Morley Distortion Wah

The Morley Distortion Wah is a Morley pedal that puts a wah and a distortion circuit in one enclosure. It was introduced in December 2019 as part of Morley's 20/20 line and previewed at NAMM 2020, with a street price of $169 and a Luminous Green finish¹². Morley describes it as "a combination of Wah and Distortion" built around the company's switchless wah technology¹².

The pedal's layout follows a traditional order: the distortion circuit comes after the wah circuit, so the wah filters the clean signal first and the distortion then shapes the combined tone³¹. The two effects work independently, so you can use the wah, the distortion, or both at once⁴.

What it does

The Distortion Wah gives a player two effects that normally take two pedals. On the wah side it uses Morley's switchless activation: there is no footswitch to hit, you simply step on the treadle to engage the wah and step off to bypass it³. Morley calls this "the first Switchless activation Wah" in the company's history, a design it has used across its wah line since⁵. The wah itself is optical, using a light-based circuit rather than a mechanical potentiometer. Morley says this optical circuitry "won't wear down or get scratchy over time," which is the common failure point on conventional wah pedals where the pot collects dust and gets noisy³.

On the distortion side, the circuit is a redesign of the classic Morley PDW, a pedal Morley built in earlier decades that combined wah and distortion. For the 20/20 version Morley says it added more gain and a new tone circuit³¹. The distortion works independently of the wah and volume functions, so the gain stage is available whether or not the treadle is in use⁴.

The pedal also includes what Morley calls a 20/20 Buffer circuit, which the company says prevents signal loss and maintains tone when the pedal is bypassed in a longer chain³.

How the signal flows

1. Guitar signal enters the pedal.
2. The wah circuit filters it, controlled by the treadle position³¹.
3. The distortion circuit follows the wah, adding gain and tone shaping³¹.
4. The buffered output sends the signal on to the rest of the chain³.

Where it came from

The design reaches back to the Morley PDW, a wah-plus-distortion pedal from the company's earlier catalog. Morley's press release describes the new circuit as "based off the classic Morley PDW circuit, but with added Gain and a new Tone circuit"¹. The 20/20 line itself was a compact-format range that also included the 20/20 Wah Lock, which emulates a fixed-position wah⁶, and wahs such as the Bad Horsie family with its two wah modes⁶⁷.

How it compares in the Morley range

Questions