Alex Lifeson’s Lerxt Amps brand has expanded its range of guitar effects pedals with the launch of the Blah Blah wah pedal. Developed in partnership with Morley, this optical wah features a pair of footswitchable circuits to give you something classic, and something a little more adventurous.
Lerxst say the adventurous players in particular will get a kick out of the Blah circuit, which applies a secret blend of filters to your electric guitar signals for the ‘Blah talkie’ effect. There’s a pitch knob to adjust just how weird and psychedelic this might get.
While the classic wah is just that, offering up the sort of filter-sweep vocalisation that has made the wah a pedalboard essential since the very beginning of the stompbox revolution, when Jimi Hendrix et al first stepped on them. And, set just right, maybe with a little fuzz pedal in the mix, you can tease some quasi-synth sounds out of this as well.
The idea is to experiment, which is exactly what the R&D team at Morley did when putting the Blah Blah circuit together.
“Alex wanted us to create something unique and inspiring,” says Scott Fietsam, Morley’s owner. “We certainly achieved the ‘Blah-talkie’ sound, but what surprised us was how versatile this pedal turned out to be. It opened up numerous sonic possibilities in both clean and distorted modes, making it enjoyable for a wide range of players.”
This being Morley, the Blah Blah wah is designed a little differently. It is engaged via an optical circuit. There is no mechanical potentiometer to wear out after years of use. A spring-loaded treadle returns the effect the bypass position when you are not using it.
Step on it and it engages the wah, the LED comes on, and you are off to the races. You can toggle the Blah circuit on and off with the silent footswitch. And there is a buffer to protect against tone suck.
Lifeson named this pedal back in 2013. Well, at least that’s where the inspiration for the its name came from, with his famous ‘Blah, blah, blah…’ acceptance speech at the Rock And Rock Hall Of Fame induction ceremony.
Lifeson’s Lerxt Amps brand – a collaboration with Mojotone – is filling out its stompbox lineup nicely, with the Blah Blah joining the By-Tor amp-in-a-box overdrive pedal and The Snow Dog octave-fuzz. Everything you need for those Fly By Night jam sessions, which is when the wah became a regular part of Lifeson’s tone.
“Wah pedals have been an essential tool of sonic expression for me since the Fly By Night album,” says Lifeson. “With the ‘wah’ side of the Blah Blah, we really wanted to capture that classic sound while also giving it a wide enough frequency response to suit modern players.”
Judging by the demo video, with Andy Martin of Reverb’s Tone Report at the wheel, it certainly has all the core wah sounds you would need, and a bit more.
“The guys at Morley have designed some of the greatest wah pedals ever, so it was a natural collaboration to work on this project with them, and also see where we could take it next,”says Lifeson.
The Blah Blah pedal has a road-worthy steel enclosure, takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, and draws 300mA. It is available now, limited to 500 units, exclusively via Reverb.
