Electro-Harmonix Crying Tone

The Electro-Harmonix Crying Tone is a wah pedal that does away with nearly everything a wah usually has: no treadle, no footswitch, no potentiometer, no optics and no magnetics¹. Instead of stepping on a rocker, you rock the entire pedal back and forth on the floor, and a motion sensor inside turns that motion into the wah sweep². Electro-Harmonix introduced it in June 2012 as part of its Next Step series, describing it as a re-invention of the classic wah pedal³.

Guitar World's reviewer, Paul Riario, described the enclosure as "a slim, contoured brick with an angular bottom that allows you to rock the wah back and forth" on the floor¹. The circuit itself is a total redesign of an original EHX wah/volume pedal produced in the mid-'70s¹.

A wah with no moving parts

The Crying Tone's central idea is that the pedal itself is the controller. Delicious Audio's reviewers put it simply: "It doesn't have any movable parts or knobs"⁵. MusicRadar explained the mechanism: "The Crying Tone works by physically rocking the whole pedal, and a motion sensor inside takes care of business"². Guitar World's Riario noted the same design in detail, writing that it "doesn't have any moving parts, footswitches, optics, potentiometers or magnetics to produce its vocal-like wah"¹.

Because there is no footswitch, engaging the pedal works differently from a conventional wah¹⁶⁵:

• To turn it on: tilt the pedal forward toward the toe; the Electro-Harmonix logo lights up to show it is active⁵.
• To turn it off: tilt it back toward the heel; the bypass is silent⁶⁵.
• To sweep the wah: rock the pedal back and forth on the floor; the motion sensor tracks the angle².

For sound, Riario found the pedal could "coax some very vintage-like wah tones" with a very pronounced wah effect¹, and a later Premier Guitar review listed its "very wide tonal sweep" among its strengths⁴. MusicRadar's review team called it "an affordable wah that sits nicely between vintage growl and modern clarity"².

Calibration and extra modes

A small calibration button on the pedal's side sets the wah sweep in relation to the surface of the floor⁴. Guitar World's reviewer called this button important for adjusting the sweep depending on the slope of the surface it sits on¹. Delicious Audio described the process:

1. Press the Calibrate button with the pedal sitting flat.
2. Tilt the pedal to its heel position.
3. Press the button again⁵.

The button does more than calibrate. It can also set the pedal to a fixed wah tone, but Premier Guitar's reviewer found this "the cumbersome process of leaning down towards" the pedal, turning it to its side and forward, and pressing the button twice⁴. MusicRadar flagged the same trade-off, noting "some cool extra modes, such as cocked and square-wave wahs, but you have to hit the calibration switch and hold the pedal in different positions" to reach them². That review summed up the pedal as "interesting - yet slightly flawed in practicality"⁷.

From the Next Step Effects design

The Crying Tone was the first member of what Electro-Harmonix dubbed the Next Step line, a series built on a proprietary design the maker called groundbreaking⁸⁵. Premier Guitar's launch announcement described the pedal as "the result of almost three years of intensive design and development by an international team of engineers and musicians"³, and Guitar Interactive Magazine reported the same development period⁸.

The design carried forward into siblings. The Talking Pedal, introduced a few months later, is "completely free of moving parts" and uses the same smooth rocking chassis with silent bypass⁶. Later EHX wahs took the Crying Tone's circuits in more conventional directions: the Cock Fight and Cock Fight Plus put cocked-wah and talking-filter sounds into traditional enclosures, with the Cock Fight Plus adding a sweepable treadle, and the Wailer Wah and Wailer Wah Pro moved to a standard rocker format. Premier Guitar has described the Crying Tone's sound as "the classic wah tones" against which those later pedals were positioned⁹.

Build and durability

Electro-Harmonix billed the Crying Tone as rugged, and the company went out of its way to prove it. In August 2012, fans demonstrated "the rock-solid build of their new Crying Tone wah wah pedal, with the help of a car and, er, a strong throwing arm" in a video MusicRadar covered, with the pedal surviving being run over and thrown¹⁰. Guitar World followed the stunt, writing: "We knew the Crying Tone wah was rugged, but we never imagined it would be subjected to this"¹¹.

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