Pretty sounds live alongside freakish modulations in a phaser, flanger, and filter combo with super-impressive range.
Fantastic range of phase, flange, and filter tones that span conventional and radical sounds. Cool, practical, and functional trip switch. Beautiful design.
Some tones tend toward metallic, which might put off classicists.
$250
Death By Audio Disturbance
deathbyaudio.com
Somehow I sense that the Death By Audio team would appreciate that I wrote the review for their new Disturbance on the day I got a root canal. Dental drills whirring, bright lights, and flying spittle—this is the stuff of many DBA products. Yet the ominously named Disturbance—which manages to be a phaser, flanger, auto wah, and a sort of cocked-wah filter all in one—is actually capable of sounds that fall squarely in the category of beautiful. And like almost all DBA effects, it’s also capable of radical and jarring tones. Its ability to span these extremes is the Disturbance’s strength.
Silver Surfer Slides Away
The Disturbance is, even by DBA’s lofty standards, a cool convergence of industrial and graphic design. The gleaming silver enclosure guarantees you won’t mistake it for anything else on the floor. The control array is clear and functional, too, which is important for a pedal with such nuance and pretty-to-mangled sonic range. All told, it’s a rather simple layout. A small 3-way toggle switches between fazer, flanger, and filter settings. The three knobs along the top of the pedal are familiar and intuitive, but also take practice to understand entirely. Grasping their interrelationships is key to unlocking the whole of the Disturbance’s secrets.
The tensity control is a bidirectional intensity control. At noon, the modulation waveforms sound most fluid and even. As you turn it through its negative range, the output takes on an increasingly more metallic tone, and at maximum negative settings the waves peak with a trebly, whistling tonality. Yet, as you move back toward the middle, you’ll find some of the pedal’s clearest and most shimmering phase and flange voices, with hot, trebly peaks that elevate the modulation sound in a mix. You can even extract some great ’80s-vintage, chorus-like tones in this range at the right rate. To the clockwise side of center, the tensity control yields more vocal modulation voices and more low-mid emphasis that lends a bubble-gum chewiness to the modulation. There are even rich, Leslie-style tones lurking here at faster modulation speeds. At peak levels you can get wailing siren-like sounds from the flange mode, as well as peaky, hollowed-out phase tones.
The center point knob changes the polarity and center point of the LFO wave. Interestingly, it can be very subtle in many applications, and its effects are best understood by messing with it in filter mode. At the furthest counterclockwise setting, you’ll hear a distinct blunting of the transient note, tapering to a clearer tone. At the clockwise extreme you hear a clearer transient that swells into a more phasey tonality. At extreme tensity settings, the center point control has a more profound effect—emphasizing more trebly or bassier elements of the LFO cycle. The width control is, save for the self-explanatory speed control, the most straightforward function. It governs the LFO’s range. At minimum settings you get little sense of modulation at all. But as you turn clockwise the waveforms get thicker and more aqueous. At maximum levels it will negate the effects of the center point control entirely.
Trip It Up and Trip Out
One or the coolest features on the Disturbance is the trip footswitch. It freezes the phase, flange, or filter cycle, adding punctuation in an arrangement or helping bring a solo to a head. When using wild, more intense flange or phase settings, it can be a great way to duck out of a super-swirly section without losing any weird essence, as you might by switching to a completely dry tone. Freezing the precise point of an LFO cycle takes practice—not unlike using a looper. But the more I used it, the more I got hooked. And it’s a great way to extend the Disturbance’s practical capabilities.
The Verdict
Like any DBA pedal, the Disturbance is designed to leave its mark in a musical situation. So, though many settings here border on conventional, they may not satisfy classicists seeking canonical modulation tones. If you’re among this crowd, you may want to consider the tone score on a sliding scale. But I savored and bathed in the breadth of mellow to wild tones here. And I expect that to many players that relish the unexpected or crave sounds that make a statement, the Disturbance’s range of tones will be thrilling. That said, you don’t need to be a deviant or weirdo to find a wealth of inspiration in Disturbance. For musicians of just about any alignment, this is a pedal that will prompt invention. And while the $250 price is a touch high, it’s not much to pay for a pedal that can offer unique phaser, flanger, auto wah, and filter tones—particularly when you consider DBA’s build quality and generous break-it-and-we’ll-fix-it guarantee. Restless modulation fiends take note—the Disturbance is a treasure trove of satisfying swirl and many other wobblingly nasty surprises.
Multiple modulation modes and malleable voices cement a venerable pedal’s classic status.
Huge range of mellow to immersive modulation sounds. Easy to use. Stereo output. Useful input gain control.
Can sound thin compared to many analog chorus and flange classics.
$149
TC Electronic SCF Gold
tcelectronic.com
When you consider stompboxes that have achieved ubiquity and longevity, images of Tube Screamers, Big Muffs, or Boss’ DD series delays probably flash before your eyes. It’s less likely that TC Electronic’s Stereo Chorus Flanger comes to mind. But when you consider that its fundamental architecture has remained essentially unchanged since 1976 and that it has consistently satisfied persnickety tone hounds like Eric Johnson, it’s hard to not be dazzled by its staying power—or wonder what makes it such an indispensable staple for so many players.
The latest incarnation of the Stereo Chorus Flanger, the SCF Gold, underscores the timelessness of TC’s classic. And the richness of its modulations, its broad versatility, and very accessible price still add up to a most appealing multi-modulator.
Complex Sounds from Simple Controls
Pedals that combine chorus, flange, and vibrato aren’t uncommon. But given the fundamental similarities between the effects, it’s curious we don’t see more boxes that bundle the three. Obviously, specialization enables enhanced control and more refined and radical results. But for gigging guitarists and studio players that need to work fast and intuitively, there is an undeniable appeal in a pedal that covers all the bases competently.
One beautiful feature of the SCF Gold’s ageless design is the simplicity of the control set. That simplicity is essential, however, because the three controls are highly interactive and vary in feel and function depending on the mode you use.
The speed knob spans rates ranging from an ultra-lazy 10 seconds per cycle to fast, rotary-style 10-cycles-per-second pulses. The width control governs the delay time between waveforms. The intensity control is the shape shifter of the bunch. In chorus mode, it’s effectively a wet/dry blend. In flanger mode it becomes a feedback control. And in pitch modulation mode it regulates the balance between vibrato and chorus effects. The input gain control situated just below the mode switch may look less vital, but the grit, body, and volume that it adds to a signal transforms many modulations into thicker, less clinical, and sometimes more organic and cohesive sounds—though that sometimes comes at the expense of the SCF’s excellent focus and clarity. It’s also critical for overcoming some of the volume loss that you perceive at intense modulation settings.
In both live and studio settings, the extra top-end clarity makes the SCF Gold pop.
Clear-Eyed and Wobbling
If you had to pick a single characteristic that sets the SCF Gold apart from other classic analog choruses and flangers, and the contemporary pedals that imitate them, it’s the TC’s focus and clarity, particularly in the high-mid and high frequencies. Many analog chorus pedals end up with a fairly dark voice—partly as a function of bucket brigade circuit design, but also, perhaps, in an attempt to tame resonant peaks and better simulate the more liquid qualities of rotary speakers and tape flange. I love those smoky modulation colors. But there are times, especially when I’m working with a dense arrangement, that I want a chorus to sit more present and distinctly in its corner. The SCF Gold’s relatively bright voice enables these simultaneously more prominent and less bossy tones. For players that revere the heavy, unmistakably underwater sounds of Electro-Harmonix’s Electric Mistress flanger and Polychorus or the Boss CE-1 chorus, the TC might sound comparatively thin. But I love the fidelity I can hear in its less murky modulations. And in both live and studio settings, the extra top-end clarity makes the SCF Gold pop, which is killer for underpinning ’80s-style applications and modern indie-pop hooks.
There are countless textures to uncover among the SCF Gold’s modulations, including a wealth of familiar classic chorus and flange sounds. But there are scores of surprising highlights, too. Mating fast and fairly intense vibrato pulses to high input gain settings, for instance, generates a fair approximation of Magnatone amp vibrato in a pinch, and a nice Boss VB-2 style throb in cleaner settings. And high flange speeds coupled with modest width settings create gently pulsing waveforms that are redolent with hints of phase, tremolo, and delay. Adding intensity in this setting adds progressively more vowely and metallic overtones—yielding some of the coolest sounds the pedal has to offer.
Among the chorus sounds, the most traditional late-’70s/early-’80s modulations were the most enticing and addictive to my ear. But the chorus also dishes stylish approximations of 12-string electric (particularly with a bright Fender bridge single-coil out front) and trippy faux-rotary sounds, which sound extra immersive in stereo.
The Verdict
If you’re a gigging player, the utility and jack-of-all-trades flexibility of the SCF Gold could make it indispensable. And if you’re into pedalboard economy, it could conceivably replace multiple pedals. Whether you’re chasing the most versatile modulator possible or just authentic ’70s to ’80s chorus and flange sounds, the SCF Gold’s $149 price represents an excellent value. The modulations may not be as deep or queasy as those you’ll hear from other classic analog choruses and flangers. But the low noise floor and focused EQ profile make it easier to wrangle in many musical situations.
Does it better the many variations of the SCF that have come before it? Well, with crown-mounted 9V power and an input gain circuit that bumps the pedal’s already considerable headroom, we’d have to say yes. However minor and incremental these improvements may be, they are reason enough to investigate this fun, multifaceted, sweet sounding, and super affordable multi-modulation device if you haven’t already had the pleasure.
TC Electronic's 1st Pedal Reissued! SCF Gold Stereo Chorus Flanger Demo | First Look
A cornucopia of rich vintage chorus, flange, and vibrato tones live on in a reissue of TC's very first stomp—at a very affordable price.
Note: The previous version of this video was accidentally published with mono audio rather than stereo. The error has been corrected in this version.