Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah Pedal

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Chi-Wah-Wah 1

After distortion the wah-wah pedal, for many, is the second most preferred pedal for guitarists. From rock to funk and other genres in between, the wah-wah offers a tremendous amount of tonal variety to inspire your playing. There are a lot on the market to choose from too thanks to manufacturers like Vox, Dunlop, Morley, Boss and Fulltone. But until now none have been small enough to fit on a standard pedal board or provide dials for wider tonal variations. Enter the Chi-Wah-Wah from Plutoneium - a small, steel encased wah-wah that is the same size as a typical guitar pedal and offers three dials (volume, contour and gain).

To use, stomp on the treadle to engage then press down to open the frequencies up. As the treadle is spring loaded, taking your foot off returns it to a flat (level) position. Around half a second after removing your foot, your guitar reverts back to its original tone (ie no wah wah effect). This makes it seamless to use and much quicker than the traditional 'toe-down, click to engage' option. It's also perfect for more frequent applications - colouration of a ¼ note sustained chord on beat four of every bar, perhaps? Super easy! For this reason we can see guitarists like New York's effects virtuoso, Oz Noy loving this! That said, rockers may find the Schenker/Lynch 'half stuck wah' tone problematic as you need to keep pressing on the treadle for the effect to be engaged. If you're that type of player, this probably wouldn't be your first choice wah then.

Overall, it's the on/off speed of effect and its sound that gives the Chi-Wah-Wah its appeal - all manner of funky Shaft and Hendrix tones are available with subtle and wide sweeps a breeze after a dial turn or two. For example, with the contour and gain up full the wah had us whackacha-ing for a good ten minutes! Ultimately though, having a wah-wah positioned amongst your tuner, distortion and modulation pedals has substantial 'wow' factor for those stuck with small pedal boards and/or gig stages.

Distributed by Guitar XS and retailing at £189, this wah- wah should (super)fly out of stores - we love it!

For more info visit http://plutoneium.com/

Specs

Inductor-based resonant wah circuit with 100% Analogue signal path

Switchless optical actuation design

Frequency range 250Hz-2.2Khz

Fully buffered bypass

1.5mm thick rolled steel pedal

Current draw - 35mA (9v DC)

133mcm(L) x 72mm(W) x 59mm(H)

Weight - 625g (without battery)