An interesting phaser

[Mark Hammer]

Some days, "everything I touch turns to s**t", to quote Robert Mitchum in Farewell My Lovely.  And some days, it's gold, Jerry, GOLD!

Today was one of the second type.  I finally boxed up something I had started a while back, and was thrilled to hear that it did what I hoped it did.  It is basically two Phase 90's in a single box (used an older TOnepad layout), but with some interesting bells and whistles.

The two circuits are in series, and I can use one and add in a second with a stompswitch.  Each circuit has 3 additional pushbuttons for changing the resonance/feedback, sweep width, and higher or lower range.  The first one can be set for phase-shift or vibrato, and the second one can either use its own LFO or be tied to the LFO in the first one.  Note that these are two self-contained phasers, and not 4 stages tacked onto four stages.

Setting one for a slow and wide sweep, and the other for a medium narrow sweep with more feedback yields an interesting sound where the sweep in the faster one moves up and down in its range.  Indeed, having two units in series gets some very interesting sounds for rhythm work, with more animation than a single one.  Nicely aperiodic.

Syncing them both to one LFO is interesting as well, although I find that doing so slows the speed down.  I gather this is because the LFO in phaser 1 has its current divided in half for each...or something to that effect.  If there are better simple ways to use one LFO to drive two units, please let me know.

For now, I have to ream out the holes for some of the push-buttons, so that the buttons don't stick.

[aishabag23]

This is awesome! 

[bool]

To get a certain sound, I used to do "series connection" with two smallstones (in a funny era between the 80's and when grunge hit big). That was a good recipe for 2stop rhythm figures sound sans using flangers (like a bit de-gothed goth thing).

[Kipper4]

Am I the only one not to see the image?

[mac]

Am I the only one not to see the image?

You're not alone Rich. I just see the Photobucket logo.

mac

[duck_arse]

"everything I touch turns to s**t"

the new photobucket motto.

I can't see it either.

[jimilee]

Very cool idea, I love phasers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Mark Hammer]

It showed up last night when I posted it.  Theoretically, as long as one has that little viewable-photobucket thing installed in Firefox, it should be viewable.  But I gather the Photobucket folks are keepingtabs on such things.  I'll try again.

[Mark Hammer]

Nope, didn't work.  I'll figure out something else.  Stay tuned.

[Mark Hammer]

[duck_arse]

very nice, Mark - I'm seeing it three times now.

[Mark Hammer]

I have to say that, as much as I like the small footprint that those little pushbuttons have, it is an absoilute bear to line up the holes with the button caps.  Even if one is using a board with standardized spacing of pins, unless every single switch is mounted perfectly flush to the board, you can run into hole/button alignment problems.  If the pins on one side of the switch are not as flush with the board as those on the other side, the whole thing ends up benign a few degrees off at the top.  Not Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa "off", but off enough that the hole has to be bigger than you wanted for the button caps to not rub up against the chassis and stick.  Let's just say there was a lot of irritated use of my hole-reamer tool, and it probably isn't done yet.

That said, there are some really nice sounds.  I'l try and make a demo tomorrow when my wife is at work.

[stonerbox]

That said, there are some really nice sounds.  I'l try and make a demo tomorrow when my wife is at work.

After reading your initial post I thought to myself "That sounds great, I GOTTA HEAR THIS THING!", and especially with syncing LFOs. Also, I love the name "Double Vision".