5. Auto Wah

You can create a wah effect even without using your foot - either completely automatically, or by touch control.

Depending on the manufacturer, this type of wah effect is called auto wah, touch wah, dynamic wah or envelope filter. The touch control works dynamically: with a light touch, the low mids are raised as in the pedal heel position, while a more forceful touch raises the upper mids, which corresponds to the pedal toe position. This applies when the "up" effect mode has been selected. The "down" mode works in the opposite way, a light touch raises the upper mids, a harder one the lower mids. These effects devices, too, make for interesting sounds, although they do sound somewhat different from the classic pedal wah. The auto wah is particularly popular with bass players, who often also refer to it as the funk box.

One of the first envelope filters was the Mu-Tron III, followed by Electro Harmonix' legendary Q-Tron, which is available to this day in different versions. Many other manufacturers offer their own dynamic wah effect creations.

In an auto wah effect, several settings are available: with the sensitvity controller, the effect is aligned to the force with which you strike the string(s), so that for example the heel position's muffled sound results from striking softly, while striking harder results in a somewhat brighter sound. Another important parameter is the setting for the medium frequencies - this is where you basically adjust the bandwidth of the frequency shift, the virtual pedal pathway, so to speak. This parameter is headed "range", "manual", or "peak". With most pedals, you can also choose among different operation modes, e.g. Low Pass Filter (Down), High Pass Filter (Up), Band Pass Filter.

Here are some examples with dynamic wah effect:

Clean Auto Wah (AW-3: 10 - 14 - 14,5 -Tempo)

Clean Touch Wah (AW-3: 10 - 14 - 14 - Sharp)

Overdrive: Touch Wah (AW-3: 13 - 14 - 14 - Up)