P
HASERS ARE THE SOMEWHAT
UNSUNG HEROES OF GUITAR
TONE. Whether they are incredibly
subtle or blatantly obvious, they have found
their way into many foundational tones of
the ‘70s, guitar and otherwise. They have
been used to fatten, add motion, funk,
or weight to countless instruments, from
electric pianos, basses, analog synths,
guitars, and even in some rare cases, drums.
On guitar, they spanned almost every
genre from jazz all the way to hard rock
and metal. However, oddly enough these
globulous swirl machines are not as widely
discussed or loved as much as distortions
or delays these days.
ONE CAN ONLY GUESS WHY THEY FELL
OUT OF POPULARITY, but my guess is
that it was a sound that held best against a
backdrop of a particular time. Like chorus,
smashing solid-state distortion, and the
massive gated reverbs of the ‘80s, the
phaser glued better against the setting of
the experimental and boundary-pushing
‘60s and ‘70s. They found their homes
amongst the filtered basses, bone dry
drums, mellow Rhodes, and squeaky clean
guitars of disco and funk. Like psychedelic
glue, they mated the thick and meaty drums
with the cranked fuzz stacks of Marshall
and Hiwatt, imbuing a dark and gelatinous
throb to all it touched, like a Midas from
an alternate reality that swallowed one too
many special sugar cubes. Phasers even
snuck onto a few guitar tones in the ‘80s,
one famous one in particular by a Mr. Eddie
Van Halen, perhaps the king of all ‘80s hard
rock.
WITH TODAY’S MUSICAL RESURGENCES
INTO THE SOUNDS OF THE ’60S AND
‘70S, neo-psychedelia, bands such as Tame
Impala, Animal Collective, Phish, Radio
Moscow, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra
have found new use and inspiration for
what was once thought to be the outdated
phaser, melding and squeezing it into
massive guitar solos, funky fill-ins, and
psychedelic walls of sound.
SO HOW DO THESE THINGS WORK?
WELL, THE ANSWER IS A LITTLE
COMPLICATED, but I will try to make it as
easy as possible to understand. Essentially,
a phaser works with something called an
all-pass filter. This filter takes the original
signal, and splits it into two separate
signals; leaving the original intact, and
creating another signal with the phase
inverted. If we just left it at that, the signals
would cancel each other out. However,
one signal is run through a low pass filter,
while the other is run through a high pass
filter. The two are then combined back into
each other, creating a phase shifted signal.
These all pass filters, also known as “poles”
or “stages,” are then mixed together
along with the original guitar signal to
create changes in frequency. However,
we still don’t have the movement! It’d be
pretty boring without it, so either an LFO
(low frequency oscillator) is added in to
modulate the static phase shifted signal,
creating the sound we know and love.
IN SIMPLER TERMS, IMAGINE A LITTLE
IMP SITTING ON TOP OF YOUR AMP
AND GRABBING ONTO THE MID EQ
CONTROL. While you play, he is slowly
turning the EQ knob back and forth, cutting
ToneReport.com
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