GO FOR THE THROAT

How Michael Schenker found the half-cocked wah sound heard on UFO’S Just another suicide and many other of his great leads…

When Michael Schenker first acquired a wah pedal, he was so young and inexperienced that he plugged it in the wrong way and he remembers it “sounded like a police siren!”. However, it didn’t take long for the burgeoning musician to come up with his own sound – and it was that instantly identifiable half-cocked wah tone that would hold the secret to many of his finest solos…

“I would describe myself as treble-sensitive,” he explains. “So when an old-fashioned wah-wah is all the way down, it’s piercing to my ears. I love the Jim Dunlop Dimebag model because you can change the EQ, but the more vintage ones were too harsh. Back in the day, I opened mine up and found this wheel inside… after some experimentation, I found the exact position that I liked and tweaked the pedal so that it would never go past that point. To my ears, that sweet sound is very nasally.”

The guitar player soon got into the habit of using the pedal differently to all the Hendrix/clapton wannabes also competing for the same crown. To him, it was more like an EQ pedal than anything else…

“I wouldn’t use it traditionally, I would just use the frequency rather than the scoop, like on the UFO instrumental Look in’ out for no .1( rep rise) or Just Anothersuicide. All of that stuff is very mid-rangey. I tend to like one straight tone in general, there’s no real difference between my rhythm or lead channel. I leave everything exactly the same, to be honest I don’t think of myself as a gear hound – there’s delay in the send/return and then the wah. I try to invent things with just the basics! Somebody once pointed out that I don’t really use my pinky. And I thought to myself, ‘Why would you notice that… who cares?!’ You can use just one finger and make it sound great. I told him to forget about the pinky, I use mine to pick my nose, ha ha!”