Wah pedal shootout! Dunlop Crybaby GCB-95 v. Morley Bad Horsie 1. Also: Marshall 4203 tube amp, Fender Strat Plus, Gibson Les Paul Studio Plus...

Gear demo.
Yes you can get a decent clean sound out of an unmodded Marshall 4203. Yes you can play funk with a Morley Bad Horsey 1 wah pedal. User reviews claim otherwise, you decide. (And yes you can play high gain modern wah solos with a Dunlop Crybaby GCB-95.)

I don't work for these companies. I couldn't find any Marshall 4203 clips nor any clean Bad Horsie clips anywhere before I gambled on my purchases, so here you go.

Speaker is to the far left in the cab so the mic is an inch or two from the left edge of the speaker just slightly off axis toward the dome. I did no mic testing for anything but level, I slapped the mic right there and never moved it. God love the SM57.

The mic by the desk picking up my comments (and the opening voiceover) is a Studio Projects C1 large diaphragm condenser. I muted that track during the guitar bits so all you hear is SM57.

If you're obsessed with sparkling glassy clean amp sounds that bring a tear to your eye (Fender Twin) you won't be knocked out by this amp, but it's a perfectly serviceable clean sound for the rest of us. Many people at harmony-central user review site swear by the C13 mod (clipping the capacitor, see harmony-central dot com for details in some reviews), but guys in the 3203 reviews say the modification ruins the gain channel. You could install a toggle switch on that cap. But I don't mind the clean channel on this amp; I do turn down the treble and mid, and it's against my nature to turn down the mid, but on this amp it's true that the mid is pretty high and harsh on the clean channel.

I do wish I had included some midgain sounds, maybe next time. The gain sound here is with the boost channel preamp knob all the way up. This thing will bellow like a happy moose when the master's cranked, and as well through a 4x12, 6x10 (Acoustic 104), 1x10 closed back Earcandy with a Jensen Mod 50, or any other cab.

A great blues combo, every kind of tone or gain structure you'd ever want. I'm in love with the single tone control on the boost channel, that channel is fantastic at many volume, gain, and tone settings.

One more thing: shorty after I put this video on youtube I pulled it to fix a caption, and therefore lost all existing comments when I put it back on--but I'm compelled to preserve here my favorite one of those early comments...it read simply and eloquently for all posterity: "Nice shoes wank face."

You can hear me play actual songs on my record--visit my youtube page for details. On the song "Rocket Pogo" I played this same Strat Plus when it had a no-name salvage humbucker in the bridge, using this very Crybaby wah prominently. The whole album was done with this Strat, mainly through a Lab Series L5 amp through the dirty channel. If download any of the tunes or buy the whole CD, send me a note if you want a breakdown of what I played on which tunes.

On this gear demo video:
Guitars:

2001 Gibson Les Paul Studio Plus
neck pickup: Gibson '57 Classic
bridge: '57 Classic Plus

1991 Fender U.S.A. Strat Plus
Fender-Lace Sensor pickups: neck/middle: gold bridge: silver


Amp:

1989 Marshall model 4203 (Artist 30)
1x12 combo
no modifications
Groove Tubes (GTEL34R, 5's)

Normal channel: treble & mid 1.5, bass 7, vol 2
Boost: tone 5, gain 10, vol 2


Wah pedals:

Early '80's Dunlop Crybaby GCB-95

Morley Bad Horsie 1 (VAI-1). Auto-off set to instantaneous. You can open the pedal and adjust a pot for up to 3 seconds of delay before the effect shuts off. Many people set it for about 1/2 second delay so if you rock your foot back too far in the middle of a solo the effect doesn't shut off. I'm not finding that to be a problem, there's a good bit of travel in the low end of the sweep before you hit bottom, and even if you do you're back in action as soon as you rock your foot forward.




Recording chain:

Shure SM57 mic to Behringer UB1202 board to
M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card to e-Machines PC hard drive. Edited with Cool Edit Pro 2.0, no EQ or effects in recording/mixdown.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• marshall
• 4203
• bad
• horsie
• crybaby
• GCB-95
• wah
• les
• paul
• strat
• stratocaster
• classic
• '57
• lace-sensor
• kenny
• gott

[ruggyrugg0]

whats better for distorted guitar?

[MissingLincolnK]

@ruggyrugg0 Many would say the Bad Horsie. I say it's a matter of taste. At 3:00 you can hear a comparison with the amp distortion switched on. You need to try every pedal you can get your hands on, with the guitar and amp you're going to use or something as close as you can get, to decide what works for you. Keep in mind that the crybaby sucks out the bottom end (bass tones) more than the Horsie but on stage that shouldn't be an issue, guitar lives in the midrange anyway.

[CreativeChick8]

Hey guys! A couple months ago I purchased an original Dunlop wah pedal only to bring it home and find that it didn't work. I replaced the batteries twice, made sure the input and output were in the right places and whenever it was clicked on there would be no sound at all. When it was clicked off, there was sound but no wah. So I returned it believing it was a defective pedal.

Now I have a new one WITH THE SAME PROBLEM. I know it's me but what am I doing wrong?

[MissingLincolnK]

@CreativeChick8 It almost has to be the battery. That's exactly how a dead battery would make it behave. Either that or you have the worst luck in the universe and you got two defective ones in a row.

[MissingLincolnK]

@brianwurst1234 you've got a point there. :)

And the strat doesn't care if I leave the lid up on the toilet...

[MissingLincolnK]

@loganoreilly2112 Congratulations, you're my favorite visitor of the first 190,000. Thank you.

[xXxLovEMasTerxXx911]

@ruggyrugg0 Sandals!

[ManipurTV]

@ruggyrugg0 my cunt

[atwomey12]

@CreativeChick8 Make sure that you have the cables coming in and going out the correct way, it should show which way the cables should be going right on the face of the pedal. This happened to me once, It was working fine and I stoopped using it for a while and when I brought it back out I was running the guitar into the wrong side of the wah because apparently I can't read haha.

[MrLuisLemon]

this is my modded cry baby..

[BlackenedFifth]

was on the fence between the two - but crybaby wins hands down for me because of this excellent demo! thanks!

[bobspie4]

One of the most noticed guitars ever! The Fender Strat, and Gibson Les Paul. !<3