Del Casher, who invented the wah-wah pedal, dies at 88

Del Casher, the session guitarist credited with inventing the foot-operated wah-wah effect, died on 1 October at 88 after a battle with cancer. The effect lets guitarists change the tone of an electric guitar with their foot, producing a sound resembling a voice saying “wah-wah.”

A fundraiser for his wife, Eiko, disclosed his death, Billboard said. Citing Guitar Player magazine, Billboard credited Casher with turning an amplifier’s tone-control circuit into the effect while working with Vox and its American parent company, Thomas Organ.

From amplifier control to pedal

While consulting for Vox in 1966, Casher noticed that adjusting a variable tone control on an amplifier produced the sound. Casher persuaded company engineers to adapt the idea into a pedal, initially called Cry Baby. Moving the pedal let players sweep through sound frequencies, changing the guitar’s tone.

Casher recorded a demonstration album for music stores, but neither it nor the pedal attracted much attention when they were released in 1967. After Casher jammed with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in 1966, Zappa gave a pedal to Jimi Hendrix. Billboard credited Hendrix’s use of the effect on Electric Ladyland in 1968 and at Woodstock in 1969 with helping popularize it.

Casher’s session work included collaborations with Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra and Sonny & Cher. Universal Pictures hired him to use the effect on the soundtracks of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and Shakiest Gun in the West (1968).

Casher also developed early guitar-synthesizer technology for Roland and performed and produced music for more than 200 episodes of the children’s television series The New Zoo Revue.

Fundraiser for Eiko