New Music Gear Monday: Eventide Instant Flanger MK II Plugin

Anyone who listened to either the Small Faces “Itchycoo Park” or The Beatles “I Am The Walrus” has been captivated by the sound of what’s become known as “flanging.” The name was given to the process by John Lennon because you have to place your hand on the tape flange (see the figure below) as the recorder is running to manually slow it down, while another tape machine connected in parallel remains at speed. The difference creates the deep moving comb filters that we really love. With the inception of the latest solid state memory chips of the era, in 1975Eventide introduced a piece of outboard hardware that mimicked the effect with its Instant Flanger. Now that same sound and more can be had with the new Instant Flanger MK II plugin.

There are so so many instances of flanging being used on songs that we all know and love (you can check out some here at the bottom of the page). The original Instant Flanger was used on hits like David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” and the high-hat on Led Zeppelin’s seminal “Kashmir,” it was such a versatile tool for stereo sweetening, subtle modulations, double tracking, and extreme flanging effects as well.

The Instant Flanger MK II plugin features three distinct flavors of flanging with its Mode switch – Shallow, Deep or Wide, while the Manual control allows you to control the ‘comb’ effect by turning the Big Knob, and the Depth knob controls the intensity of the effect. The Oscillator drives the flanging at a user defined rate, while the Envelope Follower drives the flanging based on the signal’s amplitude.

There are some new features on the plugin that didn’t appear on the original unit that make the MK II much more capable though. Remote maps the flanging control to a mod wheel for tactile manipulation, while Bounce mimics the distinctive effect of the tape machine’s capstan motor “hunting” for its proper speed when the engineer’s thumb was lifted from the tape reel flange.

“Side Chain” allows for triggering the Envelope Follower from any source in the mix for inter-track mingling, and Exercise provides total control of the Oscillator with Sync and Retrig. Finally, you can tame the intensity of the effect by removing low frequencies from the flanged signal with the new Low Cut control

The Eventide Instant Flanger MK II plugin is on sale for a limited time for just $37 ($129 after April 30th), and has a free 30 day trial period. You can find out more here, or watch the very informative video below.

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