Q: Preventing overloading input of Flanger pedal.

[Burstbucker]

I'm thinking of purchasing a used Arion SFL-1 Stereo Flanger pedal, I've heard good things about these things and I can get it super cheap too. 

One thing that concerns me though is that apparently it's pretty easy to overload the input, even with a guitar sporting single coil pickups.  It seems to me that this was also the case with the MXR Phase 90 too but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Is this phenomenon pretty common in most Flanger/Phaser type pedals and is there a way to prevent it or lessen the overload/distortion?

[KMS]

It's been a while since I used a flanger for any particular piece of music.  Seldom have I seen that it has been needed for an entire song rather it would be inserted for particular riffs.  The last flanger I had was a Vestex stereo flanger with one side of the stereo clean or I could opt to have both right and left flanging in and out of phase.

From the audience point of listening, the sound going from right to left is best if it is very subtle from the flanger FX ........and not very often.  The point here is that the stereo aspect of flanging is hardly ever used and when it is used, it is for a very short duration and very subtle.  You could do without the stereo flanging aspect and just mix clean/wet flanging and most likely get by just fine.

If that was OK with you...then you could split your signal through an A/B/Y splitter into two parallel chains and run whatever FX you need on A with the flanger (mono) on B with a level control on B like a small pre-amp (the Ruby?) turned down as low as you need it just before the input of the Flanger;however;I don't think you would need the level control as long as you were not pushing anything besides clean sound from the splitter through the flanger. I have never had a problem with overloading any of the flangers I have had which is only two and I used both single coil and humbuckers with both of those flangers.

I have recently made a 6X splitter and with various FX on 4 of the chains all mixed back together at the output stage into a stereo mixer (all diy stuff). Yesterday during practice at our studio (a very large modern built pole barn with all the HVAC and other accommodations) we spent some time dialing in all the stereo stuff we could muster and discovered that most things separated across the stage in stereo sound like crap out in the audience.  It sounds cool to us when we are right between the speakers, but out in the audience it is too much separation as compared to combining the set-up to one big mono configuration.  For one thing, the re-verb, echo, delay, and tremolo all sound much better as a mono functions as well as distortion FX too. The flanging is one of a kind and it does sound good from the audience position if you can just barley tell that it is moving back and forth across the stage.  It also sounds great......just as good in mono.

The main things we noticed.....in mono it sounds like the sound is all around you....ambient.....magical.

In stereo.......you loose the ambiance sound particularly for solos that favor one side of the stereo and in general it sounds like the sound is coming from the right or the left side of the stage instead of coming from all around you.

Bottom line for our band...stereo is not worth it at this point in time.  The only way we would consider it would be if we had a mono set-up across the entire stage along with a stereo set-up (completely separate). This would allow us to have a wet/dry mix of stereo combined with mono....that might sound good...but would cost us a lot to upgrade to that. 

I just keep learning as I go......maybe we will have stereo someday, just not right now.

You could have a separate little amp combo just for one side of the stereo flanger and run the other side out to the big rig that distributes your sound in mono across the stage. Then choose a side to place that little amp combo on and the FX of subtle stereo flanging would be great.  That would still work with the splitter/preamp and still give you stereo.

[Mark Hammer]

Even when NOT throwing huge signals at them, flangers have the capability to overload themselves.  Remember, the BBD is not only getting your guitar input, but on top of that it is also getting the regenerated signal added to the mix.  As a result, most flangers will have a built-in very crude limiter circuit at the point where input and recirculated are packaged together to send on to the BBD.  IN schematics, you will see this as something like a pair of clipping diodes in the feedback loop of an op-amp, with a resistor in series to soften the clipping.  Naturally, this adds a bit of distortion.  On the other hand, more distorted signals make flangers sound "richer", so it's not an entirely unhappy situation.

In general, the most basic thing you can do to prevent pedals from overloading is to restrict bass content, since the lowest notes have the most acoustic energy (thick strings and all).  If you look at the schematic for the Boss BF-2 Flanger here: http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Library/1355/Bf2.gif , you will see a capacitor labelled C6 (.047uf).  That capacitor restricts the low-end of what gets fed to the delay chip, and by extension what gets fed back FROM the delay chip.  It has no impact on the bandwidth of the dry signal that the delayed part gets mixed with.  Lowering the value of that capacitor will raise the frequency where the bass gets rolled off.  That will have the effect of "challenging" the dynamic capabilities of the BBD and op-amps a bit less.

Of course you need to keep in mind that the "fullness" of the flange sound can be affected in ways you might not like if you go too crazy with this, though one can probably always find a compromise that improves signal handlign while not taking out too much of the comb-filtering sound from the bottom.

Some manufacturers use compander chips around the delay circuiry to assure that the delay chip is never pushed too hard.  Some folks like the audible consequences of this and others...not so much.