Introduction
The wah never seems to go out of style, having emerged with incredible glory from the days of Hendrix and later breathing life into modern rock with many virtuoso guitarists having their own signature wah pedals. With some added distortion, there is very little that is as gritty and sexy as well-executed wah guitar vocalization, but one common annoyance is the background noise of those scratchy, wearing pots. It becomes costly and a pain to change them, and with Murphy’s Law not on your side, pots tend to wear and become noisy when you least want them.

When I heard Sonuus was releasing an analogue signal path wah/filter pedal, but with digital control and pre-sets, I was interested. But what captivated my attention was that this wah has NO pots – rather, it uses a unique patent-pending pedal sensor that eliminates pots, pot wearing, and dirt formation around the mechanics.
As anxious as I was to try this pedal, and write a review, I quickly became aware of how daunting a task it was going to be – this is no ordinary wah, but a fully programmable envelop filter. There are a ton of features about this pedal, and so I’ll address the most basic to the more complex.

Basic Features
I already mentioned one of the basic (and one of the most important) features in the introduction, including the use of a new sensor to control the effect, and that means no scratchy pot noise… ever. Moreover, with its ground-breaking pitch-tracking technology, it is possible to create unique pitch-bend and tracking effects that vary considerably in range and quality that has set a new standard in wah/filter pedals

This dual-filter ‘transparent-true-bypass’ pedal is ideal for guitar or bass and comes with 100 presets, as well as 100 user presets to save your own creations. The pedal includes the following groups (with 10 in each):

  1. Pedal-controlled wah (from smooth and sweeping of a traditional Crybaby to throaty and growling)
  2. Pedal-controlled vowel sounds (a more humanized approach to the wah)
  3. Touch wah/guitar (affected by how hard you play)
  4. Bass envelope (these actually sound pretty cool on the guitar as well… unique jazz tones coming from these presets)
  5. LFO (low frequency oscillation – not stepped; note that the rate of oscillation for these pre-sets, as well as those in number 6 below, is controlled by the foot pedal)
  6. LFO (stepped for more rhythmic applications)
  7. LFO beats
  8. Pitch-bend and pitch-track
  9. Bubbly envelope
  10. Mix-up (various combinations with some sounding like they emerged from a science fiction movie)


There is so much variation, from vintage to modern, that there’s plenty to choose from; but imagine developing a few dozen wah/envelop filter patches to your preferences, relative to different styles of songs or artists you like, and being able to access them via the pedal’s footswitch on command!
The rear panel has a lock switch, which enables the user to keep the pedal in lock-down mode, so that you cannot edit or change any presets or their parameters. This is ideal for a gigging musician who wants to make sure that none of the buttons or controls are touched accidentally (although with the steel crossbars in place, it is difficult to do so).

The power supply options are three-fold. You can use an optional adaptor or batteries (via a convenient flip lid on the bottom), and if the power supply disengages accidentally, you get uninterrupted power transference to the batteries. The third option is great for those home players, as you can hook up a USB chord to your computer and power the pedal that way – the Wahoo’s software is contained directly in the pedal, and so your computer recognizes it right away. (With all three connected, the power supply takes priority, followed by the USB then the batteries.)

A cool power feature is that you will see a periodic ‘bAt’ flash, to let you know that the batteries are getting low. As well, hold down a few button combinations and you can see how much life is remaining in the batteries. I’m not sure if I’ll have to worry about that since I adore that USB feature, but it’s certainly handy for those on the road or forgoing an electrical power supply.

A patch can be engaged or disengaged by way of the footswitch, but just like other wahs, you can engage the effect simply by moving the foot pedal to the toe-down position (there is no clicking or added noise to the signal either way… just a smooth transition in and out of the signal chain; this feature also can be turned off).


Ease of Use
The Sonuus Wahoo is both simple and complex in its use – simple enough to move from patch to patch, but offering so much versatility in altering those patches, for custom sounds, that it can be complex. However, I do say that with some reserve, since the Wahoo’s tweak-ability is not the issue, but rather how much time you can play around with it to discover your unique personality does not make it a simple plug-n-play. The Wahoo has three areas of potential configuration, and I’ll address each accordingly.

LEVEL
There are four sub-areas under Level: Drive, Filter Mix ½, Dry/Wet and Output. The Drive offers a very nice degree of distortion/overdrive, and sometimes this is all you need added to one of the wah settings and pumped through a clean amp (I’m a bit smitten with this pedal’s tone right now, having removed my other distortions/drives from the chain). It’s a very warm-sounding analogue that produces rich harmonics when turned up – no harshness, and if turned to the max gives some fuzziness to the tone (adjusted with some of the other settings and you can mimic some heavy and thick muff tones).

The Filter Mix ½ refers to the proportion of filter 1 and filter 2 in the output mix, so that you can have a little of one, a lot of the other, etc., including combining a wah with a pitch control, or a LFO filter with an envelope filter, etc. The Dry/Wet allows you to alter the degree of your instrument’s signal, whether you want to go full bore on the effect, or have it enhance your guitar’s tone only slightly. The Output refers to how strong the signal will be, which also includes a noise gate/threshold setting, a very nice feature since some modulation effects (wah is an example) can produce some hissing when the Drive is cranked up.

FILTER
This section of the pedal is the real shape-shifter. You can adjust the resonance and frequency of the filter, for deep and high responses, and for short and broad responses (and even reverse filter sweeps). In effect, you can adjust the filter shape, to allow for (or remove) various frequencies, and this then is affected by the filter curve (which adjusts the feel of the footpedal/response of the envelope filter). For the greatest expression, this is where you can adjust and create vocal sounds – combining two filters in order to pair together common resonances found in the human vocal tract; in doing so, a typical wah can sound more like ‘ee,’ ‘uh,’ or ‘aw,’ for example.

MODE
With this part of the pedal you can indicate whether the pedal controls the effect (typical with the wah) if control is handled by way of MIDI, or internally by way of LFO (e.g., an auto-wah effect). As well, the Envelope Mode option allows you to control the degree of filter by how hard or soft you play, and the Pitch-track/Pitch-bend functions serve to provide you unique feedback responses relative to the note pitches you play (when exaggerated, think of strange sci-fi or mad-scientist laboratory sounds).


CUSTOM
This is where you alter settings for a more custom fit, including:

  • LED Brightness (reducing brightness saves on batteries!)
  • Instrument (any plug-in instrument you desire, and obviously guitar… but also 4- and 5-string bass; a different selection will optimize the Wahoo for your particular needs)
  • Sensitivity (this offsets the envelope sensitivity globally so you can adjust for different instruments without having to adjust each envelope preset, so that the effects sound true and clear without being either too low or distorted)
  • Noise Gate (how quickly the noise gate kicks in, set separately on each preset)
  • Footswitch Time (you can adjust how quickly footswitch activation reacts when switching an effect off and on, or switching from pre-sets)