Dunlop KFK Q-Zone review
Posted on 13/09/2014 by ozzy in The Blog
I bought this pedal because I wanted to nail this nasal, vocal tone of Mark Knopfler's guitar from Money for Nothing. Funny, even Mark can't remember how he got that sound on the record. Only thing he remembers is that he played a Les Paul through a Laney amp with some mysterious microphone setup. To re-create that tone, he uses a rack-mounted Cry Baby wah with fixed settings today.
Even though my Vox V845 wah worked fine for this purpose, it filtered certain frequencies that I wanted to be part of the tone. The last but not least, the foot-pedal position was susceptible to accidental bumps, so I had decided to look for something more practical. Soon, I found out that there weren’t many budget alternatives available on market. In fact there was just one. Dunlop KFK Q-zone, a limited reissue edition of already discontinued stomp box of the same name.
The Dunlop KFK Q-zone is so called fixed wah, so it's like if you were to set a wah foot pedal in one position and leave it there rather than consistently manipulating it. It features the same controls as a Dunlop 95Q Cry Baby: The Volume (up to +18 dB), Q-Zone (frequency breadth), and Peak (frequency center, serving the same function as the wah foot pedal, to sculpt and set the sweet spot).
The Q-zone might not be the most frequently used pedal of my rig, but it does the job very well. It's more pedal board friendly than a standard wah.
The Guitar Player Vault magazine (April, 2012) published the interview with Knopfler's guitar tech Ron Eve, where he's describing how to get Money for Nothing tone:
1) Get Soldano 100 Watt head and Cry baby wah-wah
2) Adjust the Soldano's normal channel as follows:
- Put the Clean/Crunch switch in Crunch position
- Turn the Bright switch off
- Set the Gain to 6, Bass to 9, Mid to 8, Treble to 3, Master to 7.5, and Presence to 6
3) Set your wah-wah to the most "vocal" position, and leave it there
4) Add a touch of Reverb