Johnson WaVo

Easy to use ... If you dont care what you sound like. No knobs on the thing work well. Kick it on and off, pretty basic

Here's where it goes from crappy to MOST crappy, the actual sound can be ear piercing if not adjusted just so, and can we talk about the huge CLICK that you hear when you engage the wah?

Definite noticable and makes you sound like your a rookie player. I bought this thing new just for a goof because I got it cheap, still in the box w/all paperwork. It took me about 1/2 to decide this is the worst wah I have ever heard, seen, expierenced.

It sucks huge....

I hear the switches are crap, for the money grab one only if your a bedroom player and you take an oath to never play it within earshot of another human.

Never dealt with them, didnt have it long enough....

I play all kinds of music, have been playing pro for about 23 years, PLEASE, if your looking for a wah, save an extra 75.00 and buy a Dunlop, Vox or Morely, but not this piece of crap, its really a joke of a pedal. I have to give it a 1 cause it wont let me type in a -10....

Well, it's a wah-wah combo volume pedal. Made in China (that should have rung warning bells, but I digress). As far as I'm aware it's pretty new, and it's a nifty idea. But if the version of it I got is any indication of quality, it ain't going to be very popular.

It doesn't really need a manual. Basically, you have a little knob on the side that selects 4 different kinds of wah mode, light to heavy I suppose (or as they say on the Johnson website - "The pedal features a multi-band frequency selector to customize the wah-wah tone." Pah. Customise the tone, my arse). Instead of pressing down on the pedal to turn it off, when you do this the volume function is engaged, and by raising the pedal the volume is lowered, by slowly depressing it the volume kicks back in. Then by depressing it fully again the wah is engaged. And so on and so on. Simple enough, really.

As far as features and ease of use go, it would rate pretty high. I give this 8 very grudgingly.

OK, here we go. This is where I bag the absolute shit out of this thing.

I played this through my 80 watt Marshall Valvestate, clean and on OD1 and OD2 settings. My guitars are an Ibanez Jet King (which, as far as I'm concerned can take it up to a Les Paul any day of the week) and an custom made Strat-style guitar with Fender USA pups. I like the tones I get through both guitars, my BOSS units and this amp. However, on the day the WaVo wasn't used with any effects other than the amp overdrive, since my adapter has decided to pack it in.

At first I thought that the wah sounded quite good. I sat there ripping through solos and getting a kinda decent wah sound on my OD2 settings. Then I realised that it was bleeding my volume quite badly, as the settings on my amp should have been making me much louder! I tried all the 4 settings for wah, and the only one I really liked was the first setting - sounded like a vintage wah sound, kinda reminiscent of the Crybaby. The other three thickened out the tone but you also lose that treble wah. It's not a distortion effect, but I don't know what the hell it is, it just sounded muffled. And it definately only sounded good with my OD2 setting. Trying it on OD1 and it sounded weak, trying it clean (I would have put in a bit of chorus, but as I said, my adapter had packed it in and I didn't have any spare batteries to try it with the rest of my effects) just sounded strange.

Next I tried the volume function. My first gripe is that when you change to function by pressing on the pedal, you hear it through the amp. This great goddamn "CLICK." Oh, and I got the same sort of sound when switching between the different wah effects as well. I was starting to worry about the state of my amp.

Anyway, the volume function is SHITE. All the way back, there's faint sound...depress it one fucking millimeter and BANG!!! There's all your sound again. That isn't a volume pedal, that's a bloody On/OFF switch. What a load of crap.

I'm giving it a 4 because at first it sounded quite nice, but its other crapness lets it down. And as we shall see, I think 4 is being generous.

For me, reliability does not just mean, would I gig without a backup. It's also - "is it nice to play with? Or do you want to throw it out of the window after a while?" Thus I comment below:

The arc of movement of the pedal is really limited. Not as smooth as a Crybaby, and I found out why too, when I looked and saw that the little arm controlling the movement was made of this crappy plastic that kept slipping back and forth. Every now and again I had to reach under the pedal's footpad and shove that little blighter back into place. Now THAt would be fun in the middle of a gig, I'm sure.

The unit is made of heavy steel, which should feel sturdy, but it doesn't. Whenever I held this thing it felt cheap, nasty and fragile. This wasn't helped by the fact that it when I received it, the cosmetic knob for the selector was cracked and fell off when I tried to use it. I could use the thin knob UNDERNEATH the cosmetic one, but it didn't bode well for the reliability of the rest of the unit.

Well, so far. Sounded ok, on at least one of the wah settings. As it's not a true bypass it bleeds volume, but the VOLUME pedal made should have made up for that. Nope. By this time I'd been playing for all of about 15 minutes. Then, all of a sudden, the volume started dropping even further. Switching back and forth between the Wah/Volume settings wasn't rectifying this. Unless I'm mistaken, this hunk of shit had bled a 9V battery dry in about 15 MINUTES!! I changed batteries with the one they'd provided (I hadn't trusted it, for some reason. Call it intuition.) This did nothing. Then, all of a sudden, my amp makes another unhealthy noise. I mean, one of those "Oh shit we're all gonna die!" noises. I unplugged the Hunk of Shit (the WaVo, for those of you playing at home) and tended to my bruised amp. I am never plugging that thing into my amp again. The electrics in it are obviously as reliable as a used-car salesman.

So. Would I depend on it? Christ no. Would I use it on a gig without a backup? I wouldn't even use it in REHEARSALS, my friend. I'm sending the fucker back tomorrow and I expect a full refund. Then I'm going out and getting a Jim Dunlop product, which is what I should've done in the first place.

The Johnson website is pure, unadulterated propagandal crap. It just advertises their (in my experience) inferior quality products. I have never dealt with anyboby from this company, nor would I want to. However, I got this off eBay through a music store and they were actually very helpful. I called them up and asked them prior to the sale about the unit, and they gave me some helpful info. When I rang them today about the dodgy knob, they were also quite helpful and friendly. Let's see how amenable they are to giving my money back tomorrow.

Well, this would have been a nice little addition to my effects. if it had worked properly and hadn't tried to kill me. Our band plays bluesy rock, with a dabbling in alternative and metal. Hard to describe really. Let's just say rock. Anyway, been playing for about 15 years, and have owned various shitty equipment, but I must say, nothing as bad as the Wavo.

I generally run either of my guitars through(all BOSS effects) a PSM-5, NS-1 (I hate buzz and the single-coil hum from my Strat-clone), MT-2 (hardly used, just as a beefer up of tone sometimes), a CE-2 and a CS-2, then through the input of my Marshall (not the effects loop. It sucks hairy dogs' balls). I quite like this setup, but I need a wah and didn't want to shell out for a CryBaby. My mistake.

Don't get me wrong. The idea of the wah/volume combo is good. Really good. Problem is that it didn't live up to expectations. If it were stolen, I'd hunt down the bastard and smack him over the head with it just because he was stupid enough to steal it in the first place. if I didn't want my money back, I'd throw it off the nearest skyscraper.

So, don't go near this thing. It's crap. While it might sound decent at first, it gets worse and worse. Then it tries to kill you. Go get a real wah-wah pedal. The reason I'm giving it a 1 is because it's such a disappointment. If I'd paid less I probably wouldn't be so critical, but for God's sake. $120 means you should get $120 worth of quality, not $20 worth.