Del Casher

Del Casher died on 1 October 2026, at the age of 88. The date is given by TMZ, which reported his death on 8 November 2026, by the NAMM Oral History Library, and by a GoFundMe fundraiser created on 30 October 2026 by Al Burg. Burg wrote that Casher had battled cancer over the last year before his death. A place of death was not published.

Wider news of his death circulated in early November 2026. Steve Goldstein published a remembrance on 4 November, and the fundraiser asked for help for Casher's widow, Eiko, then 89, to pay down debts and move into assisted living. Funeral or memorial arrangements were not made public.

Del Casher was born Delton Edward Kacher on 28 December 1937 in Hammond, Indiana. The full name Delton Edward Kacher appears on the fundraiser organised after his death, and the birth date is given by the NAMM Oral History Library, which interviewed him in 2003.

He studied at the University of Pittsburgh, where he majored in communications. After college he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as a guitarist, combining a performer's ear with a lasting interest in electronics that later shaped his inventions.

In Hollywood Casher was invited to perform as the guitar and banjo soloist on The Lawrence Welk Show. He also toured with The Three Suns, RCA recording artists known for their hit Twilight Time. On a tour of Japan with the group he introduced his Ecco-Fonic, a portable tape echo that brought studio-style echo effects to the stage. He later signed with Japan Victor and Union Records as a featured artist.

He was a sought-after studio guitarist. Paramount Pictures hired him to appear with Elvis Presley in Roustabout (1964), and he appeared opposite Jerry Lewis in The Patsy. He received a contract to appear on Gene Autry's Melody Ranch television show and played with Eddy Arnold, Connie Francis, Bobby Vinton, Sonny and Cher and the Mothers of Invention. TMZ reported that he was part of the studio unit known as the Wrecking Crew, which backed artists including Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and The Monkees, and that he composed for more than a dozen television shows and films.

In the mid-1960s, after the Thomas Organ Company acquired the Vox name, Casher worked as a guitarist and consultant for Vox and performed with the Vox Amplifonic Big Band. While a mid-range boost switch was being redesigned as a variable tone control for the American solid-state Vox amplifier, he noticed that sweeping the control produced a vocal "wah" sound. He asked the engineering team, which included Brad Plunkett, to fit the circuit into a Vox organ volume pedal so that he could play and move the pedal at once. After experimenting, they produced a tone like a trumpet's wah mute. Vox initially wanted to market it for the electric trumpet, but in 1967 agreed to let Casher compose and release a record with the pedal. Universal Pictures featured his prototype pedal in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Shakiest Gun in the West and The Traveling Saleslady, and MGM hired him for the Tony Curtis film Don't Make Waves. His guitar is also heard on a theme for NBC Nightly News.

He also invented the Fender Electronic Echo Chamber, and through his friendship with Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi he was invited to Japan to introduce the first Roland guitar synthesizer. In 1972 he became music director of the children's series The New Zoo Revue, producing more than 200 shows and more than 200 children's music, educational and dance albums for Activity Records. He composed Americana Suite for Orchestra, a classical work in three movements, and produced English-language versions of the anime series Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo! and Sakura Wars.

Casher was married to Eiko Kacher. Writer Steve Goldstein recalled that when he contacted Casher about the pedal's invention, Casher replied within an hour with the story, photographs of the Los Feliz garage where Goldstein said the pedal was developed, and a recording of an early radio advertisement for it, along with a picture of Eiko standing in front of the garage.

According to the fundraiser set up by his friend and business neighbour of 40 years, Al Burg, the COVID-19 pandemic badly damaged Casher's sound studio business and forced him to sell valuable guitars and equipment.

The wah-wah pedal became one of the most recognisable effects in popular music, heard on countless rock, funk, soul and disco records. Casher's role in discovering the sound and pushing for it to be put under a guitarist's foot is documented by Wikipedia, by Wax Poetics magazine's 2010 oral history of the pedal, and by the NAMM Oral History Library, which described him as a pioneering guitarist and inventor whose work influenced generations of musicians.

Beyond the pedal, his Ecco-Fonic tape echo, his work introducing the Roland guitar synthesizer, his film and studio playing, and his long run producing children's music and anime adaptations made him a quiet but unusually varied figure in American music and sound technology.