blackhatboojum
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Once again, I'm the beneficiary of a @szukalski and @Guardians of the analog project. The long since out of production but, not forgotten, Boss PH-1. When it comes to phasers, I've always been a MXR phase 90 user. I liked the one knob simplicity, it sounded pretty great, and it's the most widely known phaser on the planet. When Chris built and sent me an Aion Emerald... my taste and opinion of the phaser circuit completely changed. I absolutely fell in love with that pedal and since then, it has not left my pedal board. It'll do everything a phase 90 will do but, it also has so many more sounds and fun on tap. I never realized that I needed depth and feedback control until I got my first taste of a Boss phaser. It completely changed my opinion and I no longer associate phaser with the color orange... it's green. With that being said, I was stoked as hell when Chris said he was sending me this pcb. A different flavor of Boss phaser that I've always wanted to try? Hells yes, I'm all in.
So how is this phaser compared to the Emerald? Outside of the obvious lack of feedback control, not a whole lot. They can sound very similar to each other but, there is a difference. The sweep of the LFO on the Phoenix Lights has a softer and "sweeter" transition from the top and bottom of the sweep compared to the Emerald. It sounds more rounded and doesn't feel so abrupt. I was actually able to confirm this by observing them both on an oscilloscope. That's pretty rad if you ask me because, that means each phaser has its own special mojo going on.
Build wise, it was pretty straightforward. As Chris mentioned in his build report of this phaser, some surgery was required and I too had to operate on mine. Outside of that, it was smooth sailing. Mostly Tayda parts in this one except for the matched jfets and the opamps which I got from Aion FX. For my enclosure art, I actually stepped into @Paradox916 territory, while also trying to keep my Arizona thing going. The Phoenix Lights. A series of UFO sightings observed in the skies of Nevada and Arizona on March 13, 1997.
At 7:55 pm, a witness in Henderson NV, reported seeing a large, V-shaped object traveling southeast. At 8:15 pm, an unidentified former police officer in Paulden AZ, reported seeing a cluster of reddish-orange lights disappear over the southern horizon. Shortly afterwards, there were reports of lights seen over the Prescott Valley, AZ. Tim Ley and his wife Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson Damien Turnidge first saw the lights when they were about 65 miles away from them.
At first, the lights appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc shape, as if they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized that the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes, the lights appeared to come closer, the distance between the lights increased, and they took on the shape of an upside-down V. Eventually, when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away, the family said they could make out a shape that looked like a carpenter's square, with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side.
Soon, the object with the embedded lights appeared to be moving toward them, about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly that it gave the appearance of a silent hovering object, which seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Piestewa Peak Mountain and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
Between 8:30 and 8:45 pm, witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the light formation pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds. Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley in Scottsdale, AZ, also observed the high altitude lights "flying in formation" through a telescope. According to Stanley, they were quite clearly individual airplanes.
Approximately 10:00 pm that same evening, a large number of people in the Phoenix area reported seeing "a row of brilliant lights hovering in the sky, or slowly falling". A number of photographs and videos were taken and at that time, was probably the most widely witnessed UFO event in history.
So, there it is. A phaser, some Arizona history, and a little UFO stuff to round it out. I also threw in a poorly recorded demo of this phaser and my recently completed Shadow Man Delay.
So how is this phaser compared to the Emerald? Outside of the obvious lack of feedback control, not a whole lot. They can sound very similar to each other but, there is a difference. The sweep of the LFO on the Phoenix Lights has a softer and "sweeter" transition from the top and bottom of the sweep compared to the Emerald. It sounds more rounded and doesn't feel so abrupt. I was actually able to confirm this by observing them both on an oscilloscope. That's pretty rad if you ask me because, that means each phaser has its own special mojo going on.
Build wise, it was pretty straightforward. As Chris mentioned in his build report of this phaser, some surgery was required and I too had to operate on mine. Outside of that, it was smooth sailing. Mostly Tayda parts in this one except for the matched jfets and the opamps which I got from Aion FX. For my enclosure art, I actually stepped into @Paradox916 territory, while also trying to keep my Arizona thing going. The Phoenix Lights. A series of UFO sightings observed in the skies of Nevada and Arizona on March 13, 1997.
At 7:55 pm, a witness in Henderson NV, reported seeing a large, V-shaped object traveling southeast. At 8:15 pm, an unidentified former police officer in Paulden AZ, reported seeing a cluster of reddish-orange lights disappear over the southern horizon. Shortly afterwards, there were reports of lights seen over the Prescott Valley, AZ. Tim Ley and his wife Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson Damien Turnidge first saw the lights when they were about 65 miles away from them.
At first, the lights appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc shape, as if they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized that the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes, the lights appeared to come closer, the distance between the lights increased, and they took on the shape of an upside-down V. Eventually, when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away, the family said they could make out a shape that looked like a carpenter's square, with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side.
Soon, the object with the embedded lights appeared to be moving toward them, about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly that it gave the appearance of a silent hovering object, which seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Piestewa Peak Mountain and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
Between 8:30 and 8:45 pm, witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the light formation pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds. Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley in Scottsdale, AZ, also observed the high altitude lights "flying in formation" through a telescope. According to Stanley, they were quite clearly individual airplanes.
Approximately 10:00 pm that same evening, a large number of people in the Phoenix area reported seeing "a row of brilliant lights hovering in the sky, or slowly falling". A number of photographs and videos were taken and at that time, was probably the most widely witnessed UFO event in history.
So, there it is. A phaser, some Arizona history, and a little UFO stuff to round it out. I also threw in a poorly recorded demo of this phaser and my recently completed Shadow Man Delay.
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