So I got a chance to sit down with a Big Bad Wah over the weekend and I wanted to share my thoughts on it. Feel free to disagree with my impressions, I gave it plenty of time in the quiet room at a GC with an american strat into a fender blues jr. I own and use the Satchurator and am a huge
Satriani fan, but I'll try to be objective...
I'll start by saying that I was immediately suprised at how light the pedal was. It's metal, but it felt like there was a lot of empty space in the housing of the pedal. I didn't particularly care for that because it allowed the pedal to slide around a little and made switching the wah on a little finicky. Still, it felt well constructed and with a little more time, I think you'd get used to it. The switches on it all felt solid. I like that wah vintage vox/modern
satch switch was the same vacuum style switch as on the satchurator. It just makes it so much easier to hit it and not worry about getting that click when you're on the fly. The wah on/off switch is a typical of all vox and crybaby wahs though the pedal's light weight made it a bit tricky to activate. All of the side knobs are recessed enough that they shouldn't get in the way when switching quickly/aggressively at a gig. The pedal itself had a good amount of sweep and was smooth as silk.
The sounds the pedal could produce were pretty good. As I said before, I played it straight into a blues jr with a strat and in the vintage setting, I got classic Clapton wah. Think White Room. The sound was rich with an appropriate amount of sweep on the pedal. It gave a nice warm and round sound as it moved through the frequencies. Very good for classic funk wah as well.
The Satch side of things was very modern sounding. It was much more focused on the upper-mids and treble frequencies (what you'd expect for soloing and Satch sounds). It was crisp and clear without being too thin or brittle. There is a definite difference between the two inductors. That's something I was happy to see and it should provide the user with a good amount of versatility (or more likely, provide a lot of different tastes with the one style they like and leave the wah set to).
Switching the inductor from the UK to the US, the sweep became slightly more pronounced in the treble and upper mid frequencies. It also became a little thinner, less warm and round, and more sharp. It was still very much a workable tone but more for modern tastes than for classic vibe.
I honestly didn't notice too great a difference with the voice switch one way or the other. I can see it's application being if you're going to use the wah for leads vs rhythm playing but otherwise, it mostly retains the same tonal characteristics to me.
The gain boost did what it was supposed to at it's varying degrees...raised the volume of the wah while adding some overdrive to the tone creating a harsher tone that would cut through on a solo.
Overall, the pedal was very quiet. I also checked to see if there was any significant "tone suckage" and was not able to hear a difference running through the wah vs direct to the amp (note I was in GC and there is always some noise that gets through the sound barriers in their quiet rooms so YMMV). Still, the pedal was very quiet in it's operation only adding a little hum when I upped the gain knob to the max. I own a 535q that has been working just fine for me over the past few years so I do not see myself purchasing one in the near future. At it's price of over $200, I'd have to say that even if my crybaby failed me, I'd probably look at a cheaper alternative. The BBW is a good wah, very versitile and has a solid feel to it, but, while I would consider it and test it against other wahs out there, I think I would opt for a cheaper alternative or (if I wanted to spend the money) a boutique wah at that point.
So there you have it. For anyone that owns the pedal, let me know what you think of it after using it with your rigs. This is what I found out about it after only an hour on a more vintage set-up.
