Electro-Harmonix Nano
114
Guitarist January 2017
VINTAGE-STYLE PHASERS
Set your pedalboard to stun as we check out four 1970s-style phasers,
revisited and revamped for the modern pedalboard
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Olly Curtis & Joseph Branston
I
t’s the early 1970s and a new type of guitar pedal has
appeared on the scene: the phase shifter or phaser.
Up to that point the effects pedal scene was in its
infancy. Wah and fuzz pedals were commonplace, but
the only major modulation pedal was the Uni-Vibe,
which was technically a four-stage phaser itself, but of a
different design and with a distinctive sound that puts it
into a category of its own rather than be lumped in with
pedals that are actually called phasers. The new phaser
pedals, arguably, heralded the birth of the stompbox as
we now know it today and would hold sway as the only
mass-produced type of modulation pedal available until
the chorus and flanger appeared later in the decade.
Phasers give a swirl or whoosh (a swoosh, perhaps?)
to the sound. There’s not the space here to go into the
theory, but the sound – in which different frequencies
are emphasised and de-emphasised – is a result of
notches in the frequency response being swept up
and down. Phasers can be categorised by the number
of shifting stages they use: the more stages, the more
notches. Each pair of stages adds one more notch.
How did the phaser come about? Well, the design
started off in life (like the Uni-Vibe before it) trying to
replicate the sound of a rotary speaker. Audio engineer
and synth pioneer Tom Oberheim has stated that he
was inspired by George Harrison playing through a
Leslie speaker on a Beatles album and decided to make
something to recreate that sound. When it came down
to it, he actually found the Leslie sound too complex to
recreate, but in the process came across a phase shift
circuit that he thought sounded “really cool” in its own
right. From here, he designed the Maestro PS-1A unit,
which he describes as the first phase shifter that was
available for musicians.
GIT415.peds_phaser.indd 114 01/12/2016 11:20