Shin-Ei/Companion Fuzz-Wah Pedal

Couldn't be easier.

I give 10 points for the fuzz.

It brings a smile to my face every time I hook it up. It has that over the top in your face fuzz sound. I believe I hear some octaver in there as well sometimes. Not sure though.

Is is said to have the same internals, come from the same factory, as Univox's super fuzz. Can't vouch for that. It does have the same controls...

Of course the fuzz is not too versatile. 2 sounds and that's it.

The wah is nothing special. Never use it.

Still works after all these years.

...

Luv it.

Being a vintage fuzz its as simple as could be, a pot for volume, another for fuzz amount and a two way tone selector.
The big rubbery pedal on top is the wah!!!

I hate all these "it sounds like a chainsaw" reviews but this pedal kind of does, its a nasty crunching gristly fuzz. The two stock tones are both good, but i replaced the switch with a pot to give some more tone control and its well worth doing, can be done in 2 minutes and easily put back!!! But it well worth doing.

The Wah is kinda the same story, its not good but it offers a welcome alternative to the more brash modern wah's its nicely understated. But the range is somewhat short if you want a rock/metal wah you want a crybaby or a snarling dog.

I cant say i have had any noise problems with it, and the only other gripe i can muster is the volume drop/boost with the fuzz and wah respectively.

I use this with an epiphone les paul/squire jazz bass and various pedals into vintage traynor mark 3 and sunn coliseum heads with matching cab.

I play everything from punk, metal, doom, drone etc... and it sounds awesome with everything.

Its simple as anything i havent had any problems with mine, and schematics are widely available if not still stuck to the chassis!!!
So pretty simple to fix or even re-build entirely.

See reliability

This is one of my favourite pedals, i dont have much money and i get good stuff as and when i can at prices that i can afford. If it got stolen or destroyed i would be majorly sore and i doubt i could afford to replace it.

It is a fantastically horrible pedal but i dont believe any pedal can truly warrant the prices i have seen paid for this. I am rating this on the price i paid for it, note i got lucky!

easy to use. adjust the volume and fuzz to where you want it, and step on the pedal.

agile hornet---->fuzzwah---->marhall 15 watt
not noisy if your amp is clean
the effects are great...when its set to high fuzz, the bottom end and power chords are very defined. if you try playing barre chords with high fuzz, they sound like shit, but obviously because its a fuzzwah. as for clean, it is all beautiful. picking and strumming is great....perfect amount of sweep. Two Fuzz settings...hard and soft...hard is more intense obviously. kinda like less sustain but louder...soft is thick and full.

i got it broken for 10 bucks, and spent 80 to fix it. well it is a little better now, but still not perfect - only works right on certain days!?!?...i cant really say because i got it broken. surprisingly lightweight for a wah pedal too.

again cant really give a rating. never dealt with them.

i already have a Snarling Dogs Wonder Wah 2 which is also a great wah, but i wanted a wah that worked well with fuzz. the shin-ei companion fuzzwah is great for classic rock/altenative with fuzz. another feature i like about it is when you turn the wah off, it makes for a great fuzz box with hard and soft fuzz settings. Only problem with this is to get bypass, you gotta push a lot of buttons. this is great for any kind of music mostly, except metal. i tried it on clean settings with distortion, and fuzz settings with not so much distortion, and both ways, it was muddy and undefined...so if youre looking for a "metal wah" get the crybaby from hell...if youre looking for a great wah, with unique fuzz, get the Shin-Ei Companion FuzzWah.

So... the only cons i could really think of were...
1)metal and really heavy stuff isn't really reachable with this pedal
2)NO AC ADAPTER INPUT????? BUT its great on batteries.
3) appearance is straightforward wah pedal...kinda wish it looked funkier

This may not be the appropriate site to ask this question However,, I have an 8Tr Fuzz Wah & I think these vintage pedals have a sound that todays digital effects cant come close to. My problem is that several of the wires soldered to carious connections have come off & I have no friggin idea where thier correct placemnt is. Woulkd sum KIND SOUL please op thewir unit ( Not very difficult 4 screws) and take a close up picture of the wires & circuits. I should be able to then solder the wires to the correct terminals. I woulkd greatly appreicate anyone who could do this THank you..Dr Undies

Great warm soft & Harsh Fuzz ( nuffink digital comes close) and the wah wah pedal is fair... overall though this vintage pedal is worth its weight in cocky shit.

Damn I inherited from a bother-in-law &about 5 wires have broken off the soldering points & I have NO IDEA where they connect to. I this was thru wear & ter it would be no good But I suspect it had human intervention :o)

I have no idea who maufactured the 8Tr Fuzz Wah. If I can find out they may have a circuit schematic or at least be able to advise me how to rectify the problem if nobody on this site is able to help.
Does anyone know who made this pedal?

I use mainly Boss effect pedals... I dabble in guitar & keyboad but play the drums as my main instrument.

Played guitar over 20 years but ya wouldn't know it :o)

I doubt if I could find anudda one

I love the warm analogue sound the fuzz is awesome & the wah acceptable

has 2 knobs, volume and tone i think(doesnt do much), a switch to change the style of fuzz and a wah.
pretty damn easy to use coz theres not many different tones u can get out of it

I am using squier strat or a Dearmond M-75 into DS-1, into a solec phaser, into the wah and into my Kustom amp. i love the sound of this fuzz. It is very rawk. Sounds like a chainsaw cuttin somethin.
only problem is there is some background noise but if u have an effects loop this should eliminate the problem.
The wah is not that great, i mainly bought the pedal for the fuzz.
Ive started to play a bit of punk but mostly originals. Also this is the same pedal as used by Ed O'brien of Radiohead so it sounds great on bass.

Um had it for a day so i hope so. look s pretty sturdy and has lasted 30 or so years so i guess so

I play a range of music but this pedal is not so great for all styles. You wiill either love it or hate it.
Has the most intense sound ever. THe reason i bought this is because of the sound that can be heard on radioheads Myxamatosis.
Some one should start a fan club for these fuzz pedals.

8TR FUZZ/WAH. Mine is labeled, oddly enough "Thomas". It's made in Japan. Has two pushbutton switches (one for wah and one for fuzz) wired in true bypass.
Two rotary knobs to set the amount of fuzz and volume, a footswitch to turn off and on the fuzz, a slide-switch to choose from Hard or soft fuzz and a 'toe-down' footswitch to engage the wah. Battery only.

It's strange sounding, but useful. It can get a bit noisy, but its worth it.

It has COSMO pots good switches and is built in a metal case. It should last.

Manual? Standard wah-type pedal. My tone-deaf non-musician friends can work it out in the space of seconds. The one I have is so used that the switches don't always, well, switch. Two, three (hard) presses to activate the wah, which can lead to some confusion due to the noise this machine produces anyway. Fuzz is an understatement.

Another reviewer said that he couldn't imagine what kind of music could be made with this pedal, and then went on to speak of Neil Young's "Arc" CD. I'll technically agree with the latter. I can't really imagine a "style" (I hate that word) this machine was designed for. Face it, guitar players in general are a fairly conservative bunch when it come to sound, which is reflected in the huge amount of available effects based around about six-seven circuit designs. Outside this sphere is your "avant-garde" (I hate that word) realm. This pedal is in that general area. Personally, I put a (more or less) homemade fretless bass through this purely for the sounds that all the synths and samplers I have just cannot make. If I need controlled noise, this little black box will provide it. Therefore no "sound quality" opinion. It's arbitrary.

Depend on it? Depends on it. All the moving parts on mine are in ribbons, but I don't use it on the road, as it were. Constant daily (ab)use would probably add to it's charm (will the wah kick in now?) but the circuit is, as far as I know, as it was when it left the factory/sweatshop all those years ago. This thing is older than I am, and I feel the years sometimes. I would like to try half a dozen more to compare the sound. I doubt it's the same. A ten all the same, it does what I want it to occaisionally and something new frequently.

Yeah right.
But Shin-ai were kind enough to put the schematic on the baseplate. Companies did that in the seventies, it seems. So theoretically this pedal can be cloned in the space of a few hours, although it's taking me rather longer. The end is in sight.

All the specifics of this pedal have been discussed. I feel that it slipped through the common-or-garden guitar effects net and a few thousand examples of a really original sound producing machine came into circulation. Maybe mine is just warped. It's far too extreme for "ordinary" (I hate that word) "music" (whatever) but as a truely different sound effect it is a treasure trove of frequencies. As I've said, I usually put a fretless bass through it, but am not adverse to drum machines, synths, microphones (just for ambient/room sounds)... it's all there to be used.

It's pretty damn easy to use - you press the toe-switch for the wah, the other toe switch for the fuzz, hit a chord and deafen yourself. Working out exactly what the hell is going on can be confusing the first time...;)

The band that everyone is talking about is probably the Jesus and Mary Chain. The pedal is heard on most of their albums - try 'Never understand' and 'I hate rock and roll' (the last half of the song) for two excellent examples. I'm 99% sure it's the only pedal used for that shrieking sound on those songs, played through William Reid's trademark 355 hollowbody.

I use this with any old bass amp and any old bass guitar (I'm not picky) and it makes the sound from hell. There's a bit of hiss, but it doesn't bother me because it's high-end. Also picks up radio when the guitarist uses it with his Peavey amp. Sometimes I use it with a Boss Distortion (which is broken, in a good way). I usually have the fuzz running, stomp the Boss - which creates monstrous levels of deep feedback - then stomp the wah, which creates gales of white noise and screaming feedback. It's an unbeatable crescendo of noise. On a good day just blowing on the strings makes it cry like a banshee. I would love to use this with a Big Muff, but I had a choice of one or the other and after one spin on the Shin-ei the decision was easy.

It really has only one sound, so if you like it, go for it. A friend likened it to having his teeth drilled.

It can be a little random, but I put that down to the age of the moving parts - I suspect the wah slips now and then, making it hard to get the exact sound and maintain it.
Other than that it's great. Hasn't failed to (dis)please yet.

Never heard of 'em other than this pedal.
My friend the pedal builder says it would probably be hard to repair because of it's age, but he didn't take a close look at it.

I'm in a very noisy avant-rock band (Sonic Youth/Dead C etc) and it's a gift from hell. I really can't think of anything quite like it. I'd sell both my amp and bass before this thing. Seriously.

I do agree with Michel, though, that the wah is very much like a pass filter. If I had the nouse to build one I'd probably dispense with the wah pedal and set the pot as a set-and-forget pass filter next to the other two pots on the front of it, with a stomp switch for the fuzz and a flick switch for the filter, which would make it more reliable for recording a 'just right' sound. But as it is I won't complain, the wah allows some serious deviations in pitch for the feedback in a live setting.

turn your amp on and step on it (look at the faces of the drummer and the bassplayer ;)

the wah is very sweet, a little bit softer than my crybaby and my vox.. i love it
the fuzz sounds? very very strange, but beautiful. you never know what happens nextespecially when u try to play mora than 2 notes at a time ...hendrix, kyuss... use a strat/neck PU and you get a octave fuzz like heard on jimi's purple haze. i use it with a ibanez tube king overdrive ,a digital delay and a MXR phase 90. any sound is possible now ;)

i play it all the time (ah no... not in every song... that's probably too much for the audience..;)

the best thing i bought for years (except the tubeking). i'm playing for 20 years now and i had A LOT of wah's, fuzz boxes, overdrives and so on. this is the best/strangest i ever heard. it's not bad to have another overdrive for more "normal" sounds ;)
but matches my needs (style somewhere between hendrix,zappa, RATM and korn & kyuss
sorry for the bad english ...i'm german

Fuzz button, off on and side-switch for two possibilities. Some knobs to turn. Wah off/on button. I moved the Wah button next to the Fuzz one to avoid switching the thing off by mistake.

I run a LP and a Marshall half-stack. It's incredibly noisy.
The effect sounds absolutely weird. The fuzz is harsh, stinky, brutal, totally void of 'dynamics'. The wah is not too bad, but the wah-sweep is a bit to short.

It has it's completely own noise character! I can hardly imagine any music that fits this pedal! I'd love to hear it.

No. It can make any kind of noise at any given moment. Including silence. I never dared to gig it. Didn't even dare to bring it to the rehearsal room.

This thing is completely weird. It fizzes, howls and screeches. It's impossible to make it sound like anything like a decent guitar sound. Sometimes, you get metal-saxophone sounds, old synths and things out of it.

The closest I can imagine is some of Neil Young's farthest out work on the special Arc-Weld disc or similar (it's one complete CD album of feedback endings to songs from the Weld tour).

I read in Guitar World or a similar publication about a band who used one of these things, noone out there whou found them?

I'm amazed to find so many reviews of the thing, made me real happy!
If you find one, buy it and treasure it for it's abilites. If you manage to harness the sound, you'll be the next Hendrix.