The science of making a guitar sound like a human voice

Or what puts the "wah" in the wah-wah

Jimi Hendrix
(Image credit: Peter Tarnoff/Retna Ltd./Corbis)

The wah-wah pedal makes a guitar sound as though it's singing "wah, wah, wah." The effect was a staple of 1960s psychedelic rock: Jimi Hendrix bent reality with it in classics like "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," Eric Clapton cut loose with it on hits such as Cream's "White Room," and even Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page made use of it on occasion ("Dazed and Confused").

The wah-wah pedal didn't disappear after the '60s, either; its distinctive sound has been carried on by the likes of Guns N' Roses, Metallica, David Bowie, and more.

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James Harbeck

James Harbeck is a professional word taster and sentence sommelier (an editor trained in linguistics). He is the author of the blog Sesquiotica and the book Songs of Love and Grammar.