Most wah pedals ask you one question: are you in or are you out. You step on the thing, you rock it, you step off. The circuit inside was designed in Italy in 1967 by people trying to make a guitar sound like a muted trumpet, and in the fifty-odd years since, the industry’s main contribution has been to change the colour of the box.
The Xotic Wah XW-1 asks you about eleven questions. Four of them are answered with small pots on the right-hand cheek of the pedal. Four more are answered with DIP switches under the baseplate. One is answered with a trimmer you can only reach with a screwdriver, one with a hex nut on the treadle bolt, and one with a rubber bumper you shim to change how far the pedal travels. Nothing about it is plug-and-play, and that is the entire point of it.
Xotic spent four years developing it. It arrived on 6 November 2014 at a $295 MSRP, in a chassis 20 per cent smaller than the wah everyone was already using, with a low-battery warning light — a feature so obviously useful that its absence from almost every other wah on the market is a small ongoing scandal.
This is not a review. It is a field guide to the most adjustable wah in mainstream production: what the controls actually do, which of the specs published about it are wrong, who is genuinely using one, and what the arrival of the XW-2 in 2024 means if you are shopping for either.
Where the XW-1 Comes From: Clyde McCoy and the Italian Question
You cannot write about this pedal without writing about a jazz trumpeter who never played the guitar.
The Trumpeter and the Volume Pedal
The first commercially available wah was the product of a collaboration between Vox and Clyde McCoy, a bandleader and trumpet player famous for a growling, plunger-muted sound. McCoy approached the company wanting something that mimicked a muted brass instrument — and, per the accounts of the period, wanting it usable with a keyboard rather than a guitar. Vox’s design team took the chassis of a volume pedal, dropped a sweepable filter into it, and produced the pedal that carries his name.
The guitar world took it from there, and the trumpet application was quietly forgotten. What survived is the treadle-driven bandpass filter and the inductor at the heart of it, and a fifty-year argument about which year’s example is the good one.
What “1967–1968 Italian-Built” Actually Means
Xotic is precise in its own copy about which vintage unit it is chasing. The XW-1, in the manufacturer’s words, “is modeled based on the Holy Grail wah, 1967-1968 Italian-built Clyde McCoy Wahs.” That specificity matters. Clyde McCoy-branded wahs were made in more than one place and more than one configuration — the picture-back and signature-back variants of 1967 and 1968, and the “metal can” units that followed — and the components inside them varied along with the badge.
So the XW-1 is not a general-purpose homage to “vintage wah.” It is aimed at a specific narrow window, and the manufacturer sets the pedal’s factory-default position as the target: Xotic’s stated design intent is that with all four external controls at noon, you are hearing its best approximation of a vintage Clyde. Everything else the pedal does is a departure from that reference point, and it departs a very long way.
Four Years, One Product
Xotic Effects — trading name of Prosound Communications, Inc. of Van Nuys, California — announced the XW-1 on 6 November 2014 with a press release that opened with a claim worth quoting because so few pedal launches make it: “After four years of research and development, the wah pedal has been redefined.” Four years is an extraordinary development cycle for a stompbox. It is also, for a company whose reputation was built on boosts and preamps like the EP Booster, the RC Booster and the BB Preamp, a departure into mechanical engineering: treadles, bushings, pots that survive being stood on.
The launch MSRP was $295. Premier Guitar reviewed it in the May 2015 issue at a $236 street price. Guitar & Bass reviewed it in the UK in September 2016 at £287. As of Xotic’s own current price sheet, the direct price is $329 — a point we return to in the buying section, because the used market tells a very different story.
Xotic Wah XW-1 Specifications
These figures come from Xotic’s official manual PDF and the manufacturer’s product page. Where the two disagree, both are shown and the conflict is discussed in the section that follows.
Four Places Where the Published Specs Disagree With Each Other
This is now the fifth consecutive Xotic product where the manufacturer’s own documents contradict each other, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming: on an Xotic product, the spec table on the website and the spec block in the manual are maintained separately and drift apart. Here is where the XW-1 drifts.
1. Power: 9V Only, or 9–18V?
The product page spec table lists the optional AC adapter as “9VDC-18VDC, Negative Tips (Regulated recommended).” The official manual PDF lists it as “Regulated 9VDC / Negative Tips.” Only one of those is a safe instruction to give a buyer.
The practical read: run it at 9V. A wah is a filter, not a gain stage — there is no headroom benefit to chase here in the way there is on a boost, and the manual is the document the engineers wrote. The 9–18V line reads like a spec-table field copied across from Xotic’s boost range, where higher voltages genuinely are part of the product story. If you want more level out of the XW-1, the input gain trimmer inside it is the intended path, and it gives you up to +6 dB without touching the supply.
2. The Baseplate: Four Screws, or Four Rubber Feet?
The manual says battery access “is through the removal of bottom plate (four rubber feet).” The product page and the shop listing both say “(4 screws).” Premier Guitar‘s reviewer, who actually had one on the bench, wrote “removing four bottom-plate screws.” Believe the screws. This is trivial in isolation but it is a useful tell: the manual text for this pedal has not been proofread against the physical product recently.
3. The EQ: ±15 dB, or +15 dB?
Premier Guitar‘s review describes the side pots as adjusting “bias, wah Q, and +15 dB for both treble and bass.” Xotic’s manual, product page and shop listing all say the same thing in the same words: “a two-band EQ with +/-15 dB center-detent potentiometers.” That is a 30 dB range per band with a mechanical detent at flat, not a 15 dB boost-only control — a meaningful difference if you are buying the pedal specifically to tame a bright rig, which is one of its best uses. The magazine’s phrasing is a slip; the centre detent is the giveaway that the control cuts as well as boosts.
4. “True Bypass” and “Relay Bypass” Are Both True Here
Marketing copy that says “relay bypass” alongside “true bypass” reads like a contradiction, and on plenty of pedals it would be. Not here. The XW-1 uses a gold-contact relay as the switching element, and that relay physically lifts the circuit out of the signal path — so the bypass is genuinely true, it is just actuated by a relay rather than by a mechanical 3PDT stomp switch. The benefit is the one PG singled out: no switch pop, and a switching element rated for a minimum of a million cycles rather than a mechanical switch that will eventually get scratchy. Xotic states both facts on the same page and they are compatible.
The External Controls, Decoded
Four micro-pots sit along the right-hand side of the chassis, out of the way of your foot. Xotic’s guidance on all four is to set them with the pedal off, and there is a specific reason for that on one of them.
Bias
The most misunderstood control on the pedal, because “bias” sounds like an amp-tech word and people assume it does something exotic. In Xotic’s own words: turning the bias up gives the XW-1 “slightly more output & firm up bass frequencies along with a more pronounced wah through the sweep.” Running it cold — the other direction — is what Xotic identifies as the vintage behaviour: “A cold bias is common with vintage wah pedals for a very clear voice that is more transparent in tone and smoother in operation.”
So: clockwise for a thicker, louder, more aggressive wah; counter-clockwise for the transparent vintage sweep. It is simultaneously your output-level trim and your aggression control, which is why PG‘s reviewer used it as a workaround when he wanted to change levels between a Strat and a Les Paul without unscrewing the baseplate — while noting, correctly, that it “does affect the tone considerably.” Bias is not a clean volume knob.
Xotic ships a warning about this knob that is worth repeating because it stops people returning perfectly good pedals: “You’ll notice that the ‘BIAS’ knob makes a slight scratching noise when you turn it…NOT TO WORRY! Our engineers designed it that way – once adjusted it will be silent.” Adjust it with the effect bypassed and the noise is a non-issue.
Wah Q
This is the control that separates the XW-1 from every wah with a single fixed voice. Q is the width of the filter’s resonant peak. Narrow Q gives you the pointed, nasal, almost violent vowel that cuts through a loud band; wide Q gives you a broader, gentler, more washy sweep that sits inside the mix rather than on top of it.
Xotic’s description — the knob “adjusts the amount of the wah effect for precise filter shaping to achieve vocal-like effects” — undersells the physical consequence, which PG caught: change the Q substantially and your foot technique has to change with it. If you have spent twenty years finding your half-cocked tone at a particular treadle angle, widening the Q moves that sweet spot and you will overshoot it for the first hour. That is not a fault. It is a genuinely different instrument under your foot.
Treble and Bass
A two-band EQ with ±15 dB of range and a centre detent on each, sitting inside the wah’s own signal path. Two-band EQ on a wah sounds like a gimmick until you own a bright amp.
The obvious use is corrective: pull treble down when a bridge single-coil into a cranked amp turns the toe-down position into an ice pick, or push bass up when a Strat through a small combo makes the heel-down position disappear. The less obvious use is that the treble control effectively repositions where in the sweep the pedal sounds most exciting, because it is changing the level of the material the filter has to work with at the top of its range.
Under the Baseplate: Four DIP Switches and a Trimmer
Everything above is what you get from the outside. Undo four screws and there is a small red DIP block on the circuit board plus a trimpot, and this is where the XW-1 stops being a wah with some tone controls and starts being a platform.
The Four DIP Switches
| # | Function | Xotic’s description | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toe Down Range | “Activate to maximize treble frequency. Turn off for darker toe-down frequency response.” | Sets how bright the top of the sweep goes. Off = darker, more contained toe-down. |
| 2 | Input Gain | “Input gain trimmer is only active when this switch is activated.” | An enable switch, not a sound. The trimpot does nothing until this is on. |
| 3 | Presence Cut | “Activate for smoother high end.” | Takes the edge off the upper mids. PG left this engaged for most of its testing. |
| 4 | Wah Q Frequency | “Activate for deeper vowel frequency response.” | Moves the vocal part of the sweep down. With humbuckers and gain, this is where it growls. |
The Input Gain Trimmer
“Controls wah input gain — by turning clockwise it adds up to +6dB of Wah Boost.” Critically, and this is the single most-missed detail on the whole pedal: the trimmer is dead unless DIP switch 2 is on. Anyone who opens the pedal, turns the trimpot, hears nothing and concludes the unit is faulty has simply missed the enable switch.
The trimmer exists because a wah does not naturally output at unity — engage a passive-style filter and the level moves. Both reviewers of the pedal hit the same wall: PG found output dropped slightly when engaging the wah with a Strat into an Orange OR50, corrected it with a third of a turn on the trimpot, then wanted less output when he switched to a Les Paul. Guitar & Bass reached the identical conclusion: “we did find we needed to match the wah output to that of the dry amp signal… and we’d suggest that you’ll need to do this when using guitars loaded with pickups of differing output levels, too.”
Both reviews then made the same criticism, and it is the only substantive complaint anyone has ever levelled at this pedal: this control should be on the outside. If you play one guitar all night, you set it once and forget it forever. If you switch between a Strat and a Les Paul mid-set, you are choosing a compromise you cannot fix without a screwdriver. That is worth knowing before you buy, not after.
Two Mechanical Adjustments Everyone Forgets
The hex nut on the treadle bolt sets rocker tension — how much effort the pedal takes to move, and therefore whether it stays where you leave it for half-cocked work or springs back. Set it heavy if you park the treadle; set it light if you sweep constantly.
The rubber stopper on the rear boom of the treadle can be shimmed to reduce the pedal’s travel range. This is a subtle and genuinely useful trick: shorten the throw and the same physical foot movement covers a smaller slice of the filter sweep, which makes precise parking dramatically easier. Nobody mentions this in demos and it changes how the pedal plays more than half the DIP switches do.
Famous Players: What Actually Holds Up
The XW-1 has a player list, and it is a genuinely good one — but it is not the list the internet will hand you, so we need to clear some ground first.
First: The Names That Do Not Belong Here
Search results, retailer pages and aggregated gear lists routinely attach Jimi Hendrix, Slash, Kirk Hammett, Jerry Cantrell and Tom Morello to “wah pedal” queries and, by association, to this one. None of the five has any documented connection to the XW-1, and in one case it is chronologically impossible: Hendrix died in 1970 and this pedal was announced in 2014. He is connected to the circuit the XW-1 references — the Vox Clyde McCoy — and nothing more.
The other four are all real wah players on other people’s wahs. Cantrell’s association is with his own Dunlop signature, the JC95 Cry Baby. Slash has a Cry Baby signature of his own. Morello’s documented wah work runs through Dunlop units. Hammett has a Dunlop signature too. Every one of those is a Cry Baby derivative, not an Xotic.
There is a nice bit of irony buried in the actual evidence here. In the same 2021 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown where the XW-1 appears on one Halestorm pedalboard, the other Halestorm pedalboard opens with — of all things — a Jerry Cantrell JC95 Dunlop Cry Baby. Two wahs, one stage, and the internet has managed to attribute the wrong one to the wrong pedal for a decade.
Tier 1: Players Documented Using It, In Their Own Words
Guthrie Govan is the strongest connection the pedal has, and it is unusually clean evidence. Xotic’s product page carries a Govan testimonial — “Any self respecting pedalboard would be delighted to make this thing’s acquaintance” — and normally we would treat a manufacturer testimonial as marketing rather than proof. In this case it holds up independently. In a Premier Guitar feature by Joe Charupakorn published 23 July 2015, Govan describes his own rig without being asked about Xotic: “My typical, everyday touring board has a volume pedal, Xotic Wah, Providence chorus, maybe an Xotic envelope filter, Xotic EP Booster, a little tuner, and a TC Electronic mini delay and mini reverb in the effects loop.” The article’s separate gear box lists “Xotic Wah,” “Xotic Robotalk Envelope Filter” and “Xotic EP Booster” among his effects. He also mentioned it again in a 2019 Guitar World interview.
That is a testimonial that survives contact with the artist’s actual rig — worth flagging, because in our Xotic SP Compressor feature we found the opposite case, where a testimonial on the same manufacturer’s page was contradicted by a filmed board photo. Both outcomes are possible. You have to check each time.
Chris Shiflett of Foo Fighters is on camera talking about it, and the way he introduces it is telling: at roughly 2:55 in a filmed pedalboard walkthrough he says, “The same people that make the EP Boost make a wah-wah pedal… That thing’s crazy!” That is the XW-1’s actual route to market in one sentence — players who already trusted Xotic’s boosts discovering the company had built a wah. Shiflett’s Xotic trio of EP Booster, SP Compressor and XW-1 appeared together in Premier Guitar‘s Pro Pedalboards 2023 feature, alongside an EHX Micro POG, JHS Muffuletta, MXR Flanger, EVH Phase 90, EHX Holy Grail, Strymon Deco, a Klon KTR, a Boss CE-2W, two Strymon TimeLines and a Friedman Brown Eye.
Lee Ritenour supplied the quote Xotic uses on its page: “It’s really cool! I love how you can change the tone colors and aggressiveness of the wah.” Worth a small note on sourcing — the version circulated from Xotic’s original Facebook post reads slightly differently (“Congratulations… It’s really cool! I love how you can easily change the tone colors and the aggressiveness of the Wah”), which is a reminder that even a manufacturer’s own quote gets trimmed for the product page. The substance is identical, and it is the right endorsement for this pedal: a session-fluent jazz-fusion player praising adjustability rather than attitude.
Tier 2: Documented On the Board, By Photograph or Video
John Mayer put the XW-1 at position one in his signal chain for the 2019 Dead & Company tour. MusicRadar published the board on 13 June 2019 from a photo shared by Source Audio, with the chain identified as: Xotic Wah XW-1 → Keeley Katana → TC Electronic PolyTune → Ibanez TS10 → Klon Centaur → Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron+ → channel switcher for the Dumble Overdrive Special → MXR Phase 90 → Strymon Volante → Source Audio True Spring Reverb. A separate Mayer Instagram post from a 3 September 2019 St. Louis date shows the same pedal alongside the Katana and PolyTune. A player with unlimited access to any wah ever built, playing Grateful Dead material through a Dumble, chose this one and put it first — a data point that carries real weight, and note the placement: wah before the fuzz and overdrive stages, which is the traditional order and the one the XW-1’s buffering is designed for.
Joe Hottinger (Halestorm), Premier Guitar Rig Rundown with John Bohlinger, 18 August 2021. PG‘s own text: “Hottinger keeps a neat pedalboard, running cable into an Xotic XW1 wah to a Xotic XVP 250K High Impedance Volume Pedal. From there, it’s a Tru-Fi Octavia Fuzz, Bogner La Grange, overdrive, Tru-Fi Colordriver 18V, Keeley 30 ms Automatic Double Tracker, Electro-Harmonix POG2, Earthquaker Devices Afterneath, and Strymon TimeLine. It’s all juiced by a Strymon Zuma power box.” Two Xotic pedals back to back at the front of a hard-rock arena rig, into Marshall Super Leads and SV20H heads. This is the most fully documented XW-1 sighting in existence.
Andy Timmons — XW-1 visible on his pedalboard at 11:40 in a filmed rig walkthrough. Mark Lettieri (Snarky Puppy, the Fearless Flyers) posted about packing his XW-1 for a week-long recording session in El Paso. Isaiah Sharkey (John Mayer Trio, D’Angelo) presents it on his board in a filmed pedalboard video — note the crossover with Mayer’s own rig, which is how session-adjacent gear choices actually propagate. Josh Smith is shown with one in That Pedal Show’s “Building Josh Smith’s New Pedalboard” vlog. Jessy Caron of Men I Trust is visible using one from 2:30 onwards in the band’s garage sessions footage. Mauricio Durán of Chilean band Los Bunkers has used one across most of the band’s career, documented on his own Instagram and still in use on the band’s Mexican tour dates. Andrew Huang used one on “Truly Heavy” from the 2022 album Dust & Dewdrops.
Tier 3: Manufacturer Testimonials, Treated As Such
Xotic’s page carries two further endorsements we could not independently corroborate against a documented rig: Robert Randolph (“The best wah-wah pedal on the planet earth!”) and Paul Jackson Jr. (“Well constructed. Wonderful feel. Great tone.”). Both are credible players and there is no reason to doubt them; we simply flag that a testimonial wall is the weakest evidence tier there is, and that Randolph is a pedal-steel-centric player whose use case for a guitar wah is not obvious from the quote alone.
What the Player List Tells You
Look at the names: Govan, Mayer, Lettieri, Timmons, Ritenour, Sharkey, Josh Smith, Paul Jackson Jr. That is a fusion, session and technically-fluent-blues roster with two rock outliers (Shiflett, Hottinger). This is not a metal wah and it is not a garage wah. It has been adopted overwhelmingly by players who spend a lot of time thinking about what their tone does in a mix, which is exactly the demographic a wah with a two-band EQ and a Q control ought to attract. If you want to sound like a wall of Marshalls with a Cry Baby half-cocked, this is a lot of money for a pedal whose advantages you will not use.
Tone Recipes and Settings
1. The 1967 Picture Wah
Bias 11 o’clock (cold), Wah Q noon, Treble noon, Bass noon. DIP 1 on, DIP 3 off, DIP 4 off. This is Xotic’s own headline reference and the closest thing the pedal has to a factory voice — the clear, transparent, smoothly operating vintage sweep. Start here before you touch anything else so you know what you are departing from.
2. The 1969 Metal Can
Bias 1 o’clock, Wah Q 1 o’clock (narrower), Treble 1 o’clock, Bass noon. DIP 1 on, DIP 3 off. More output, more aggression, a tighter peak and more top. This is the later, harder-edged flavour of the Clyde family — the one that sits over a loud band rather than inside it.
3. The 1968 Signature
Bias noon, Wah Q 11 o’clock (wider), Treble 11 o’clock, Bass 1 o’clock. DIP 3 on. Rounder, warmer, less pointed. Good with a bridge single-coil into anything bright, and the setting most likely to make a wah usable on a clean rhythm part rather than only on solos.
4. Hot Rod for Humbuckers
Bias 2 o’clock, Wah Q 2 o’clock, Treble noon, Bass 11 o’clock. DIP 1 on, DIP 4 on, DIP 2 on with the internal trimmer around 25%. This is Xotic’s own named setting for humbucker-equipped guitars, and DIP 4 is the key ingredient: PG described the Q-frequency switch as giving the vowel section of the sweep “a deeper, heavier feel and tone that can turn into a guttural growl with the right combo of humbuckers and gain.” Roll the bass back so the low end does not turn to mud.
5. The Hendrix Wail (Wah Into Fuzz)
Bias 1 o’clock, Wah Q 1 o’clock, Treble 1 o’clock, Bass noon, DIP 1 on. Place the XW-1 first, a germanium or silicon Fuzz Face-style circuit second. PG‘s reviewer specifically called out an Analog Man Sun Face after the XW-1 as “a killer combination for generating wide-open Hendrix wail,” and Xotic built a “fuzz friendly buffering circuit” into the pedal precisely so this pairing works. If you are running a Dunlop JH-F1 Fuzz Face or a Big Muff Pi, this is the order and this is the setting.
6. Parked and Nasal (The Half-Cock)
Bias 1 o’clock, Wah Q 2 o’clock (narrow), Treble noon, Bass 10 o’clock, DIP 3 off, DIP 4 off. Tighten the treadle hex nut so the pedal stays exactly where you leave it, then shim the rubber stopper to shorten the throw so you can find the same spot every night. Narrow Q makes the parked position more distinctly vocal; low bass keeps it from sounding boxy. This is the setting that most rewards the two mechanical adjustments nobody uses.
7. Clean Funk Sweep
Bias 10 o’clock (cold), Wah Q 10 o’clock (wide), Treble 1 o’clock, Bass noon, DIP 1 on, DIP 3 on. Wide Q plus cold bias gives you a broad, glassy sweep that works on sixteenth-note rhythm parts without ever becoming the loudest thing in the room. Pair it with a compressor — this is very close to what a Ritenour or a Paul Jackson Jr. context asks for.
8. Level-Matched Set-and-Forget
Whatever your voicing, this is the calibration pass. Engage DIP 2, plug in the guitar you play most, set your amp for your main dirty sound, and toggle the wah on and off with the treadle parked mid-sweep while you turn the internal trimmer until the perceived level does not jump. Then close it up. This single step is the difference between a wah that disappears in the mix when you kick it on and one that sits exactly where you want it. Do it with the guitar you use most, not the one you use loudest.
Xotic’s manual supplies four sample settings by name. We have expanded them into full recipes and added four more from the reviewed behaviour of the pedal. Positions are described as clock positions with all controls at noon as the neutral starting point.
XW-1 vs XW-2: What Actually Changed in 2024
On 2 September 2024 Xotic announced the XW-2 in metallic blue, and if you are shopping for either pedal you need to understand what the second one is, because it is not a replacement and it is not a mark-two revision.
The XW-2’s design brief, in Xotic’s own words, is “Maximum Tone with Minimal Fiddling.” It is the anti-XW-1. Xotic describes it as “a refined wah pedal design” where “the wah tone and EQ are dialed in to perfection making accessing the perfect wah sound easier than ever,” with “plug-and-play simplicity.” The external Bias, Wah Q, Treble and Bass pots that define the XW-1 are gone. What remains is a wah.
Under the hood there is real engineering, not just a colour change: Xotic specifies a custom-wound inductor, custom pot and new circuit which “not only captures the pure essence of vintage Clyde McCoy (as XW1 did), but also breathes an evolved essence (of wah) that goes beyond vintage.” The shared hardware carries over intact — self-lubricating nylon bushing, adjustable rocker tension, gold-contact relay true bypass, the 50%-battery flashing LED, the same 210 × 100 × 67 mm chassis and 980 g weight, the same 9VDC/5 mA draw, the same 1 MΩ / 10 kΩ impedances. The endorsement Xotic put on the box comes from Allen Hinds: “Incredibly musical and vocal… the way it was always supposed to be.”
| XW-1 | XW-2 Metallic Blue | |
|---|---|---|
| Announced | 6 November 2014 | 2 September 2024 |
| Design philosophy | Unlimited adjustability | “Maximum tone with minimum fiddling” |
| External pots | Bias, Wah Q, Treble, Bass | None |
| Internal DIP switches | Four, plus input gain trimmer | Not specified by Xotic |
| Inductor | Not specified | Custom wound |
| Chassis / weight | Identical: 210 × 100 × 67 mm, 980 g, 20% smaller than conventional | |
| Bypass / LED / bushing | Identical: gold-contact relay true bypass, low-battery flash, nylon pivot | |
| Xotic direct price | $329.00 | $279.00 |
One pricing note worth recording, because it runs against the usual pattern. MusicRadar reported the XW-2 at launch as “priced $220 (reduced from $275),” with a limited-edition metallic red version at Sweetwater for $210. Xotic’s own current price sheet lists the XW-2 at $279. The pedal did not get cheaper over time; the launch price was promotional and the number has since gone up. If you are comparing a 2024 news article’s figure against a 2026 shopping cart, that is why they disagree.
The buying decision is not about which is better. It is about who you are. If you own one guitar and one amp and want a great-sounding wah you never think about again, the XW-2 is cheaper, newer, and explicitly built for you. If you own several guitars with different output levels, play multiple genres in a night, or are the kind of person who reads a DIP switch table for fun, the XW-1 is the one that was designed for your problem — and it is now the older product in the line, which has interesting consequences on the used market.
How It Compares
vs the Dunlop GCB95 Cry Baby
The Cry Baby GCB95 is the default, the one on 374 documented artist boards, and it costs roughly a fifth of what the XW-1 does. It has one voice, and that voice is on more records than any other wah sound in existence. The honest comparison: the Cry Baby wins on price, ubiquity, parts availability and the fact that its sound is the reference. The XW-1 wins on adjustability, size, switching quality, the low-battery LED and the ability to be level-matched to your rig. If your wah tone already works, do not spend the difference.
vs the Ibanez WH10V3
The Ibanez WH10V3 is a fundamentally different animal — a plastic-era design reissued in metal, with a Depth control and a distinctly aggressive, mid-forward character that John Frusciante made famous. Where the XW-1 is a precision instrument aimed at a vintage reference, the WH10 is a specific and slightly unhinged voice. Buy the Ibanez because you want that sound. Buy the Xotic because you want to build a sound.
vs the Vox V847 and Fulltone Clyde
Both are more direct attempts at the same vintage territory. The V847 is the closest thing to a period-correct Vox you can buy new, and Guitar & Bass used it as the direct size comparison: 257 cm² of pedalboard against the XW-1’s 210 cm². The Fulltone Clyde Deluxe splits the difference with three switchable voices. The XW-1’s argument against both is that it does not make you choose a voice at purchase time.
vs RMC and Other Boutique Wahs
Premier Guitar placed the XW-1’s price “in line with great boutique wahs by RMC and Fulltone,” and that is the right neighbourhood. Player opinion in this bracket is genuinely divided and we are not going to pretend otherwise: some long-time Teese RMC owners rate the XW-1 as the best wah they have used, and others find it clinical next to an RMC4 Picture Wah. That split is real and it is predictable — a pedal engineered for flexibility and low noise will read as “sterile” to somebody whose reference point is a specific inductor’s particular flavour of imperfection. Try before you commit if a vintage-flavoured wah is what you actually want.
Where It Goes in the Chain
First, or very close to it. Every documented XW-1 rig puts it at or near the front: Mayer at position one before a TS10 and a Klon; Hottinger first into an Xotic volume pedal; Govan with a volume pedal and then the wah at the head of the board. Xotic built the buffering specifically to survive being placed in front of fuzz — a genuine engineering problem, since a wah’s output impedance interacting with a fuzz’s low input impedance is what causes the classic wah-into-Fuzz-Face squeal. If you run a Tube Screamer or a Blues Driver, the wah still goes first.
Buying Guide
What It Costs Right Now
| Source | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Xotic direct (price sheet 10-1-25) | $329.00 | 24 units listed in stock |
| Major US retail (Sweetwater / Guitar Center / Amazon / Musician’s Friend) | $296.10 | Consistent street price across all four |
| zZounds | $329.00 | Matches Xotic direct |
| Thomann (EU) | $266.00 | Lowest new price found |
| Reverb, new | $280.00 | |
| Reverb, used | from ~$184.00 | The value story on this pedal |
| XW-2 Metallic Blue, Xotic direct | $279.00 | 29 units listed in stock |
Prices verified September 2026. Two things follow from that table. First, the spread between Xotic’s own price and street is roughly $33 and the spread to Thomann is $63, so it pays to shop. Second, and more importantly: a used XW-1 at $184 is one of the better-value pedals on the market, because a wah has almost nothing in it that degrades — no electrolytic-heavy audio path to dry out, no batteries left in it for years if the previous owner used a supply, and a relay rated for a million switching cycles instead of a mechanical switch that wears.
What to Check on a Used Unit
- The four baseplate screws. Present, not stripped, not replaced with mismatched hardware. That plate is the only route to the battery, the DIP switches and the input trimmer — if it has been chewed up, walk away or budget for a repair.
- Ask how the DIP switches are set. A pedal that sounds wrong in a demo video may simply be configured for somebody else’s humbuckers. Reset to defaults (1 on, 2 off, 3 on, 4 off per the manual’s default illustration) before you judge it.
- The bias knob scratch. Xotic says it is by design and goes silent once set. A seller who describes it as a fault is telling you they never read the manual — not a red flag on the pedal, but useful context.
- Treadle feel. The nylon bushing is self-lubricating and should be smooth and silent. Grinding or squeaking means the pivot has been abused or contaminated.
- The LED. Confirm it lights when engaged. It should also flash on a half-drained battery — that circuit is the pedal’s most distinctive feature and a non-functioning LED means something in the switching or indicator path needs attention.
- Colour and SKU. The standard unit’s model number is XW-1 WH — white. Other finishes and the limited-edition red XW-2 exist; confirm which pedal you are actually buying, since XW-1 and XW-2 are visually similar and functionally very different.
Who Should Buy This
Buy the XW-1 if you switch between guitars with different output levels and want the wah to sit right on all of them; if you have ever thought “this wah is too bright” or “too thin” and had no way to fix it; if pedalboard space is a real constraint; if you are chasing a vintage Clyde sound but cannot spend four figures on a fifty-year-old pedal with a fifty-year-old pot in it; or if you are running fuzz and want a wah in front of it that Xotic actually engineered for that job.
Do not buy it if you already like your Cry Baby, if you play one guitar into one amp and want to be finished thinking about it, or if you are buying a boutique wah expecting to be seduced by character rather than served by flexibility. The XW-2 exists for the second group and it is $50 cheaper.
Living With It
Set the input gain trimmer once, properly, with your main guitar, and then leave the baseplate alone. Every serious criticism of this pedal in print traces back to that one control being internal, and the fix is a fifteen-minute calibration pass with a screwdriver and your actual rig rather than a shop’s demo amp.
Power it from a regulated 9V supply — the manual’s spec, not the website’s — with 5 mA of headroom, which every isolated supply on the market clears without noticing. A battery works and the low-battery flash makes battery operation genuinely practical for the first time on a wah, but there is no tonal reason to prefer one.
Set the rocker tension before your first gig, not during it. The hex nut is on the treadle bolt and it takes thirty seconds. A wah that will not stay parked, or that fights your ankle for a whole set, is a wah you will stop using.
And treat the DIP switches as a one-time setup rather than a performance feature. Xotic’s defaults are a reasonable starting point, DIP 3 (presence cut) is the one most players end up leaving engaged, and DIP 4 is the switch you flip if you have moved to humbuckers and want the growl back. Beyond that, the four external pots cover everything you will realistically want to change between gigs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Xotic XW-1 true bypass?
Yes. It uses a gold-contact relay as the switching element, and that relay lifts the circuit fully out of the signal path — so it is genuinely true bypass, actuated by a relay rather than a mechanical stomp switch. Xotic rates the relay for a minimum of one million cycles. The practical benefits are no switching pop and a switch that will not go scratchy with age.
What do the four DIP switches inside the XW-1 do?
Switch 1 is toe-down range: on for maximum treble at the top of the sweep, off for a darker toe-down. Switch 2 enables the internal input gain trimmer — the trimmer does nothing at all unless switch 2 is on. Switch 3 is presence cut, engaged for a smoother high end. Switch 4 is wah-Q frequency, engaged for a deeper vowel response. Access is through four baseplate screws.
Can I run the Xotic XW-1 at 18 volts?
The manual says regulated 9VDC only; the product page spec table says 9VDC–18VDC. We would follow the manual and run it at 9V. There is no headroom argument for a filter circuit the way there is for a boost, and the +6 dB input gain trimmer inside the pedal is the intended way to get more output. Current draw is 5 mA either way.
Why does the bias knob make a scratching noise?
Because Xotic designed it that way, and they say so on their own product page: the noise appears while you turn the knob and the pedal is silent once the control is set. Adjust it with the effect bypassed and you will never hear it. It is not a failing pot.
Did Jimi Hendrix use an Xotic XW-1?
No, and he could not have. Hendrix died in 1970; the XW-1 was announced in November 2014. He used Vox and Thomas Organ wahs from the Clyde McCoy family — which is the circuit the XW-1 is modelled on, and the whole extent of the connection. The same applies to Slash, Kirk Hammett, Jerry Cantrell and Tom Morello, all of whom are documented on Dunlop Cry Baby variants rather than on anything from Xotic.
Who actually uses the Xotic Wah XW-1?
The strongest documented users are Guthrie Govan, who described it on his own touring board in a 2015 Premier Guitar interview; John Mayer, who ran it first in his chain on the 2019 Dead & Company tour; Joe Hottinger of Halestorm, filmed with one for PG‘s 2021 Rig Rundown; and Chris Shiflett of Foo Fighters, who is on camera calling it “crazy” and had it on his 2023 pedalboard. Also documented: Andy Timmons, Mark Lettieri, Lee Ritenour, Isaiah Sharkey, Josh Smith, Jessy Caron of Men I Trust, Mauricio Durán of Los Bunkers and Andrew Huang.
Xotic XW-1 or XW-2 — which should I buy?
The XW-2 is not a replacement for the XW-1; it is the opposite design philosophy from the same company. The XW-1 gives you Bias, Wah Q, Treble and Bass on the outside plus four DIP switches and a gain trimmer inside. The XW-2 removes all of that in favour of a custom-wound inductor and a single dialled-in voice, marketed as “maximum tone with minimum fiddling,” at $279 direct against the XW-1’s $329. Buy the XW-1 if you want to shape it; buy the XW-2 if you want to step on it.
Is the XW-1 good with fuzz?
Yes, and this is one of its explicit design goals — Xotic lists a “fuzz friendly buffering circuit” among the pedal’s headline features, addressing the classic problem of a wah’s output impedance misbehaving into a Fuzz Face’s low input impedance. Premier Guitar‘s reviewer found an Analog Man Sun Face placed after the XW-1 to be “a killer combination for generating wide-open Hendrix wail,” and singled the pedal out as “very fuzz friendly” in its published pros.
How much smaller is it than a normal wah?
Twenty per cent, per Xotic. In real numbers: 210 mm × 100 mm × 67 mm, which Guitar & Bass measured as a 210 cm² footprint against 257 cm² for a Vox V847. It weighs 980 g. Reviewers consistently report that the smaller size feels slightly unfamiliar underfoot for the first few minutes and then stops registering.
When did the Xotic XW-1 come out and what did it cost?
Announced 6 November 2014 from Van Nuys, California, after what Xotic described as four years of research and development, at a $295 MSRP. Premier Guitar reviewed it in March 2015 at a $236 street price; Guitar & Bass reviewed it in September 2016 at £287. Xotic’s own current direct price is $329.