Morley 20/20 Lead Wah

The Morley 20/20 Lead Wah is a compact wah pedal from Morley, built as a "Switchless, Optical Wah designed for High Gain with a Wide Sweep"¹. Where a classic wah has a footswitch you click on and off, the Lead Wah engages the moment you step on the treadle and returns to bypass when you step off, so there is no switch to hit mid solo. Morley positions it squarely at lead players: "The Lead Wah is made for high gain and amps that go to eleven"¹.

It arrived in late 2019 as part of Morley's 20/20 line, a family of wahs that shrank the company's existing designs into smaller steel housings. Morley's Scott Fietsam described it at launch as "a switchless Wah with a wider frequency sweep, low-end boost" with a street price of $149², and Guitar World reported it available in Shred Red for $149³.

A switchless optical wah for high gain

The core of the pedal is Morley's optical wah system. Instead of a mechanical potentiometer that wears and gets scratchy, the treadle moves against a light and sensor, so there is no pot to degrade. Morley's 20/20 line copy puts it plainly: "all 20/20 Wah pedals include our Switchless activation. Simply step on to engage and step off to bypass"².

The wah voice itself comes from Morley's MQ2 custom inductor, the same inductor the company uses across the 20/20 family¹. What separates the Lead Wah from its siblings is the voicing: a wider frequency sweep than the standard 20/20 wah and a low end boost, aimed at players running distorted amps where a narrower wah sweep can disappear².

The pedal carries the family's build features:

• MQ2 custom inductor¹
• LED indication of on/off status¹
• Cold-rolled steel housing¹
• Quick clip battery door¹
• Glow-in-the-dark treadle grip and toe-end logo¹

Controls and buffer

The Lead Wah keeps its controls minimal. The one user adjustment is an internal Wah Level trimpot that lets you customize your wah loudness².

• Treadle: step on to engage the wah, rock it to sweep, step off to bypass²
• Wah Level trimpot (internal): "an internal Wah Level trimpot to customize your Wah Loudness"²

Because the pedal is never fully out of the circuit, Morley fits what it calls the "New 20/20 Buffer circuit that prevents signal loss and maintains tone"¹. For a player with a long cable run or a large pedalboard, that buffer keeps the guitar signal from dulling when the wah is bypassed. It also means the pedal is not true bypass in the switching sense; its bypass is the switchless step-off state, with the buffer still in the path.

Power comes from one 9 volt battery behind the quick clip door, or from an optional Morley 9V adapter; Morley says the pedal is compatible with most 9V adapters, so a typical pedalboard supply works¹.

The 20/20 family and its versions

The Lead Wah is one node in a wider 20/20 range that Morley rolled out from August 2019 onward, each model a compact reworking of an existing Morley design. The family shares the steel housing, MQ2 inductor, LED indication, battery door and glow-in-the-dark grip, and differs mainly in voicing and switching¹².

The closest sibling is the 20/20 Power Wah. Both have a wide sweep, but the Power Wah is a switchable pedal with side switch activation and a vintage-toned voice, where the Lead Wah is switchless and tuned for high gain¹⁴⁵. In Sweetwater's demo video of the Power Wah, John Carr noted that "it has all the great features that were on the classic" Morley wahs with "the side switch activation," and that its voicing is "a little bit harsher" than some other wah pedals⁵.

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Guitar World's launch coverage of the first 20/20 wahs noted the Power Wah at $139 and the Power Wah Volume at $159, both packing a 20dB wah boost⁹, which places the Lead Wah's $149 street price between them²³.

Videos

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