Flanger
Ah, where would we be without the flanger?
Well, we’d be left with a more boring version
of “Voodoo Child,” that’s for sure. Several
classic effects would cease to exist,
like MXR’s eponymous Flanger and the
Ibanez Flying Pan. Today, we wouldn’t
have Subdecay’s incredible Apollo-cockpit
Starlight DLX. It’s hard to believe—especially
after gazing upon Subdecay’s wild stallion
flangebox—that flanging also has its roots in
tape machines and reels. What’s more, reelto-reel machines are cheap-ish, and many of
us musicians have one or two lying around.
If one’s like me, they recognized the reel-toreel’s historical importance and bought one
every time they saw one at a thrift store,
regardless of whether they’d ever use them
or not. Without reaching peak math, a flange
effect is created when two
identical signals are played,
then one is slowed down,
then sped up to overtake
the play point of the other,
then slowed down again.
The point where the tracks
are perfectly in sync is called
the zero point, and this is
where the term “throughzero flanging” comes from.
The actual flanging part
takes its name from the
flange of the tape, the part
one must press to slow
playback on one of the two
decks.
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TONE TALK //
DIY Workarounds for Studio Effects