I want to build a Phaser, Flanger...

[DaKurt]

Hi,

I just built two distortionpedals till today, and so I thought I would really like a Phaser or a Flanger. How hard is it to make one? Could you post some easy schematics?


Thank's Kurt

[Marcos - Munky]

A flanger is hard and you need to find BBDs. I think the easuer phasers are posted in Tonepad.com. The Phase45 is the easier, but they need matched transistors.

[Gringo]

The phaser at 4ms looks good, it uses photocells. I i don't know if these have to be matched, or bought under equinox's moonlight, though...

[Muldoer]

You can always try tonepad's layouts for the Small Stone or Ross Phaser. I'm looking to build one soon myself.

As for Flangers, tonepad has the Ibanez one, and general guitar gadgets has the electric mistress.

As for difficulty, I personnally dont believe that it they are hard to build, just they take a little longer to build. Sure debugging is a bitch on bigger circuits, but it all depends on how you work. If you solder quickly and neatly, and know how to poke around with your meter, I dont see why you couldnt tackle a project like this.

[smoguzbenjamin]

If you're gonna make a flanger or phaser, you should use a PCB. I imagine a perf layout would be a pain in the ass to make for anything which has more than 30 parts.

[Mark Hammer]

My vote is to start with a phaser, since there is less cost involved, less trouble-shooting (probably), less risk of damaging critical parts, less mail-ordering, and lots of fun and room for learning by modding.

The implementation of the old MXR Phase 45 is a decent place to start.  JC Maillet's version is also able to nab some Unvibe-type sounds.

And just to respond to an earlier comment, photocells do not have to be matched for a photocell-based phaser to work properly.  FET mismatching interferes with optimal functioning (especially sweep) of a FET-based phaser but photocell mismatch simply moves the notches around a little without having any impacton sweep itself.  You'd have to have some serious mismatching of photocells (e.g., 2 range from 1k to 10meg, one ranges from 100R to 100k, and another ranges from 500R to 500k) to have a discernible effect on sweep.

[Gringo]

Hey Mark, thanks for the info on photocells. I just found an "almost free alternate source" for photocells, and was wandering about if i could use them without any special care.

Regarding this thread, i just finished my phase 45 from tonepad, and i recommend it 100%. Easy, small build, sounds great. I used matched mpf102's (a most fortunate gift from Arn C. Thanks once again Arn!!).

[petemoore]

An I perfed the 90 also the EZ Vibe. I was crosseyed after each build for about 1 week.
 Fransisco [Tonepad] made a SS Board for me, and I would have to say when it comes to phazers and the like, have a PCB to start with simplifies matters considerabley if not exponentially.
 If you keep an eye on all your pieces, [I check each R's value, and the schematic and PCB drawing to be sure], get the orientations correct ...and add enough heat to the large thermal mass areas [I had to rehEAt where six leads and a large trace were, to fix a cold solder problem on the SS board]...It should work fine...
 If I had the SS to do over, I would leave enough room on the 4k7 leads so the volume fix mods would not require getting under the board...