You know that Bwa-chicka-Bwa-wa guitar sound they used to use in, oh, say funk music in the early 70’s? Whatever happened to that?
I just thought of another good example. The theme song to the old ‘Match Game’.
Or the theme to Three’s Company? That’s a wah-wah pedal. It modifies the tone of the guitar. By rocking the foot pedal, the tone goes from treble-boosted (nasal) to bass-boosted (vowel-y). You combine that vocal “wah-wah” sound w/scratches (muting the strings w/your fret hand and strumming normally w/the pick hand), and you have the trademark funk guitar/70’s cheese sound.
It’s still around, but I don’t hear it as much as I used to. I guess it just fell out of favor, much like overly tremulous “surf” guitar from the 50’s went out.
to the porn industry.
[sub]Or so I’ve ah, heard[/sub]
Didn’t Tommy Tedesco do a lot of this stuff? I know he did the soundtrack to The Streets of San Franciso.
Then again, like orr said, wah-wahs were a late '60s/early '70s kind of thing…
That sound isn’t just ANY wah-wah pedal. That is the Cry Baby wah-wah pedal, as popularized by Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and the only true choice of discerning electric guitar players. I have one, bought it in about 1978. AFAIK, it is no longer being manufactured. Thus, it died out.
When the Cry Baby was in its heyday, there really weren’t too many effects, just the wah wah and reverb, a bit later came the primitive phase shifter and flanger, that was about it. Nowadays we have tons of effects, IMHO, too many. Shut off those goddam annoying boxes and learn to PLAY your damn guitar!
Sez the man who owned half of all the effects for guitars in’78! 
Well actually, warmgun, I guess I owned ALL of them since I had a reverb amp and a Cry Baby. I considered buying a phase shifter when it came out, but I hated the sound, I could barely hear what I was playing.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chas.E *
**AFAIK, it is no longer being manufactured. Thus, it died out.
It is still being manufactured, by Jim Dunlop. You can walk into any Guitar Center or Mars Music and buy one right off the shelf, brand new.
**
George Harrison was using tone and volume pedals as early as 1965, most notably on “I Need You” and “Yes It Is.” While flanger pedals might not have been readily available, the effect was being used by the Beatles for vocals and guitars by late 1966. Eric Clapton used a chorus pedal quite famously on “Badge” in 1969. In fact, chorus and flanging were in pretty common use by the late '60s. My friend Aaron has a Vox teardrop shaped guitar from 1968 that has built-in distortion, chorus and wah-wah.
Do you ever, like, know what you’re talking about?
I would second the fact that the Crybaby is still around - I’ve owned two new ones, as well as currently a Dunlop Rotovibe, which is a chorusy-out of phase version. The first two weren’t very reliable, though; they managed to come out of the factory with dirty pots pre-installed somehow.
It is however true that the glut of effects around today were not as available in the late sixties, unless you were Hendrix, though I have some older friends with some truly fantastic examples. One particuarly huge combination volume/wah rig from 1970 or so comes to mind. I forget its name, something cheesy like the ‘Volumetron’.