Morley Power Wah Fuzz Pedal
My vintage Morley Power Wah Fuzz Pedal
I bought my first Morley Power Wah Fuzz (PWF) sometime around 1974 from Schroeder’s Music Store in Savannah, Georgia. It combined the two sounds that were the essence of rock guitar at that time --- distortion and wah-wah. The Morley PWF was the brainchild of brothers Marv and Ray Lubow, who founded Tel-Ray Electronics as an OEM supplier and eventually created their own Morley brand of effects devices. The design of the Morley PWF was somewhat innovative at the time because the rocker pedal interfaces with an electro-optical circuit to affect the sound, instead of a mechanical rack and pinion turning a potentiometer. As far as I can remember, this was unlike any other wah-wah pedal being offered at that time. Also, the Morley PWF was built like a tank. It has some heft to it, and combined with the thick chrome plating, a vintage PWF almost feels like a piece of industrial grade equipment.
As far as the sound, the Morley Power Wah Fuzz is not for the faint of heart. There’s nothing subtle about it at all. At its most extreme settings it gives you screaming distortion. Add the seemingly endless sustain with the wah-wah effect, and you can get some outrageous guitar sounds. I always get a vision of Mick Ronson playing “White Light / White Heat” when I use it (although Mick Ronson did not use a Morley PWF – my understanding is that he used a Sola Sound Tone Bender MKI distortion box and a Jen / Vox Cry Baby wah-wah and, of course, a Marshall amp turned way up).
Given the “in your face” sound, I consider the Morley PWF to be more a niche effect than something to be used on every song. In any event, it’s still a prized tool in my toolbox. I recently used it for the lead guitar on my song “Dark Clouds on the Horizon”, which I recorded in 2023. I was just looking for something different. On this song I recorded the lead guitar direct into the mixing board through a Strymon Iridium Amp/Cab Simulator and the Morley PWF, so the feedback-like overtones you hear are solely the product of a Gibson Les Paul and the internal electronics of the Iridium and the Morley PWF. Pretty neat.
I parted with my original Morley PWF somewhere along the way (a very commonplace story for me, unfortunately), but I reacquired a vintage Tel-Ray, Burbank-built example on Ebay a number of years ago. I’m not sure of the precise year of manufacture of my replacement, but it looks and sounds exactly like the one I had in the mid-seventies. Morley still builds the Power Wah Fuzz today, but the current-day version looks very different from the 70s vintage units. It also appears they’ve swapped “Wah” and “Fuzz” in the name and now call it the “Power Fuzz Wah” - interesting.
Related Links
