Area 51 Fuzzwah Grey

I built a special one-of-a-kind wah wah for a good friend who has since passed on. I was thinking that it might be kinda cool to take the classic wah circuit and add an extra gain stage to it. I was dialing it in for just a slight boost, and eventually got it just where I wanted it. But I'd also noticed that when it was set to higher gain levels - it produced a killer sounding fuzztone.

And the character of it changed a lot depending on where the wah rocker/treadle was set. Well hey - not to let a happy accident go to waste...the Fuzzwah was born. This is definitely going to be far better when paired with a (at least decent) tube amp. The extra gain stage drives the amps preamp, which is part of the mojo here. It also smooths the sweep of the wah out, and accentuates the upper mids - which makes it sound like an old Clyde McCoy on uppers. Yeah...it's bad. It's nationwide.

The fuzz part of the circuit is bypassable too - so when it's off, it's a straight-up Area 51 Wah. Check out the video below to get an idea of what it can do. The amp used in the vid is a 5E3 Deluxe style amp, that was set for mild to moderate breakup. About 6 on the volume knob.

"Hey Dan - Wow! Your wah sounds soooooo much better than the dunlop..it's not even fair to compare. At first I thought the fuzz part wasn't going to work for me with the Ethos because the clean channel is just all clean headroom and the boost circuit makes everything louder with no breakup. But then I explored what the boost/fuzz circuit does with the overdrive channel and it's just a blast. That circuit is definitely meant for a dirty amp, and it saturates beautifully. Rocked back, it's all Tonebender, and rocked forward it's searing fizzy fuzz. Tons of fun." -- Andy (via reverb.com)