Does the world really need another "budget" wah-wah pedal? What if it's got "VOX" stamped on the rocker? Introduced earlier in the year, the Vox Classic Wah-Wah v845 streets for $69.99, putting it in direct competition with entry-level wahs from the likes of Jim Dunlop and Morley. Plus, if you purchase a v845 before the end of the year, Vox will give you a $20 rebate, making this pedal less expensive than even the rock-bottom Behringer "Hellbabe" wah.

Still, fifty bucks is fifty bucks, and while the Vox brand may be associated with wah-legend, the Classic v845 still needs to meet three basic requirements to be worthy of your hard-earned Grant: is it well-built, does it sound good, and barring acceptable stock tone, can it be easily modded? I put the v845 and my web-forum-raking skills to the test to find out.

Wah's In A Name?
Ahh, U.S. Patent No. 3,530,224: the "foot-controlled continuously variable preference circuit for musical instruments." It's become as much a cornerstone of the sound of classic rock music as U.S. Patents No. 2,089,171, No.3,213,181, and No.2,438,259. The first commercially available wahs were produced under the Vox brand when it was owned by the Thomson Organ Company, and originally branded as an effect for woodwind instruments—hence the first Vox wahs bearing the image and endorsement of trumpeter Clyde McCoy (though, notably, the schematics filed with the circuit's U.S. patent application show the input signal originating from a crudely-drawn, four-stringed, guitar-shaped electric instrument). Regardless, the wah-as-electronic-plunger idea never took off, and it wasn't long after the Vox Clyde McCoy's 1967 market release that Thomas started pitching the new effect unit to the ground-breaking guitarist-visionaries of the era.

The new "Classic" Vox v845 Wah is based on the same patented circuit of the original Vox wah, i.e. a relatively simple dual-transistor-plus-inductor-plus-potentiometer circuit (explained in much technical detail here ). It's the same circuit found in all Vox, and several competitors', wah-wah units. The differences between various models' tone and price—excluding extras like Q-width-control and load-buffers (which we'll discuss in a bit)—comes down to components—the tolerances of the transistors, the load and taper of the potentiometer, and the materials and design of the inductor. The inductor, in particular, is often cited as the core component of a given pedal's tonal character, and particularly storied are the Fasel inductors used in the first Vox Clyde McCoy Wah-Wahs. The current lineup of Vox wahs, including the v845 and the updated v847 use a Vox/Korg-manufactured L1A inductor.

Takes A Knocking, Keeps On Rocking
Like the other wahs in its price-range, the v845 feels very rugged. It's a bit lighter than the Dunlop GCB95 Original Crybaby ($69.99) and Morley CLW Classic Wah ($69.99) pedals, but still feels like it can withstand more than its fair share of abuse. The v845 shares a common basic construction design with the Dunlop pedal, including an easily removed screw-mounted base-plate (allowing battery and circuit board access) and rack-and-pinion mechanism connecting the rocker switch to the potentiometer. This design also feels bit more rugged to me that that of the Morley CLW. However, I think Vox could afford to be a little less stingy with the grease; my 12-year-old Dunlop Crybaby still runs smoother and has larger dollops of grease anointing its gears. Sure it's also got more than a decade's-worth of dust, hair, and other mundane detritus lodged in the gobs, but that's just part of a wah pedal's disgusting charm.

The effect is engaged in a familiar manner —press hard on the toe. This is one of the most satisfying aspects of the v845's design; never did I engage or bypass the effect by accident, nor did I feel I ever had to struggle to turn it on when I needed to. It may not seem like such a big deal, but it soon becomes one in the heat of performance. The signal and AC jacks feels reassuringly solid as well. High marks all around for construction.

Wahdition Time
For this test I ran two guitars through the Vox v845—a Fender Standard Telecaster and an Epiphone Dot—and fed the signal into a Blackstar HT Studio 20, a 20W 1x12 combo tube amp. Almost immediately I noticed a degradation in the tone of each guitar, even with the pedal bypassed—a common problem with the non-true-bypass wahs that comprise the majority of sub-$200 stock wah-wah pedals. This fact confounds me: why are most wahs designed and manufactured as tone-sucking hardwire-bypass effects when they're supposed to be situated at the front of a pre-preamplifier effects signal chain? It's a problem prevalent enough to have inspired a number of after-market mail-order mod packages and other workarounds .

With the single-coil Tele plugged in, engaging the v845 yielded a noticeable volume boost when sweeping through the mids, high-mids, and especially the highs. The lows, in contrast, seemed muted, and playing a basic "wicka-wicka" rhythm (you know what I'm talking about) with the guitar's bridge pickup selected, the tone was nasal, though not necessarily to the point of being unpleasant. The neck pickup fared better, and the beefier humbuckers of the Dot better still. The clean rhythm sound isn't bad, but to my ear it lacks the bottom-end heft and low-mid chunk of the my Crybaby (also $70 when I bought it). Not my cup 'o tea, let's say—which surprised me, as I remember being covetous of a bandmate's chrome-topped Vox V847's watery clean tone not long after buying my wah.

The picture flipped when I switched the Blackstar to channel 2. Whereas my Dunlop Wah would lose definition and mud up in the heel (bass) position, the pronounced upper-range of the Vox v845 really cut through moderate to high gain, especially when playing the humbucker-equipped Dot. I'd peg the tone of the v845 through the distorted Blackstar as sitting somewhere between the hollowed-out grit of "Voodoo Chile" and the laser-bath of the guitar solo "Enter Sandman." The Classic Wah also fared favorably in front of a Whirlwind Rochester Series Gold Box Distortion, though the resonant sweep wasn't nearly as present. This load-buffering-related issue is another common budget-wah problem with its own slew of after-market solutions, including the FoxRox Retrofit active buffered output circuit.

Mod SqWahd
Now the question becomes "how easily are these mods retrofitted to the Vox Classic Wah-Wah v845." And here we've got some bad news and some good news. Take a look at this pedal's innards (see Fig. 1; the v845 is on right) and note that you'll have to remove the PCB completely in order to get at many of the components, which are mounted on the solder-side. While this makes some forms of modification difficult, one forum poster on the thread in which I found this pic notes that because the v845 appears to lack an input buffer stage, it'd be a better candidate for a true-bypass mod than the v847a (pictured at left in Fig.1).

Fig. 1: The two current production Vox wahs; on the left, the v847A; on the right, the Vox Classic Wah-Wah v845.

Wah's Happenin'
At its standard price of $69.99, there's not much that sets the v845 apart from the crowd other than the Vox name, and not much setting it apart from the v847A—for $20 more you get a buffered input section and a classy-looking chrome rocker. But at the post-rebate price of $49.95, this wah becomes an absolute steal.

The v845 is more than capable as a first wah—ruggedly built, serviceable tone (especially in front of distortion), and though it's not as apparently mod-friendly as previous generations' Vox wahs, it seems to be easier to tinker with than the current production v847a. So from now through December 31st, 2010, consider the Vox Classic Wah-Wah v845 highly-recommended.

Pros: Very solid build. Sounds excellent in front of distortion. Good candidate for certain modification packages. Super-cheap through Dec. 31st, 2010.
Cons: Uninspiring clean tone. Very apparent signal degradation in bypass. No chrome!

Owen O'Malley shares a birthday with F. Murray Abraham, Bill Wyman, and the United Nations.