Boss Review: PW-10 V-Wah

History:

Purchase: £119, local music shop. Bought because I searched for 'Univibe'on Google and came up with an entry for PW 10. It looked good. I then searched this and other databases for a review and was again impressed. Went out half an hour later and bought one, having owned a cry baby wah-wah for 10 years.

What I Like About This Boss PW-10 V-Wah: Range of sounds. The wah sounds are excellent - the Morley especially! But some days you may fancy the Vox or the Cry Baby instead - No problem! Boss's own sound is also excellent. As a Wah pedal alone it is a great bit of kit. It's piece de resistance to my mind is the Uni Vibe tho'. It's very nearly as good as the real thing which, with expression pedal, comes in at nearly £300. It's also better than the Dunlop Rotovibe for £189.

What I Do NOT Like About The Boss PW-10 V-Wah: You should realise that it's not all wine and roses tho'. 1. The manual is not very well written - compared to some others by Boss which are very good. It took me ages to figure out that the unit comes with a default distortion setting of the Boss HM2 [ or some such over-the-top shread setting]and the bloke in the shop didn't realise it either! 2. If you use a distortion setting, it remains operative even with the Wah function switched off. The bypass mode[ which does actually bypass the unit ] is awkward to engage - because it involves keeping the back of the pedal depressed for approx 2 seconds. 3. Similarly, the Univibe can only be switched off by moving the pedal forward into the off position - causing it to go through it's highest modulation setting. This is the same as the Dunlop Rotovibe tho'. 3. The memory settings are not particularly easy to engage. Like the on/off function they are engaged electronically rather than by an on/off switch. There is a small gap of less than a second while the unit switches between on and off or the memory settings. This can sound dis-jointed during a live situation. I have limited the pedal to one memory, which makes it easier. 4. The voice setting and synth setting are of limited value - gimmicky, and the bass wah-wah is obviously of no use to me. 5. The distortion presets are not particularly nice sounding - the lack of tone and level controls on this particular part of the unit don't make them that usable - I found the boost and blues driver settings the least fuzzy and nasty. 6. You can't use the Univibe and Wah at the same time - but, hey, that's luxury.

Boss PW-10 V-Wah Quality Rating: It's made by Boss - say no more. Another gripe tho - the text on the mode button is difficult to read on stage.

Review Summary: Despite the critisisms, the unit is excellent value for money. If you don't attempt to use it on stage with all it's memory and by-pass functionality, spend time reading the manual and experimenting quite a lot,it works well as a basic on/off stomp box/pedal. Like another reviewer on this database said, to buy each unit seperately would cost a fortune, so you can't go wrong.

Rating of this Boss product: 4

This Boss PW-10 V-Wah Guitar Effects Review Submitted By: Lightning RT

Review Date: 2003-10-22