Sonicake Cry-Bot

The Sonicake Cry-Bot is an envelope filter and auto wah pedal, part of Sonicake's mini stompbox range. Instead of a rocking treadle like a traditional wah pedal, it responds to your picking dynamics: play harder and the filter opens up, play softer and it settles back down. Sonicake describes the result as "that classic humanizing envelope filter wah effect. You know that 'gooey, slurpy, quacky, syrupy'" sound¹.

Sonicake bills the pedal as full analog and designed for both guitar and bass, with what the maker calls fast and accurate tracking¹. It sits at the budget end of the filter pedals market, at a regular price of $39.99 as listed in October 2026¹, and its small footprint makes it a candidate for tight pedalboards.

An analog envelope filter for guitar and bass

An envelope filter, sometimes called an auto wah, sweeps a resonant filter across your signal based on the envelope of your own playing rather than a foot pedal or a fixed speed. With the Cry-Bot, the attack of each note drives the sweep, so the effect follows your touch: dig in and the filter moves further, back off and it stays closer to its resting point. Sonicake markets the pedal as "100% Analog Envelope Filter/Auto Wah by Picking Dynamics"².

The company says the pedal is designed for both guitar and bass with fast and accurate tracking¹, which matters for bass players in particular: envelope filters can struggle to track low notes cleanly, and a pedal that tracks well keeps the sweep tied to the note rather than smearing behind it. The FREQ control (covered below) is the tool for keeping the effect in a useful range on either instrument.

On the question of the circuit, Sonicake's own product page states the pedal is full analog¹, while a RockBoard PedalPedia listing for the same pedal records the circuit type as digital².

The pedal is built into an aluminum-alloy die cast casing that Sonicake says withstands wear and tear, with a heavy duty metal footswitch and an on/off status LED¹.

The controls

The Cry-Bot carries four knobs, which RockBoard's PedalPedia describes as "wide range funky tone shaping with 4 useful knobs"². Each one addresses a different part of the filter's behavior:

In practice, SENSE and DECAY shape how the effect responds to your hands, while PRES and FREQ shape where in the frequency spectrum the sweep happens. A player wanting a subtle, vocal-like sweep can back off SENSE and slow the DECAY; a player after the quacky funk end of the envelope filter sound can raise SENSE and let the filter snap back quickly¹³.

Power and placement on a board

The Cry-Bot runs on a 9V DC center negative power supply, the standard used across most of the pedal market, and draws only 15mA¹. The power supply is not included³, and no battery option is mentioned by the maker, so the pedal needs a spot on a powered board or its own adapter.

At 93.5mm deep, 42mm wide and 52mm high, and 228.7g, it is a mini-format pedal¹, small enough to sit alongside other compact units. The true bypass footswitch keeps the signal path clean when the effect is off¹, so it can live permanently on a board without coloring the dry tone when disengaged.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions