Del Casher, Inventor of the Guitar Wah-Wah Pedal, Dies at 88

Del Casher, a session musician and inventor of the wah-wah pedal, died on Oct. 1 at 88 after a battle with cancer, according to a GoFundMe campaign supporting his wife, Eiko.

The campaign, started by neighbor and good friend Al Burg, said the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated Casher’s sound studio business. Casher sold valuable guitars and equipment to pay bills and took out a reverse mortgage on the couple’s home.

Born Delton Edward Kacher in Hammond, Indiana, on Dec. 28, 1937, Casher was best known for the wah-wah pedal, a foot-operated electric guitar effect that mimics a human voice saying “wah-wah.”

After college, Casher began performing guitar and banjo on The Lawrence Welk Show in 1959. He also sat in with singing cowboy Gene Autry and instrumental group Three Suns while experimenting with ways to make his playing more distinctive. According to Guitar Player, Casher developed his signature invention while working with amplifier company Vox and its American parent company, Thomas Organ. He turned a tone-control circuit into a foot-operated effect that let guitarists cycle through frequencies to produce the sound that gave the pedal its name.

Working as a Vox consultant in 1966, Casher noticed that a variable tone control on one of the company’s amplifiers produced the effect when adjusted a certain way. He realized he could make an electric guitar sound like a trumpet or a harmonica player cupping his hands around the microphone and instrument. Casher persuaded the company’s engineers to adapt the idea into a foot-operated pedal, initially called a “Cry Baby.” He then recorded a demo album for music stores, though neither the pedal nor the album gained much traction when released in 1967.

“They thought I was a crackpot, but they humored me,” Casher told The New York Times in 2011 about his idea for the demo album.

After Casher jammed with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in 1966, Zappa gave a pedal to Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix helped popularize it by using its crying sound on “Voodoo Child” and his cover of “All Along the Watchtower” from 1968’s Electric Ladyland, and at the Woodstock Festival the following year.

Universal Pictures hired Casher to use the effect on the soundtracks to the Don Knotts films The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and Shakiest Gun in the West (1968). MGM used it in the 1967 Tony Curtis comedy Don’t Make Waves.

Casher also worked as a session musician with Autry, Frank Sinatra and Sonny & Cher. He appeared with Elvis in the 1964 film Roustabout and with Jerry Lewis in that year’s Patsy.

Eric Clapton used the pedal on Cream’s “White Room” and “Tale of Brave Ulysses,” as well as Blind Faith’s 1969 debut album. Other players who used the effect included Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page on “Dazed and Confused,” Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi on “Electric Funeral,” Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on “Echoes,” Jeff Beck on “I Ain’t Superstitious,” George Harrison on “Wah Wah” and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash on “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

The effect was also prominent on Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning “Theme From Shaft,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.

Casher developed early guitar-synthesizer technology for Roland and worked as a composer for many years. He performed and produced music for more than 200 episodes of the children’s TV series The New Zoo Revue.

“I feel gratified that I was there at the beginning,” Casher told the Times in 2011, noting that bands from Pearl Jam to U2 had used the pedal in concert and on albums. “I would just like guitar players to think of me once in a while. The only thing I ask is: remember me.”

Watch Casher demonstrate the pedal below.

Source: Billboard