ARP phaser - 1st impression

[Haible_Juergen#Tel2743]

Finished my ARP 14-stage phaser clone this weekend.
Results are a bit strange:
There is some amount of distortion all the time. Regardless of the
input level - guess that's the compander's work.
Did a first test with various OB-8 sounds - sounded like crap, unless
the distortion would be an effect that I wanted ...
then I connected it to my Lambda (string ensemble). What a surprise:
here it fits in perfectly. There still *is* some distortion, but it isn't 
that
bad anymore. And it produces this typical 70ies' deep phased string
sound we all know (never playd a Quadra directly; but its just as i
remember it from various albums).
I think someone (Joachim?) posted about a similar experience before,
so I wasn't that surprised. And yes, even at this point where it almost
clips the signal, there is still a lot of noise. I think it's not usable as 
a
common purpose phaser, but the noise component fits nicely to the
string sound, so here it's really great.

Another thing that surprised me: The transistor cascade really doesn't do
just a phase shift, but affects the amplitude as well. Very weird thing.

btw, With the "chorus" sound of the Lambda, the result is as bad as with the
OB-8. Really just works on "strings" (i.e. unfiltered saw waves).
Another nice thing is making use of the distortion by heavily overdriving it
with a percussive signal ("piano" from Lambda), while the phaser's resonance
is at maximum. Gives a very smooth pleasant "resonant overdrive" sound.

JH.