Phaser

A classic sweeping phaser. It carves a set of moving notches into your signal and glides them slowly up and down, giving sounds that swirling, underwater shimmer — lush on pads and guitars, vocal and squelchy on basses and drums.

How it works

A cascade of all-pass stages in series shifts the phase of your signal, and where the shifted copy cancels against the dry signal you get a notch — the more stages, the more notches. A sine LFO sweeps the stages so those notches drift around a center you can set, and a feedback path loops the output back in to sharpen them into resonant peaks. Dry and wet are blended for the familiar comb.

Controls

  • Rate — speed of the sweep, from a slow 0.05 Hz crawl up to a fast 5 Hz wobble.
  • Depth — how far the notches travel. Low settings give a gentle, fixed-sounding color; high settings sweep the full range.
  • Feedback — resonance. Higher values emphasize the notches into ringing, vocal peaks; back it off for a smoother, broader effect.
  • Stages — the number of notches carved into the spectrum. 2 or 4 is a thin, single- or double-notch Phase-90 sweep; 6 is the classic three-notch voicing; 8 and 12 pile up a lusher, denser, more vowel-like comb.
  • Center — where in the spectrum the notches sit. Bias them low for a dark, woody color or high for something glassy; 50% is the original centered sweep. Especially handy at low Depth for parking a single static notch off-center.
  • Mix — the dry/wet blend. 50% is the original equal mix and the deepest notches; dial down for a subtle shimmer or up toward 100% for a fully drenched, all-wet sweep.

Inputs & outputs

  • In L / In R — the signal to process. Patch only In L and it runs in mono, feeding both outputs; patch both and each channel gets its own cascade and feedback, swept by the same LFO so the two sides stay locked together rather than drifting apart.
  • Rate / Depth / Feedback / Center / Mix CV — voltage control over each knob; patch an LFO or envelope to move the sweep, breathe the notches, or open the mix in time with your patch.
  • Out L / Out R — the phased result. With a stereo input and only Out L cabled, both channels are folded together so the right side isn't lost.

Tips

  • Slow Rate with high Depth is the textbook pad shimmer; fast Rate with high Feedback gets squelchy and synthetic.
  • Push Feedback near the top for the most pronounced, resonant sweep, then tame Depth if it gets too intense.
  • Pull Depth to zero and use Center as a manual notch — park it with a touch of Feedback for a fixed, vocal coloration, or sweep it by hand for slow, off-center motion.