The History Of Phaser Pedals

on today's episode i'm gonna cover the most legendary phasers ever made the ogs of phase here are the rules because we're going to have rules no new phasers it's going to be the classics the ones that started it all and we're not talking about phase or guns none of this stuff phaser is important and we're going to go through what started it all it's kind of like in the 70s phaser was to guitar what that west coast whistle thing was to dr dre and snoop dogg with that said let's just get started into our first pedal before this goes further downhill this all starts in 1967 japan when someone designs the univibe company called honey created it first they become shinnai you see these made by univox as well but it's all the same company rebranding it and this ends up on the board of jimi hendrix it ends up being this effect the first effect that made modulation move through a guitar signal at your feet really important a lot of people say it's a chorus it actually says chorus some people say it's a vibrato it says vibrato but at its heart it's a phaser and what a phaser does is it knocks your signal out of phase puts it back in phase and that creates this swooshing dare i say whooshing sound that we've grown to love so this is the og there's an episode called univibe 101. i don't need to play this because you can go over there and just learn everything you need to know but we're going to just throw a little tip of the hat to this and let you hear it real quick like [Music] we get out of the 60s and the 70s brings on what we know as an actual phaser so it's not quite the univibe even though that phases and it evolves into this brand new form of knocking it in and out of phase more controlled a little more smooth and a lot more complex as a circuit the very first people to do this you know they're testing the waters and one of those companies is even tied with this unbelievable amazingly good-looking rack unit it's the ps101 i don't have it but there's a picture right there so let's stare at the picture together when this thing came out in 1971 it was 575 this is insane this is car money but look how good it looks i mean it's what's the conversion it's like 35 35 you can buy a nice used toyota corolla 100 000 miles you could buy a astro minivan now we have also in 1971 what we consider the first guitar specific phaser effect the og guitar phaser it's not a pedal but it is a pedal it actually has a microphone mount here we put it up on the mic stand the maestro phase shifter i do think it's amazing that they released the first petal ever the maestro fuzz tone and then they have dibs on first phaser effect as well this is designed by tom oberheim oberheim is a genius he is one of the greatest minds in the synthesizer world and he invented this effect so we can say oberheim invented guitar phase shifting he did it from within the synthesizer world and how those circuits work so you could say without synths phasers wouldn't make any sense good one [Music] me in 1973 74 we see oberheim doing another phase unit he had designed the one you just saw for maestro but he has his own thing going on and they look like this oberheim electronics inc this is one of the hardest phasers and pedals period to find anywhere this one's not mine and i want to give a big thanks to jamie for letting me borrow this you know who you are you know how important you are and you know how much better you are than anyone else watching this episode right now you're basically the most amazing person in the world because i've always wanted to try this it's fantastic now you might not have seen this one but you've probably seen the same thing labeled maestro with a different paint color like in the picture i have the octave box here from the same series he basically made all of these and you could buy them as maestro or him but he made them all and just painted the maestro versions different and shipped them to maestro so let's play this it's it's wonderful i love the aesthetic it's very uh ibm and that's good for phaser [Music] um [Music] we have a lot of phasers to cover and we're kind of at the tip of even getting started so i just want to ask you a question just to spice things up what does fazer have to do with the august 15th 1974 issue of rolling stone where crosby stills nash and young make a comeback steely dan comes up swinging there's a rolling stone interview with glenn gold and it has a section called unhappy hookers unite what does it have to do you ask well let me tell you the very first mxr ad ever mxr innovations we are here possibly the greatest opening statement of any company ever here it is the mxr phase 90 script i did a really big deep dive into these so go check out that episode the link is in the description below we play all the first mxrs there's also the phase 100 and you have the phase 90 block logo that comes in the later 70s we're gonna play this one but first you just gotta know keith barr the designer of this was an actual genius just like oberheim was an actual genius there are a lot of geniuses involved in phasers i don't know if it was something in the 70s it just happened to be that phaser was something people wanted these geniuses are delivering i don't know but just know keith barr mxr genius now they're from rochester new york this comes out changes the game it's the very first what i like to call color-coded effect because of this phaser is orange in our minds you can't argue with me about that you could but you'll lose fraser's orange uh yeah we just need to play it i think we need to do like a like a country kind of hoedown waylon jennings oklahoma muskogee kind of like just go for it maybe [Music] uh [Music] [Music] now that you've enjoyed that jam and i and i know you i read your thoughts you're saying there's a phase 90 on his shirt and you've been noticing this the whole time it's it's an idea i had it's a shirt called it's just a phase and this is why this is important we're using probably the greatest most well-known phaser of all time but we're saying it's just a phase because a lot of you have loved ones and those people worry about you they see how much money you spend on reverb and ebay they see you going to pawn shops they see you making excuses for where you were when you were trying to find a pedal you're addicted and you need to embrace that addiction and look at your loved ones dead in the eyes and say hey don't worry about me it's just a phase let's go across the ocean to london because things were happening there as well and one of the most happening things ever in the early 70s effects world was the brand color sound one of my favorite companies solar sound evolved into this look at these graphics look at this this is the phase x here's the problem it's broken i'm realizing that doing this episode uh as i pulled out like 150 phasers onto the table and tried to play them a lot of them are broken so this is gonna have to go into repair you're never going to hear it at least not today but i also have the supa phase the superphase is a phaser on a treadle it's like a mixture of a guitar effect and a toaster it functions about the same way it's kind of clunky but we're gonna basically at least let you hear it that's all i have to offer i'm not even inspired because i'm so bummed that this is broken so all you're going to get is my sadness this is where things really start launching off we're still in 74 or 75 honestly nobody knows i i've asked the people who actually designed this stuff and people obviously were not focused on remembering anything and i forgive them for that it's fine electro harmonics new york city design engineer named dave cockrell who did some of the most important designs ever huge electro harmonics engineer comes up with the bad stone phase shifter i have a lot to say first off this is an ugly petal i don't not like petals ever but this is ugly can i love something that's ugly yeah i can what is this logo it's like a mummy face mummy face man it's broken but this was the first version i'm not upset i thought it worked then you have this which looks a million times better you know it's bad stone it's broken as well i can't get it to work so both my bad stones are broken so we're gonna move on from that i'm just gonna say the bad stone is a six stage phaser so phasers have different stages meaning different amounts of phase gain stages the one you're most familiar with from electro harmonics is the small stone it's a four four phase four stages of phase here's the first version that's beautiful if you ask me minimal simple crisp clean mild beautiful there's some different versions this look everyone's seen this let's play the og and let's just keep phasing our brains out we got to keep going and we'll never get through this we're in it together let's do it [Music] three [Music] [Applause] [Music] next up is a pedal from boss before boss was boss think about that it's deep it is called the jet phaser ap7 they had a few things they had this one i debated the phase five this is like an envelope controlled phasor so the harder you pick it phases with an envelope on the front it's cool but it's not as dramatic in this and i'm always going to go for drama i let drama lead me as should you you have what's called jet but before i explain that you just need to know when you hit fast or slow it gives you two speeds you set your slow rate hit fast you have a faster rate so i'll demonstrate that then in the mode here you have phase one and two so two vibes of phase i think it goes between different stages more or less stages not sure but i think that's what it does then four one two three and four are jet jet is a fuzz a fuzz in a phase pedal placed before the phase it's pure madness in the best way and uh there's a box for this there is a box it's tag box can you run get the box there's a box for this one get the box get in the box you have the box go get it look look at this it's dusty but i love it hold on it's not the same it needs to just live in the box i didn't know we had the box okay but i have the box [Music] and then you take it out of the box smell the box love the box [Music] what does the traffic light have to do with phaser well i'm glad you asked it has everything to do with phaser because traffic lights are red yellow green and in 1977 roland boss launched the compact series the traffic light trio i just coined that name we're going to put it online make it famous traffic light trio ph1 four stage phaser these are reissues but uh i'm gonna put those over here and we're gonna play the real one there's also a ph1r they added a resonance here we go [Music] foreign next up comes from 1977 or so i think having a hard time on this date if you know let me know mutron phaser it's actually the phase two which means there's a phase one that i don't have i'm okay with that [Music] i just have to have that feedback depth rate this is where people start to say i understand the simple phase but what if we start adding a ton more things to it you got that jet phase craziness you got this i have some original literature here that you need to see stevie wonder big endorser this was his favor favor this was his favor it [Music] this was stevie wonder's favorite phaser apparently under 100 synthesizer effects i actually think they're straight up marketing these descent and keys players hence stevie wonder and the use of saying synthesizer effects uh here's one deep rotating spatial sound neutron phaser there's some complicated math equation yep block diagrams oh is this is this a cells or c nick look sales receipt wow this was 129 list price 77.97 if you bought two if you bought three guess how much they were nick i don't know 64.98 wow that's 50 off wow i feel like you're making fun of me i'm not look at this synthesizer effects new sophisticated versatile utilizing the latest in music synthesis techniques small enough to be a mini synthesizer [Music] oh [Music] first i do want to say that jam was awesome but that pedal weighs like 900 pounds and they're hard to find mutron actually still makes stuff it was rebooted by this really awesome guy uh these are worth looking into if you like this stuff a lot of features like cv in and out controls just check it out trust me the foot switch goes from four to six stages on to the next one next up is the first phaser i ever owned comes to us from the great city of salt lake city utah and it is the dod phaser there are several models the 401 the 201 the 490 this is the first one i own but then there's a better looking 490 so it's gonna get played because it looks better i do have not wanting to brag i'd never want to brag but i have an actual original dealer sheet let me just read what it says about this the dod phaser is a standard phasing unit with up to 720 degrees of face shift it's a lot of degrees controls for speed and phase and a foot switch it makes the 490 a reliable unit [Music] oh [Music] that's a good jam it reminds me of a song i don't know what it is i can't figure it out let me know in the comments what was going on there what was that melody line from but here's an interesting thing post that subject is the fact that i use this 490 in the episode rebuilding my pedalboard from y2k they're both 490s but they sound nothing alike i hadn't played this one in a while this sounds very much what you just heard like a univibe it's actually going up and dipping really quick through the waveform and this is good this could be my favorite because i like univibe so much and it's like an excuse to have a universe that says phaser so just that's a pro tip i don't know find that one with the weird yellow printing next up we have from the mid 80s a pedal that zac vex of zvex said in an interview this is the greatest pedal of all time that's huge zach vex is awesome and he's saying this is the greatest effect of all time here it is ab the box the pearl effector ph 44 phaser here it is from japan pearl yes that's pearl the drum company they also were a distributor and maker of different things and in this case these funky little pedals that have little push buttons we have a lot of controls manual feedback like you see on a flanger but now in a phaser the 80s are getting crazy and they're saying let's go to crazy town slow and fast is kind of like a leslie ramp style thing so i'll demonstrate that i don't know the date if you know the date let me know the date because i want to do a thing on this whole series i have a ton of them if you have any of these let me know let me know their whereabouts here we go [Music] oh [Music] uh [Music] the last of these legendary og phasers comes from the year 1999 so in the words of prince we're about to party like it's 99 and i choose this last because 1999 is the end of a century it's you know 20 years ago 21 22 years matt's heart i don't know and this is where we're ending maybe we do modern phasers later but the end of the og legendary phasers ends today on maybe one of the first really crazy modern phasers and it comes from this ibanez series called tone lock we have the ph 7 phaser in the tone lock we have the ap7 which for some reason is ungodly expensive i don't know why and it was hard to find i have no idea and a third phaser so there are three phasers in the series so in 99 i think phase was hitting a point of mass consumption we had this brand and this line basically being wrapped by bands like corn and limp biscuit like they were the poster children on these ads and then we have the pm7 the pm7 is what we're gonna play it's gonna end us off here it's wild it's crazy it's not normal but it's legendary and still old enough to make the list it has different waveforms different modes and we're going to start off on a normal triangle waveform no we're not going to do that we're going to start off on a square wave phasor wave phaser it's weird it's amazing then we're going to go triangle and then we're going to go to this saw waveform and i just want to warn you we went somewhere we've never gone musically as a band i feel like we're gonna get signed uh we had to cut it short for this clip but if you hang around to the very end i mean so far at the end of the episode that you've almost given up you're going to hear pure artistry [Music] so honorable mentions that need to be brought up because they're super cool uh the univox micro phase from 1975 these are made in japan probably by shenai not sure there's a lot of versions of this basically if you ever see an old vintage phaser with a slight slope and one knob on the right side yeah right side it's all the same thing i like the name of this black gold the kent black gold there's also a version for st louis music supply called the sweeper yeah bunch of bunch of versions of this it's really classic really nice then we have from london 1977 a really unique brand i want to do a bio on these eventually top gear they're made in the back of a music store around denmark street the funky phaser they also made just a normal phaser but it's not as exciting as the funky phaser so check those out we have 1978 maxon phase tone you can find this with the ibanez label or the maxon label and then the last honorable mention is going to be the classic 10 series these are amazing from ibanez ph 10 or the bpl they're the same exact phaser just different reboots because one didn't sell better so they changed the colors that's how the world works sometimes let's go to record time and remember check this shirt out don't forget it don't forget the shirt you need it you need to make a statement today's record time is brought to you by 1998's yield by pearl jam this record brings back a lot of memories this was in my high school in a band creating music and learning a lot about life prime i love love this record i think it's one of the most hated pearl jam records and it's one of my favorites it's super artsy it's super weird you can tell they don't care and you can tell they're having fun the guitar tones are fantastic brendan o'brien produces this so all the classic brendan o'brien drum tones the vocals are raw i think a lot of it's like sm58 live takes it's just such a good record favorite tracks are brain of jay uh do the evolution super cool low light all those yesterdays but the reason i'm holding it up is the song given to fly it was a pretty popular radio single and it is a beautiful use of phaser awesome riff awesome melody and the phaser makes it move it's one of those things where if you turn that effect off the song loses all of its goodness you could say so check it out pearl jam yield and let me know what you think about it if you haven't heard this as a pearl jam fan i love her at pearl chan check it out give it a chance um and let me know your favorite songs with phaser what are they who's the person yeah that's a pretty good record time thanks so much for watching this episode if you liked it hit like subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications of all future episodes be sure to check out djsshow.com where you can get shirts like this one that dropped today and other stuff you don't really need but you want and that's why we need stuff because we want it and uh there's a patreon check that out in the link in the description below have a wonderful day go play some phase [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 257,376

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, overdrive pedal, chorus pedal, distortion pedal, boss pedals, compressor pedal, univibe, delay pedal, octave fuzz, reverb pedal, reverb, eq pedal, boost pedal, behringer

Id: lX0jO5tXTBE

Length: 33min 26sec (2006 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021