Mark Speer’s Dunlop GCB95F Cry Baby Wah

The Dunlop GCB95F is Mark’s go-to wah pedal – his one and only – and it has featured on essentially every Khruangbin live performance to date. As for why this particular pedal, Mark has pointed to its Fasel inductor as a key part of the appeal.

My preferred setup is my guitar into a Cry Baby wah that I never turn off. It’s usually toe-down, in its most trebly region, so if I have to switch it on, it doesn’t change the tone so drastically.

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The Fasel is a small coil component at the heart of the wah circuit that determines the character of the filter sweep – the inductor is the main component that affects a wah’s overall character, smoothing out the frequency shift and adding a certain warmth and voice to the sound. Originally handmade in Italy, these inductors were integral to the vocal quality of the earliest Cry Baby pedals – the ones heard on recordings by Hendrix and Clapton – but had been unavailable for years before Dunlop reissued them.

I’m using the GCB95F. I like it because it sounds funky. Some wah’s just dont sound cool to me. like instead of a wacka wacka, they give you a gweh gweh. Like something about the sweep/freqeuncy response just sounds corny. So I like the Fasel wah. It sounds like I think its supposed to. I also cut the feet off of the treadle for a slightly wider sweep. If you’re looking for that super sharp percussive guitar sound used in reggae, the GCB95F can absolutely get you there.

Mark Speer on Reddit
Mark’s Dunlop GCB95F Cry Baby Wah (and Boss FV-5 expression pedal + Strymon El Capistan V1 next to it). Photo: reddit

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