Boss PW-3 Wah Pedal

As usual, Boss has made a quality pedal that will last from one generation to other. However, it has some minor flaws in my opinion in its design's usability compartment.

I like the sleek and industrial looking housing, reminds me of Ibanez ToneLok series pedals from the early 00's. On the bad side, the powder coated metal treadle makes the use slippery when not wearing shoes. The bottom has the unfortunate four little rubber pads on the corners that I find extremely irritating; nowadays people velcro or dual lock the pedals into their boards and these kind of solutions make it a notch harder.

Tonally the pedal has both classic wah sound and its own thing going on. Both settings sounded pleasant to my ear and had good range. The pedal worked well on guitar with anything from E standard to B standard tuning. I have no experience on how it reacts with bass, I never tried it out.

Putting the mode selector switch between the in and out jacks on upper side of the pedal is mildly annoying, since it takes a bit fiddling to get there with your fingers, especially on crowded board. I liked the way on/off function was designed, but in practice it was a bit difficult, since the switch needed really stomping on it to activate and deactivate. On the plus side, the treadle was pretty easy to leave in cocked position. Slightly small area of operation needed some adjustment, if used to classic Dunlop or Vox wah operational movement range like I was.

All in all, I liked the sounds and the looks, and slightly downsized chassis compared to classic Dunlop / Vox sized wah was a good thing. However, I ended up selling the thing because of the somewhat minor but still irritating enough issues with operating. It's a quality piece of work, though, and if you care to mod it a little for added grip and removing the pads on the bottom, you can make it work.

The reason I bought this is because I got tired with my (old) heavy, noisy Dunlop cry baby (maybe needed some maintenance). I tested this one and found it sounds fresh and sparkling (less Jimmy, I'm not Jimmy!). It weighs 700 gr less (my pedal board was getting so heavy), is smaller in size but really big enough and has 2 lights! So you know when it is on! I read some people find it difficult to swith on. The manual says you can remove 1 or 2 rubber buttons below the pedal to mak it lighter and that works really great. Very easy to switch on and of. The swith between the two modes is in a convenient position, may depend on your pedal board setup though.

At first I hated it; no true bypass and gave a little noise when not used. I couldn?t find any buttons to switch it off and on.

But then I read the manual!

You need to step real hard on it to switch it off and on, like put all your weight on it. Turned out it does have true bypass and no more noise comes out when switched off. However, that?s not a good feature when you?re playing in front of an audience. Of course you can avoid this if you have a remote pedal for it.

In general, it is an acceptable wah pedal with good sounds and modes, but not highly recommended. It?s smaller in size than other wah pedals, which give it some extra points. Switching between classic and vintage modes can be a pain since you have to find the switch between the jacks and the power plug, which is not a good place to place it.