Jim Dunlop Mick Ronson Cry Baby

The Jim Dunlop Mick Ronson Cry Baby is a limited edition signature wah pedal from Dunlop, built as a reverse engineered recreation of the pedal Mick Ronson himself played. Ronson, the guitarist known for his collaborations with David Bowie in the Spiders from Mars, used an early Italian-made Cry Baby to shape his sound, and that exact pedal, now owned by producer Bob Rock, was lent to the Dunlop R&D team so its circuit could be copied component for component¹.

What came out of that process is a wah with no adjustment controls at all. There is no Q knob and no level control: you step on it to engage the wah and rock the treadle to find the sweet spot¹. The character comes instead from the parts inside, a custom inductor and period-accurate transistors chosen to match the original's frequency response.

A circuit reverse engineered from Ronson's original

The story behind the pedal starts with Bob Rock, the producer who now owns Ronson's original wah. Rock lent the late guitarist's Italian-made Cry Baby to Dunlop's engineers so they could reverse engineer it¹. Ronson's favorite wah for the job was an early Cry Baby built in Italy by Jen, whose vintage parts give it a character Dunlop wanted to capture⁵².

Two parts of the recreation carry most of the work:

• A custom inductor that replicates the higher frequency response and subtler peak of the original pedal¹²
• Period-accurate low-gain transistors, matched to the original to replicate the same EQ curve¹

Dunlop describes the resulting sound as "an exquisitely balanced sonic profile that's bright and clear with peaks that stay musically smooth"¹. Rock, who compared the prototypes against his original, put it more bluntly:

Bob Rock, speaking to MusicRadar¹

How it differs from a standard Cry Baby

A stock Dunlop Cry Baby such as the GCB-95 is built around a standard inductor and sweep. The Mick Ronson model changes both. The custom inductor shifts the frequency response higher and softens the peak, and the matched low-gain transistors reproduce the EQ curve of the vintage Jen-built unit¹². The wah center frequency sweeps from 500 Hz to 2.25 kHz⁴.

Premier Guitar's reviewer found the pedal mid-focused and vocal, with a squawky heel-down position and many distinctly different vowel sounds within a narrow singing range⁵. The reviewer also found that profile rewards playing it with gain in front:

Premier Guitar review⁵

That suits the pedal's lineage. Ronson's own rig was loud and simple: Les Paul, Marshall, Tone Bender, Echoplex, and, most critically, a Cry Baby wah⁵. Dunlop also positions the pedal as tailor-made for Ronson's signature fixed-wah tones, the parked-treadle sounds he used as a filter⁶.

Controls, connections and power

The pedal has no knobs at all. From the manual:

Who uses it

The original pedal's history is the selling point. Ronson recorded many tracks with the pedal this recreation is based on, and Bob Rock went on to use it when recording numerous other artists⁶. Rock says the original is all over every record Ronson ever made, and that he has used it on every record since he got it¹.

Ronson's wah work with an early Jen-built Cry Baby in David Bowie's Spiders from Mars appears throughout early 1970s Bowie records, including "Queen Bitch," "Moonage Daydream," and "Width of a Circle," and on live recordings from that era⁵.

Release and price

Dunlop announced the Mick Ronson Cry Baby at NAMM in January 2025 as part of an expanded signature Cry Baby lineup¹⁷. It shipped in April 2025¹⁸. Published prices at launch and since:

The model number MR95LTD marks it as a limited edition², so availability may narrow over time even though Dunlop still lists it.

Where it sits in the signature lineup

The Mick Ronson model joins a long run of Dunlop signature wahs, including the EVH Signature Wah, the BG95 Buddy Guy Signature CryBaby, the Jerry Cantrell Firefly Cry Baby wah, and the EC95G Eric Clapton Cry Baby Wah. What separates it from most of those is its fixed, no-controls design and its component-level recreation of one specific vintage pedal rather than a modified or adjustable circuit¹².

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