I use a Fender Stratocaster Southern Cross Series (made in Brazil), Boss RV-3, a Fuzz Factory clone, Boss CH-20 and a Boss OD-2.
Well... It can do a nice flanging sound for sure. What wears me out about this pedal is the fact that it boosts the guitar signal a lot when on. There's no way to make that boost a little more subtle, so, if you turn the pedal off during a song, the guitar will sound like it suffered a noticeable volume drop.
I used this box into a Boss RV-3 with the decay knob all the way up to make a huge ethereal sound wall (a la Shoegazer-Post Rock bands) and I felt like the boost it causes to the signal, mixed with the natural sound wall boost, could explode my two amps (the RV-3 has stereo outputs, wich I love to use live) and everything around.
It didn't sound good with my Fuzz Factory too, but it's not about the fuzz: I just couldn't get a good flanging for distortions out of this box, and I tried several overdrive and distortion pedals.
But I was really impressed when I plugged a Bass Guitar into the Arion Flanger: A convincing flanging effect came out of the amp and a bassist friend of mine got in love with that pedal. But the fact is that the box is not a bass flanger, is a guitar flanger, and it's supposed to sound good on guitars, not bass. The fu***** annoying boost had disappeared when I plugged the bass into it, and I can't explain why. Now this pedal belongs to my friend.
Reliability/Durability:
Yeah, it looks like you can depend on it, but, it's plastic, man. I just can't trust anything made out of plastic. It feels like a toy not a profissional equipment.
Ease of Use:
It's not that easy to get YOUR sound of it. It took about 1 hour to find out what the "Manual" knob actually does. It's a frequency control that makes the flanger work within certain tone spectruns. The more you roll it right, the more it will work on the lower frequencies. Most of the settings can almost cut the guitar sound when the flanging gets to the higher phases.
Customer Support:
Never dealt with them.
Overall Rating:
I play my original songs, but I like to play some Alternative Rock stuff. Slowdive, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure etc. so, based on the bands I know, I could tell if a flanging effect sounds good or bad and this one sounded bad for me. It will get an 8 because of the nice pedal it became when plugged into a bass guitar.
