Build Your Own Clone Phaser

This pedal was built for me by the finest guitar tech in all of california.

I own about 30 guitars, 90 percent of which are Teles. I play all kinds of music. (Except that god awful Metal noise, hard rock, punk, anything loud.) I have been playing for nearly 30 years, and am going through the best Midlife Crises anyone could imagine! I've managed to spend my retirement on a few new amps. I've got a Fender Twin, Bassman, Marshall SLP, Bogner Shiva, Trainwreck, Mesa/Boogie, and a little Fender Practice amp (my main amp). I've got about 40 other pedals on my pedal board, all of which were no less than $300 each (for the best tone!) I like to think that someday (soon) I'm going to be a star. I play a lot of unique music (that sounds like a mixture between country and blues). I know a few famous people in the industry, and they have played through my rig lots of times! When I'm in the studio, which is fairly often, the engineers always compliment me on my stunning sound provided by my army of Teles. Have you heard my recordings before? Yes, you probably have. I've been on albums with The Tele Burners, Lets Make Love, Country Rockers, Micky Mike and the Blues Rockers, Ronny and the Blues, Bluesy Dave and the Blues Bath, just to name a few. As I said, I'm a serious musician and expect fame and fortune to hit any time now. I do mostly studio work, but that's where the money is.

I don't have any band mates, Because the more people in my band, the harder it is for me to make music! I play alot of solos, shoegazer, outworldy country-ish music.

I'd say that My tone is perfect. It sounds just like EVH without all the distortion. I can go from a perfectly clean compressed tone (i usually kick on about 5 compressors, all keeley!) sometimes I turn on a 3x modded tube screamer. (it was modded by keeley, analogman and monte allums for the BEST tone!) But most of the time I just leave it off. My 40 pedals are all true-bypassed (hendrix had true bypass, so why shouldn't I?) I won't use guitar cables that cost less than $100. I also only use strings that are pre-boiled in Apple Juice (for that sweet sustain!) was this supposed to be a review of some sort of pedal, or just me showing off?

One Footswitch, "Rate" "Depth" knobs, Input, Output and DC power jack

The only thing that requires a bit of extra know-how is adjusting the trim pot that is located on the PCB, but you know that, you built it! I can't explain the purpose of this knob in technical terms other than it acts as a frequency sweep and greatly affects how your phase sound is going to come out.

Provided you have built the pedal correctly you will get a wonderfully lush, Pink Floyd-esque phase tone from this pedal. I've put it near the end of my pedal-chain and it reacts well with clean and distorted tones.

The speed of the phase sweep is fantastic, if you turn the depth all the way to the left you will barely notice the change in frequency, Turn both controls all the way to the right and you'll get the audio equivalent of jelly!

I use a Tokai rickenbacker copy, through a vox venue 100watt 1x12 combo [at home] and a marshall jcm 900 [at rehearsal]

Everything sounds better through the Marshall so I'll base my review on that.

I'm quite bias here as I love phase, the first time I turned this pedal on I melted and had a big stupid grin on my face all day, it really is that good. With my guitar the sound is very glassy, and crisp. It reacts very well with overdrive and distortion, I have the BYOC Large Beaver which, when added to the phase give a wall of slushy, wooshing sound!

These pedals are all designed to give the absolute in signal clarity

I think at some stage I'm going to have to go back and resolder a lot of this pedal but that is entirely down to my bad soldering. For now it's safely secured onto my pedal board and works every time I step on it :)

I do gig without a backup [who keeps pedals lying around "just incase"?] but i'd definitely buy another if this was stolen.

I'd like to think though, that if it seriously crapped out someone at B.Y.O.C or Vibe-O-Tronic [the UK ditributor] would be able to help me out.

Excellent. The B.Y.O.C forum is full of usefull, and well-moderated information provided by keith [the brains behind B.Y.O.C] and all the other people who own these wonderful pedals.

A home-made pedal for about 50?? that sounds like the best vintage models around, is amenable to modifications, takes up a tiny amount of space on your board, is sturdy and [most importantly]sounds absolutely wonderfull? There's no debate there.

Now-a-days if one of my guitar player friends is talking about getting a pedal I'll send them straight to B.Y.O.C.com before they go anywhere near a music store.

I'll even offer to build it for them!

After building, and adjusting the trim pot, this thing is SUPER easy to use. The build was well explained in the .pdf instructions. No bad sounds out of it.

This phaser is lush and ultra transparent. It was a shock going from my MXR Phase90 to this. The clairty of what you play stays there while the gurgling and whooshing of a nice phaser are in full effect. Especially useful for cleaner passages with pick dynamics. The true bypass feature is a huge plus, as the MXR pedal I have sucks more tone that it should. This pedal replaced my MXR Phase90, and I plan on adding the biuldyourownclone Chorus soon.

Backups are a silly notion in my opinion, unless you are in a touring band....and really how many of us are? yeah, thought not. If you are reading a review on the internet, you are probably not a touring musician becuase those guys play their instruments instead of gassing over them. Rant over - This pedal is way solid. The casing is die cast metal, and the switch is rugged. You could probably kick off the knobs on the rate and speed dials, but you would have to give it an intentional thump.

The packaging of the components was very nice. Excellent presentation of everything, and the instructions were great. I had no reason to contact them again. Till I buy the chours anyway.

I'm not a know-it-all. I'm just a guy who has built and played in bands for a good 7 years. I get gear, try it live and return it if it doesn't work. That gets expensive, but I know my tone will be good, and it will be reliable. This pedal ROCKS. The tone is transparent to what I am doing with my guitar. I recommend it to anybody who can solder and use a can of spray paint. It costs a bit more than a MXR Phaser, but sounds way better.

Using it is very easy - just turn the knobs... great sound. You need to adjust an internal trim pot to balance the thing...

Fantastic sound - as good as an MXR script 90...
Very clean. True bypass.

It hasn't failed yet...

Great support for building on the forums...

I use it loads.
Play a Strat or home made LP-like guitar through a tube screamer clone->phaser->DD-3 delay->1980s Marshall 30W combo (with other DIY and bought pedals mixed in).

The build is reasonably straight forward (I made one silly mistake that I sorted out reasonably quickly). I build it from the PCB, rather than the full kit.

If it were stolen I would replace it in an instant (in fact I have already bought another PCB and will build a spare, just in case....)

The only problem with this pedal is that the switch makes a huge "POP" sound when you trigger the effect. None of the suggestions from the BYOC board or other places have solved this issue, the "POP" is still there. A real hassle. Turn it on when your using some delay and you get pop,pop,pop,pop.......Forget about recording with it.


The "POP" sound pretty much kills an otherwise cool sounding pedal.

Not hard to get a good sound :)

I have an 1980 original MXR Phase 90! and the BYOC nails its sound spot on :) not much diffrence but id say maybe the BYOC is very slighty more transparent which is good :) now heres the bit where the MXR loses!! it doesn't have that depth control you get with the BYOC! and what a very nice thing to have :) you set it around 9 o'clock! and turn the rate up in the higher settings! you have some very cool Hendrix univibe sounds going on :) this unit gets a 10 for nailing the MXR phase sound and then adding a very useful extra with the Depth control! maybe this is what the Phase 100 should have been :) I have one but its a dunlop reissue! enough said :)

Well? depends if I did a good job on making it :) so its hard to give a mark? I think its all fine :) but if you want to talk about the case, its strong :) top notch :)

Very useful :) they reply to e-mails :)

Why is people blasting out tons of money for an original Phase 90 script!! when you can build one for alot less! plus you get a depth control to make this pedal more versitile! true bypass! and you can power it up a standard adaptor that Boss pedals use, my original MXR does not have this :(

Very easy to get fantastic sounds from this pedal. I have the updated version with two control knobs: Depth; and Rate.

The circuit is based on the MXR Phase 90 pedal.

I am playing this pedal with a Fender Strat into a Marshall Combo Amp and it just sounds amazing. I have to be honest and admit that I wasn't expecting it to sound like a 'professional' product but this sounds better than any other Phaser I have used. What makes this even better is that I made it myself!

All Build Your Own Clone (BYOC) pedals are true bypass and therefore, there is no degradation of your guitar signal when the pedal is switched off.

Only time will tell. What I can say, however, is that everything is housed in a Hammond enclosure which I think can withstand a 200 Mega-ton nuclear blast! :-)

www.buildyourownclone.com has it's own vibrant forum which has loads of pedal experts as members. Simply post a question or concern to the relevant forum and you can expect a friendly (and useful) response quite quickly.

Delivery from their UK distributor is very fast.

This is the perfect pedal if you are after a top-class phaser and fancy building it yourself.

The only downside is that building your own becomes addictive and you have to build more and more and more and......

On/Of, one knob...doesn't get any easier.

Sounds amazing. I got the special edition from Axe and You Shall Recieve and had them build it. It sounds as good as the phase 90 script I owned in the 70's.

The case is a frigging tank...you ain't gonna hurt this one.

Bought from Canadian dealer Axe and You Shall Recieve. Dealt with Scott for years and he's top notch.

If you want a Phase 90 at less than a third the cost of vintage, this is it. Even cheaper if you want to build it yourself

On/off

It sounds and sweeps just the original script 90. Mine is the newer 6 IC model

If you are reasonably proficient at soldering you can build an effect as reliable as anything made.

BYOC has a forum that seems to address issues regarding his pedals.

I am a pro player and generally use very few effects. TIM, Lovepedal Eternity, and Analogman Ross Comp. The phase 90 is the only swirly effect I ever use on stage as it covers so many bases. Does a faux Univibe thing, a faux Leslie thing, and of course your standard phase 90 swirl. I replaced an Analogman chorus with this pedal. The Analogman chorus was great but the 90 has a funkier, less refined, more organic tone. Played original script 90's years ago but couldn't stand the tone loss when off. This kit has a triple pole switch so it's true bypass. Double side PC boards and good components. Bottom line: If you want a vintage sounding phase 90 without the signal loss you can't go wrong here. Kit it is easy to build and sounds dead on to the original. You can paint and label it any way you want, which might be fun if you enjoy that sort of thing. Just ordered a BYOC Comp based on the quality of this phaser kit.

1 knob for rate and a on switch. very easy

great sounding pedal. theres a good range of effect. the pot on the pcb lets you set how much swish you want. it can be extreme or mild your choice. i have it pretty much in the middle and dont experience any pop and barely any hissing when the rate knob is on 10.
this is the newer 6 op amp version.

the parts are all quality. if you build it well it will last a life time

there is a message board and the owner answers many of question himself.

This is a great phaser pedal. Its was based on the famous script 90.
I used it with a Tele and LP and works well with both.
True bypass switch and a slight boost when turned on help make this a great ,transparent when off and enhancement when on, pedal.
The price is great especialy when compared to the boutique builders pedals.