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Wah effect with Q control


Nidifugous
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I recently bought an HX Stomp and I love how quickly it’s replaced the majority of rig.

The only thing is I can’t stand the wah effects available. I’m looking for a sharper wah than what’s offered, ideally one with a much narrower Q. All the effects I’ve seen have some controls like beginning & end frequencies, but nothing that allows me to control the Q width. They’re all too wide for me and it makes the effect feel less punchy than what I’m going for.

It’s the only pedal on my board that’s still analog because my current wah (Exotic XW-1) can be customized to my liking. But I’ve got an expression pedal and would consider making entire board digital if I could.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to achieve a wah effect with a narrower/customizable Q width?

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On 9/30/2025 at 6:17 PM, Nidifugous said:

Anyone have any suggestions for how to achieve a wah effect with a narrower/customizable Q width?

 

Hi,

 

Simple solution - I would suggest that as a new owner of a HX Stomp, you might want purchase “The Big Book of Helix Tips and Tricks” compiled by occasional forum contributor Craig Anderton. It is available as a digital download pdf from Sweetwater - see link in thread below.

 

I mention this simply because the Big Book actually contains two ideas for creating custom Wah pedal settings, one of which includes Q control.

See the sections - “The Secret Wah” and “The Customizable DIY Wah”.
Presets for both of these are included, along with lots more free Presets

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

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Well, the Q Filter is an option if you want to tweak. I used this block as my wah (Type: LoPass) until we got the Teardrop Bass Q.

If you need a starting point I tried to approximate the UK Wah 846 and came up with these settings:

  • Freq: controller assigned to the expression pedal with Min 45%, Max 85%
  • Q: controller assigned to the expression pedal with Min 75%, Max 35%
  • Gain: 10%
  • Type: Bandpass
  • Mix: 100%
  • Level: +1 dB


It's reasonably close but has less bass, so to get closer I'd have to add a bass boosting eq block.

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