedal might work, if you are playing a style that uses clean chords and a mild lead overdrive sound on the solos.

I guess you could use the gain as a boost with the distortion turned down all the way down, but it would mean that you would still need a sepperate distortion pedal. This would mean that the distortion would be usless.

It lasted as long as I could stannd to use it.

I have no idea how dunlop does with their support people or what part of india they can be found.

I hope, I never find out.

I play: Rock, Metal, and Blues. I have been playing for ten years and own almost all the boss pedal in the curent prodution (and some out of prodution)(I.E. my FZ-2). I also own some electro-harmonix pedals (Big Muff, Delux Memory Man, and Small Clone). I Have a MXR phase 90, oh yeah... The Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Wah pedal. I Have a fender Blues Jr., a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifire Solo Head running through a Peavey Cab, and a peavey XXL head.

I'm also "Big-in-Japan" (I'm not really on the raidar, here in the USA or anywhere)

I am starting to get in to making my own pedals and aftermarket mods. I am starting a band at the moment. I have played in church and with friends.


If it were stolen or lost, would you buy it again or get something else? I could only be so lucky.

What do I love about it? I can take it back.
What do I hate? I spent the $160 to by it.
What is My favorite feature? The return policy!

Why did I choose this one? It sounded like a good idea, played well in the store through a really cheap demo amp, and I am a sucker.

This pedal is a victim of poor design and I riding on the Slash name to sell it.

Freaking easy to use!!!just slap in 2 9V batteries n your away. Gain n volume controls. Dist on/off. so easy anyone could use. Lack of a manual..but then again...you dont need it. At this price, you will know just how this sort of pedal works! :P

Sounds SWEET as. Unless youve got a 9V power supply plugged in....DONT.Use 18v or 2 9V batteries. or the distortion sounds od as the led's draw lots of power..can see the power drop when the blue led comes on. 18V ONLY. Fucking sweet tho.

Tis a hunk of metal. Only reliability issue is how well the paint will hold up....tis a sweet colour. Pedal WILL NOT BREAK.

.............Why?

Overall i love this pedal. sOunds Great, Is great. Been playing 5 years now.Play gibson les paul classic through marshall avt...not the best amp.Nevermind.Still sounds awesome.Valve amp will make this pedal fucking amazing...must have.

It is very easy to use. wah on off, distorion on off volume gain.\
Can not be. more simple

This is one of the best sounding wah pedals I have ever played. And I have played many wahs from fulltone to z vex to budda etc. This pedal has a great wah tone due to the fasel (no adjustment though) but what makes this pedal sing is the high gain distorion circuit. It nails slash's tone. So if you like a semi squished high gain sound this is it. It has endless sustain. I play the pedal from a les paul standard through multiple effect chain to BAD CAT class a combo. TH sound is huge with this pedal. It is one of the best pedals i have ever bought.

Mine works great and is very sturdy. However i have read some reviews that make me question dunlop defect ratio.

Have not used it

Excellent pedal a must have if you like high gain wah or if you want to use it like clapton and fix the wah for the tone you want.
Best new pedal I have bought in a long time.