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Favorite recorded examples of phase shifters


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Steve Hillage/Fish Rising

 

[video=youtube;M-eu4LgkpdE]

 

 

IIRC, Hillage used a Tau Pipe-phaser both live and in concert... the Tau had up to 20 stages available.

I'm building a substantially bigger phaser.... not for the meek of heart.

 

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The first example that pops into mind is Robin Trowers Bridge of sighs album where he uses the Univibe. If course he was using the same box Hendrix did to get his sounds. A Univibe is a 4 stage phaser and is often called a chorus pedal because of that but I believe it is a phase circuit, not a chorus.

 

Allot of bands experimented with phasers on their recordings. Jackie Blue comes to mind.

 

 

 

The other big one is Eddie van Halen who made the effect ultra popular.

 

The other older recordings that come to mind are the original tape based phasing used on albums like the Doors Strange Days coined by the engineer the Farkle effect. The Farkle effect was more of a vibrado combined with echo but it was pretty close to phasing. The Beatles used tape phasing on Sargent Peppers and Magical Mystery tour and maybe other albums. These were tape bending effects where the tape was pulled out of head alignment so its not a true phaser which uses an electronic LFO to vary the effect but the phase/flanging results were is essentially the same.

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IIRC the drum solo from Inglehaladalida was slow phased as was Ringo on Come Together. Prolly not the latter though.

 

As per the drummer> DH: Did you know the effects that they were going to put on it? Did you hear that in your headphone as you were playing, which could’ve influenced what you were doing? RB: No, we did the flange and the phase shift before they had flangers and phase shifters. They did it in the studio by putting the speakers out of phase. When they mixed it down out of phase, they would go woosh and sound like they would swirl back and forth.

 

This may have been done with panning but I suspect is was actually done with tape flanging developed in 1968. Phasing is similar but you have 50% dry and 50% of the flanged sound mixed together to produce a notable phases shift between the wet and dry waves. With tape flanging you get nothing but the two tracks shifting on the heads which creates a panning effect within the stereo field.

 

"In 1968, the record producer for The Litter, Warren Kendrick, devised a method to precisely control flanging by placing two 15 IPS (inches per second) stereo Ampex tape recorders side by side.] The take-up reel of recorder A and supply reel of B were disabled, as were channel 2 of recorder A, channel 1 of recorder B and the erase head of recorder B.

 

The tape was fed left-to-right across both recorders and an identical signal was recorded on each channel of the tape, but displaced by approximately 18 inches along the length of the tape. During recording, an ordinary screwdriver was wedged between the recorders to make the tape run "uphill" and "downhill." The same configuration was employed during the playback/mixdown to a third recorder. The screwdriver was moved back and forth to cause the two signals to diverge, then converge. The latter technique permits zero point flanging; i.e., the lagging signal crosses over the leading signal and the signals change places".

 

 

 

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The first example that pops into mind is Robin Trowers Bridge of sighs album where he uses the Univibe. If course he was using the same box Hendrix did to get his sounds. A Univibe is a 4 stage phaser and is often called a chorus pedal because of that but I believe it is a phase circuit, not a chorus.

 

Allot of bands experimented with phasers on their recordings. Jackie Blue comes to mind.

 

 

The other big one is Eddie van Halen who made the effect ultra popular.

 

The other older recordings that come to mind are the original tape based phasing used on albums like the Doors Strange Days coined by the engineer the Farkle effect. The Farkle effect was more of a vibrado combined with echo but it was pretty close to phasing. The Beatles used tape phasing on Sargent Peppers and Magical Mystery tour and maybe other albums. These were tape bending effects where the tape was pulled out of head alignment so its not a true phaser which uses an electronic LFO to vary the effect but the phase/flanging results were is essentially the same.

 

Geoff Emerick was the Beatles recording engineer for Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour and would have made use of the ADT (automatic double tracking) device that was developed around that time by EMI.

 

He was also the engineer on Bridge of Sighs and, to my ear, the ADT is partially responsible for the sound of that album too.

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Trower does list a Rotovibe in his list of pedals used on that album, and everyone comments how he copied the Hendrix sound. In reality he was already a big name Procol Harem before Hendrix rose to stardom. I wouldn't be surprised if they knew each other.

 

I think it was a definite possibility of some of the other instruments used additional phasing during mixing by engineers, but theres no doubt he used a rotovibe. Its classic sound cant be mistaken along with the wah and other items used.

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