I've always been curious about auto wahs and envelope filters after hearing what Guthrie Govan does with his Guyatone Wah Rocker, and being a huge fan of Earthquaker I had to check this one out. It was between this and the TWA Wah Rocker (which is based on the old Guyatone), and I ended up going for the Earthquaker as I got a great deal on it using a coupon I had with Coast Sonic.
Sample and Hold: This function really stands out, and while I thought it would be a gimmick, it's actually very usable. Tap tempo would make it even easier to apply to a song, but it's not too difficult to turn the knob on the fly and match the speed you're looking for. I keep going back to it as my favourite mode because it's so unique. I don't know if "entertaining" is the right word, but it's so varied with so much going on that you can just strum a note and listen forever without it sounding redundant. It works flawlessly with both chords and single notes and you can adjust the resonance and filter to accent highs or lows and control how raspy you'd like it to sound. Other than that it's just the speed and your choice of notes. It's also worth noting that it sustains incredibly easily; you can hold a note essentially forever and the effect will continue even after you expect the note to die out. It seems to operate on very little signal. It also sounds amazing with some phaser and delay, which add even more interest to an already entertaining sound.
Up/Down Modes: Up mode is your standard quack quack duck wah, while down mode starts at the top of the sweep and goes to the bottom, which sounds more robotic and space-y, like a Star Wars droid rather than a duck. It's absolutely crucial that you find the sweet spot on the Range knob, which controls how the pedal responds to the amount of input you're giving it. Too high or too low and you don't get any sweep at all. This was confusing for me at first until I found the spot where my input triggered the sweep, which was around 9:00 on the Range knob. You can get some interesting sounds by wandering a little out of the sweet spot in either direction, but again if you're too far off you won't get any dynamics at all, so it's essential to get the Range set right.
Another thing I noticed was that you need to leave a little gap between notes if you want the full sweep, otherwise instead of "wah" all the notes kind of blend into a continuous "a". It makes sense because the sweep is controlled by your input, so a constant input will keep the sweep in one place. If you're planning to shred you won't get a lot of dynamics, but if you space out your notes with some stops and starts that's where the magic is. In that way, the pedal adds tons of dynamics and character to notes that would otherwise sound bland and one dimensional, so it kind of encourages you to take a less-is-more approach which really changes up how you approach leads.
Placement: This really surprised me. I assumed the ideal place for an auto wah would be at the beginning of the chain in order to get the most dynamic response from my guitar's input. I tried it before everything at the beginning of the chain and got very little wah sound out of it and very poor dynamics. It seemed like the "mouth" if you will wasn't opening. The wah and quack sounds weren't pronounced at all, and there was a very narrow range of pick attack in which I could get any dynamics.
Next I tried it in the FX loop out of curiosity, and as expected there were absolutely zero dynamics there. Total no go.
I tried it in several other places in front of the amp until finally I struck gold placing it after all dirt and before the volume pedal. Wow! Suddenly the wah sound jumped right out and the dynamics became easy to manipulate with my pick attack. I could control how far the "mouth" opened with how hard I picked, and everything just fell into place. I thought having it after dirt would sound thin and harsh, but everything still sounded full and present. Everyones' setup will vary I'm sure, but this is definitely a pedal you need to try everywhere in the chain, because it's night and day from one spot to the next and my initial placement turned out to be very wrong.
Hope that helps anyone who's interested! I'd like to get a video up but I need to wait for a day off work to have the time.
But that would be cool. It'd be nice for setting the speed of the sample and hold on the fly too.