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How wonderful with a dedicated wha-wha thread! :-)) I just want to post in that I love wha-wha as an instrument,! Not "as effect" though. For guitar players there are really cool ways to go poly rhythmic with a wha pedal by tapping a different filtering beat than the beat you are playing with your hands. Please don't dismiss the wha by simply judging it by some tasteless four-on-the-floor pedal tap filtering you may have heard! A wha pedal can also be used as a constant filter to dig out a certain frequency band to boost regarding what you are playing related to the ensemble situation. In any band groove there is always one frequency that is best to deliver the riff you are playing on the guitar; depending on what drums are played, how they are tuned and what notes the bass plays. So rather than tapping the pedal rhythmically the guitarist can use the pedal to "mix" hos own instrument into the summed band sound. Listening to Jimi Hendrix is good for an example of both these wha-wha concepts. Regarding Rick Walker's "rapidly changing timbre" I guess that expression is targeting those typical "Funk Bass Synth" sounds that some Moog payers used in the eighties. I fully agree that these sounds suck (because they are not played but generated by an envelope following the input level or attack). The problem with these sounds is that they do not provide a solid body of sound attack as the filter sweep goes too far through the frequency register - which is different to most analog wha-wha pedals. Related: I personally learned something very important once from a female vocalist I was playing guitar with. We had also a drummer and an electric bass player in the band, but my guitar playing was to support the main harmonic foundation for here to phrase the vocals. She was very specific in what guitars I should use and we discussed it and experimented a lot to found out why certain electric guitars worked and others did not work as a harmonic foundation for vocal phrasing (on top there-of). What I found was that the guitars that was "good for singing" had a firm low mid frequency tone. They were consistent in the frequencies that you typically hear when covering your ears by your hands. So that frequency band was what she heard the best through the internal sound of her own voice while singing. After shifting around bodies, necks and pickups I found that it was one particular stratocaster body that delivered the best frequency response for her vocal shaping. This body was best no matter what neck or pickups it used. I would never have guessed that, so I'm grateful we took the time to do all that experimenting. And speaking from a decade of sound design added on top of that particular guitar/vocal ensemble experience I would say that these lower mid frequencies are important to create a punchy feel in any sound. If the response isn't firm down there you won't get more fatness by rolling off high end treble. So Rick's "rapidly changing timbre" is a good way of destroying that "punchy feel". Another effective way to destroy punchy fatness is to enhance bass frequencies too much; such a treated signal may sound "fat" when monitored outside a musical context but as soon as you try to play music with it you will find that the sound is "too slow" to be felt punchy. Gotta stop here because this ramble is getting into the area where you start talking about how "groove" and "swing" doesn't have to do with timing only but also with timbre and that's a another long story.... Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international) www.ubetoo.com/Artist.taf?_ArtistId=6550