Though I personally don’t consider it a criticism or shortcoming, just about every review I’ve seen of the Flanger Hoax depicts it as “deep”, implying that achieving a desired tone is not a simple matter, and almost demanding a more seasoned user. Certainly not as simple a matter as the good old “one-knobbers” (Small Stone, Doctor Q, Y-Triggered Filter, Small Clone, etc). And even though in a just world it shouldn’t have, I think that seems to have held it back in terms of sales. That’s just my opinion, though.
What I’m proposing for the Small Stone lies somewhere between the Flanger Hoax, and where the Small Stone is now. I’m thinking simple modulation box with just a few more tricks up its sleeve. There are all sorts of 3-knob phasers out there (Speed, Depth, Resonance), and with a digital implementation, Boss introduced Barber-pole phasing for the masses. But no one has ever produced a commercial Phase-filter effect from what I know, and for such a delightful signature sound it is such a simple thing to do on a Small Stone. The use of OTA stages provides some really nice easy-to-implement options, like converting stages from allpass to lowpass, staggering notches, and so on.
What else might the typical Small Stone owner/user like? Some kind of stereo output might be nice (e.g., an extra 90 degrees of phase shift for output 1 relative to 2), as would a vibrato option. And finally, for my money, a centering control (that shifts the overall range of where the notches are, without altering sweep width) would be delightful. So, two knobs (Rate, Center), a Color switch, Vibrato switch, Phase-filter/phaser switch, and a stereo output option of some kind, would give a great many players a wider palette to draw from than before. All of it still providing the same classic SS sound people have come to love. And if you want to throw in a ramp-up/ramp-down switch, there’s “that” market too.
But, but, but…you say…..we MAKE a fancy phaser already: the Polyphase! Yes, you do, and a fine phaser it is. But, there are some things it doesn’t do. And, if EHX can have more than one distortion, and more than one delay, and more than one chorus, it can have more than one or two phasers that each do different things, and appeal to different markets. Besides, if one already owns a few phasers, and has experimented with them in series or parallel, you’ll know there can be some really interesting sounds produced by having two of them at different speeds doing slightly different things.
), its a wonderful swampy thing. Cancel the dry signal so that you only get the allpass/lowpass signal and its this gorgeous combination of vibrato, modulated wah and quasi-tremolo that, at medium speed, has voodoo written all over it. It’s a sound that deserves to be heard more often.
