To get the exact tone you’ve heard from others, you might need to tweak or try out more wah pedals. Since the tone is so closely linked to the sound, the less gratification you get from an old thread style wah should probably be assumed as wrong. If you want to get a little more raw, you may want to try one of the most popular mods for the legendary Bluesbreaker. When maximizing the pretty solid sounding tones that the Bluesbreaker gives you, you often do so by adding both a second control groove and a sharp control tone pot. Depending on your preference, you may want to go for a Bluesbreaker style that comes with one pot and one control pot and gives a clean boosted tone in between the sharp and gritty tones other companies often provide. When exploring this further, you may also need to check out the SP-407 Grillo Tone mod that can provide a more gritty or conducive sound versus the slightly brighter Tone Boost of this Bluesbreaker. I own an SP-407 and don’t really enjoy its sound, so I tried out the Tone Boost Bluesbreaker mod and it sounds very similar to the Bluesbreaker just boosted a little more. If you’ve tried this tutorial and have a TONE BLEND preference or you prefer these classically brighter tones with a little extra bite, then this mod may be for you. Also, you’re free to experiment with gaining a more boosty or humbucker style tone as well.

Restoring tone or ‘leonarding’ is a great way to differentiate two wah pedals. For instance, differences like sharp vs. gritty might not sound as important when comparing chromatic vs. motivic valves. Oneida State: Tone can be enhanced by stacking a mid choke (mid phase) or both mid phase and perhaps a bridge mod, but overall you’re best off dead level tuned (not plugged in). More info on defining the ‘sound’:When you often vary between three to five W and A sounds, you probably have a good generic sound that is in the ballpark of straight standard guitar sounds vs. distortion. This is called the ‘PG’ or ‘normal’ sound. Stacking up a seventh tone really doesn’t do much. Some folks like to stack a oneida or twoida mid phase wah tone and have a fun mellower snarl to their sound. Most of the time, a change of one key setting “dips” much cleaner than changing all 77 on a guitar. Note: the same stack sounds different than different colors of wah (screaming versus hollow) which is subjective — listen for yourself. A pedal that produces more uniformity of frequency response and more energetic, aggressive sound can generally sound better than a wah pedal. Extremes of amplitude modulation can become very subjective at times.

Rob contributed a great tip for when you want to use a signal source other than your amp “for that extra oomph” to reveal itself. There can really be no set of parameters that will unify all set of tone characteristics. Instead, you’ll need to try and find that sweet spot causing the sweetest mix of guitar, source, and EQ settings. For instance, it’s useful to go back to the days of Fender and house amps where there was a slightly fat mid cut EQ that created that fat mid-hump. That ‘sweet spot’ has existed since the late ’50s and became part of the Atkins channel. More info on defining the ‘sound’: Play around with the same source and EQ setting on two guitars. Paragraph Topic: Different guitar pickups work very well on different sources. For instance, some solos will benefit from a hotter Head. Some would appreciate a smoother neck pickup. Finding that sweet spot is more art than science. Oneida State: One place to find the sweet spot is neck position. You can use the same neck guitar on different bass or treble frequencies to find the sweet spot.

If you want some more information regarding wah pedals. Check out https://www.bestguitarequipment.com/reviews/best-wah-pedals-on-the-market/