Auto-wah and the dialectics of instant funk.

There's a new face in my pedalboard - an old DOD FX-25 envelope filter given to me by an old friend and guitar colleague. To be honest, it had sat in my odds'n'ends drawer for a couple of months before I chained it in earlier tonight.

It's the most pedal fun I've had in a while, and I'm a serial Memory Man abuser. Why did it take so long to get it out of the drawer? I guess that I have a weird relationship with out-of-fashion pedals (see my flanger blog post) and the envelope filter, or T-Wah, is not exactly in vogue these days. They've been around for a while; the 1972 Mu-Tron (popularized by Stevie Wonder on recordings like "Superstition" and "Higher Ground") is probably the classic expression of seventies auto-wah technology but they all work on the same principle: an automatic wah effect that opens and closes a filter based on picking strength (unlike the still-cool wah pedal, which requires foot movement for the wah effect to happen).

Mu-Trons went out of production around 1979, after the company that made them, Musitronics, was bought out by the ill-fated ARP synthesizer company. In an earlier post I recounted how the ARP Avatar, an early guitar synthesizer, essentially put the company out of business, and it seems that the Mu-Tron was collateral damage. For purists seeking the original Mu-Tron III sound, Electro-Harmonix has taken up the mantle by hiring one of the original inventors of the Mu-Tron, Mike Beigel, and issuing an update of the Mu-Tron, the Q-Tron.

I set the DOD envelope filter up with a rhythmic delay on the Memory Man. Instant funk.  Was the envelope filter ahead of its time? It seems right at home with contemporary loopy, analog filter effects. Sure enough, original Mu-Tron IIIs are sought after, though I suspect that the effect is more popular on bass than guitar. Bootsy Collins is no stranger to the envelope filter, and in fact has been known to use the very DOD FX-25 that is warming up my pedalboard's power supply as we speak.

I mention Jerry Garcia a lot in this blog, and one of his many roles in my life has been as the harbinger of auto-wah.  "Shakedown Street" by the Grateful Dead represents the first time I heard the effect, though this was followed shortly by hearing it used by a few reggae lead players and in the guitar solo from Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' "What I Am." I had possession of an Ibanez Auto Filter for a while when I was about 16 but I'm not sure how that came to me. I certainly never owned one before now. What have I been missing all my life? It's possible that I just got a little funkier.