New Music Gear Monday: Warm Audio Jet Phaser
You have to hand it to Roland. Over the years the company has come up with some great effects that managed to become key sounds on tons of records. One of those effects has actually been somewhat forgotten even though it’s been in use on hit records for decades – the AP-7 Jet Phaser. You’ve heard this effect used by David Gilmour, Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, and on keyboard stylings of Steely Dan, Herbie Hancock and Paul Simon’s Richard Tee. The unit has been hard to find for a long time, but the clever boffins at Warm Audio have managed to recreate it with their new Jet Phaser pedal.
The Jet Phasor is actually two effects in one. There’s an interesting phaser effect (which is a distinctly different sound from other modulation effects like chorus or flanging), and there’s the “Jet” effect, which is basically a multi-tone fuzz generator.
There are only 4 controls on the unit but they cover a lot of ground. The main control is Mode, which selects between 4 Jet modes and 2 phaser modes. The differences in the Jet modes is the tone of the fuzz effect and the amount of phasor that’s applied. The fuzz effect amount can be controlled by the Jet control to the left. The 2 phasor modes are for light or heavy phase effect.
There’s also a Resonance control that sets the tone of the phase effect and a Slow Rate control that sets its speed. There are also two pedal switches. The one on the left is an Effect/Bypass switch that features true hard-wire bypass, while the one on the right switches between a fast and slow speed of the phase. The change from fast to slow ramps up and down gradually like an organ’s rotary speaker.
You can power the Jet Phaser from either battery or through an AC wall adapter. The battery requirement is unusually robust though, needing two 9 volt batteries. There’s a switch on the top panel that enables you to select between the two.
The Warm Audio Jet Phaser has all the earmarks of the impossible-to-find original Roland unit. It’s available for pre-order for $199. Find out more here, or watch the video below, where you can hear it in action.
