Electro-Harmonix Flanger Hoax

i play analogue synths and thus am accustomed to creating my sound on the fly. really, i found this unit not hard to operate after reading some info on how the two phasers are employed in a serial configuration.

my very first twaeking session resulted in a wealth of musically usable sounds, meaning the range of the pots is very well calibrated. you have nice subtle control over feedback, and all the settings and the panel layout make great musical sense, contrary to what others have written.

i can see, however, that this is not so suited for guitarists who want to operate it as a stompbox. i have it sitting on top an analogue synth and use it as a natural extension.

i use it mainly with synths, for recording onto my daw.
the slight hiss doesn't bother me at all, it only occurs during extreme settings and is only noticeable if you feed dullish sounds into it where the noise isn't masked by the signal. much exaggeration in the discussion.
within an hour, i made small stone like sounds, flanger sounds and subtle shimmering chorus sounds with no effort at all.
pristine is not something i seek anyway, but warmth and balls.
the sound quality is absolutely awesome.

mine was bought used and with minor defects.
the dc wallwart sucks, particularly since there is quite some room inside. maybe i'll have it modded.

the paint job is, as others have noted, a pretty shoddy affair.
also questionable design.
nice metal housing though, good footswitch.

don't know

i've been playing ambient, electronic pop and electro-acoustic experimental music for almost 20 years now. i try to use the best affordable technology (mainly but not exclusively "vintage") and would say my best work comed from combining expensive stuff with carboot sale shit but always aiming to record to a high standard.
i was searching for a deep, warm modulation effect (prior to this i used a dynacord tam-19) with many knobs that would give me a great variety of phasing and flanging sounds - this is it, probably the holy grail of (advanced) flanging.
my favourite feature is that you can effortlessly tweak it while playing and go from crass feedbacked flanging to shimmering chorusses to gorgeous phase shift effects and back. never the same sound twice, but 90 per cent of the knob settings are usable.
this unit should primarily be marketed to serious analogue synth players and not guitarists as you really need one hand on the controls for tuned phase shifts wafting in and out of your sound.
as a fellow reviewer put it: complex, ever changing washes, like waves on the seashore.
totally worth the asking price.

After all, it says "Foxy Mistress" on the pcb - wonder why they renamed it last minute?

Since there's nothing else like the flanger hoax, it takes a bit of getting used to. A lot of getting used to in fact. Ive had it for about a month, and I still dont know what half of the controls do. Im sure I would understand a lot better if I could be bothered to learn how a phaser works though. Someone explained it to me once, but Ive forgotten.
Its very hard to play along to a CD or live as well, because its all analogue, so it is hard to get the timing of the phasers exactly right.
If youre an impatient type of person, you will be frustrated, but if youre prepared to sit down with it for a couple of hours and experiment, youll get along just fine.

Awesome sounds are obtainable with this thing.
My setup goes something like this:
Ibanez GAX-70 guitar-->Flanger Hoax-->Danelectro Fab Echo Pedal-->EHX English Muff'n-->Alesis F2-->Behringer BX6000 Bass amp
(I realise it seems slightly eccentric to run a guitar thorugh a bass amp, but it sounds great to me)
Its great on both clean and distortion. Many people have complained about the hiss. It doesn't bother me at all really, and only hisses with distortion...I can live with it.
I heard it on the EHX website and immediately thought WAHEY! must buy one of those.
I was slightly worried that it would be difficult to get the sort of sounds heard on the website (sometimes, companies make things sound better than they actually are) but its very easy to get good noises.

Once again its the old sheet metal ploy from electro harmonix.
Its very sturdy. You could probably knock a burglar out with it.
In fact Im confident you could defend a fort with it.
Some people have complained about paint falling off. Mine hasnt exhibited this behaviour yet, and is still gorgeously shiny.
No knobs fallen off, no loose switches of jacks.
I would gig with it, if it was a bit more...digital. Thats the only problem - its hard to play in time.

Ive never dealt with these folks, but Im so happy with the pedal that Im sure theyre lovely anyway.

This was a sort of impulse buy (though I tried it out first) and Im now a very happy man.
I play all kinds of music - generic rock, blues, jazz, experimental Muse-Radiohead-Floyd kind of stuff, with everything in between. Because there is such a wide range of effects, I can fit it in nearly anywhere.
Its very spacey/psychadelic. I was looking for something different, and EHX seem to specialise in wierd effects, so naturally I looked in their direction...and Im glad i did!
Ive been playing for over 6 years now, and while my playing is far from perfect, this thing makes it sound a lot better.
I love everything about it. If it was stolen, I would buy another one and take care of the thief later.
As I mentioned, the only problem is that its analogue, so very hard to get the timing right.
Also, a note of warning: if you stumble across a good sound, write down the settings, because you will never be able to find it again otherwise.

Now! Here are some I made earlier.

(all designed to be used with distortion)

Something that sounds like 'If You Tolerate This' by the Manics:

Swept feedback, 3:10, amount 3:00, modulator mode 270, log response, delay mode 3, rate 10:30, invert and both phaser switches up, fixed delay amount 8:00, swept delay amount 4:00

Tremolo:

Swept feedback, 3:00, amount 12:10, lin response, modulator mode 270, delay mode 3, rate 3:00, all other switches up, fixed amount 8:50, swept amount 3:00

Ring mod:

Wet feedback, 3:10, amount 10:00, lin response, mod. mode 270, rate 3:55 (be careful not to set the rate too high - if you do, you will lose the effect and have to wait a while or turn the unit off and on again) delay mode 1, all other switches up, fixed amount 8:50, swept amount 3:00

Generic wierd sound:

Swept feedback, 3:00, amount 3:00, mod. mode 90, log response, delay mode 2, rate 1:25, invert off, phasers on, fixed amount max, swept amount min

If you want a more subtle effect, use lin response and no feedback. More obvious effects can be found with swept feedback and log response.

This is one of the best effects units Ive come across. Its Awesome! with a capital 'A'!

Difficult as nothing else! I've had oodles of pedals, and this one was the worst. Even with help from EH and presets, they just aren't the same. From what I've gathered you can't get the same sound twice.

When it did make flanger/phaser sound, it was very sublte, almost unnoticable. Or it just make speaker damagingly loud static/woorbles. (if that is a word)

I never used it at a gig, but to be honest it got the one for the fact that with out even stepping on it, the paint started to wear off the pedal. I'm not Freddy Krueger here, but gez, should it be coming off that easily when I"m not even stomping on it?

More importantly I would wonder how well it would work if the knobs got bumped before a gig, and you had to adjust it on the fly? Is that even possible? I say no.

EH has always been great about giving advice, and fixing pedals. Send them an e-mail, they will usually reply with in 48 hours. Turn around time to fix a pedal is about 2 weeks. You can't beat that!

I'll give it a four, because i was mostly disappointed, because the wav. files make the pedal seem much more dynamic than it really is. I spent about 8 hours with it, and still didn't get anything that was dynamic and usable. (mostly just a lot of feedback, without the guitar vol. being up!) Poor contruction. Poor graphics, I latter learned were just cheap decals. I come to expect good things from EH and they usually deliver, but this time, they didn't. And I am very disappointed. I returned it two days ago and got a full refund.

Try it before you buy it!!!

this unit is very particular in that it will give you anything you ask for...which is very confusing

there is soooo many options, and soooo many buttons and the manual is a 2 page pamphlet that explains the function of the buttons/toggles but not how to use them...

very difficult(for me anyways) to get a useable sound, i should mention that this is probably a very good studio pedal but will need to be coaxed a bit to use live

i am using a 2002 gibson classic and american stratocaster through a Orange Rockerverb 50 head(this head is the most amazing piece of amplifier i have ever heard)

of course it is a little bit noisey, its electro harmonix of course you are going to get a little noise, especially at higher gained settings...

the effects can be very slight with a low blend or in the face phaser/modulation with a higher blend

i think that www.ehx.com gives a very good impression of the flanger hoax-so get those and be patient because getting that sound took me weeks...i could see omar rodriguez of the mars volta using this...and perhaps frank zappa lol


so the "sound quality" i would say is perfect but the beast must be tamed!

its ehx so who knows...good thing is that most technicians are familiar with ehx pedals so good chance they will be able to fix it...

never dealt with them, i deal with analogman.com and Mike is absolutely fantastic about help and delivery...its worth the couple extra bucks than to buy it from musiciansfriend.com because you get Personal business...

and mike is genuinely interested in the buyer/product

so i rate mike and not ehx for this category

he is incredibly kind and helpful

I play modern/progressive rock and i think that i will be able to use this pedal for the spacey lead parts that require a little character to the guitar sound...

i have been playing for 4 years and have owned many pedals, this one is by far the most confusing but worth the patience and time to figure out...

if it were stolen i would honestly wait and try the small stone out a little more, but i have enjoyed this pedals potential capabilities even though they are hard to harness

I love that it definitely adds character to my sound, its not digital so i love that it is its own pedal, that it has its quirks and all of that stuff...

I WISH IT CAME WITH A BETTER MANUAL SO THAT FIGURING THIS STALLION OUT WOULD TAKE LESS TIME AND HEADACHE...

This is the issue, isn't it? A bewildering array of knobs and controls and minimal documentation. How hard is it to figure out? Or can you get away with twiddling till you like what you hear?

There is certainly a learning curve, you have to sit down and learn to operate this thing. It is hard at first to understand the parts and what they are doing (or what you are doing to them). Much harder than this is to conceptualize what is really going on with the signal, what's happening when two parallel signals are shifting in and out of phase. Most of us don't really know what a flanger or a phaser is doing, we just know what it sounds like. Fortunately, you don't have to.

So we jump in and twiddle like crazy... and the maddening thing is, at first it doesn't even sound like anything. Most of the knobs appear to have no effect in many of the configurations.

A bit of learning will show you what parts get twiddled, and in what order. Then you can start discovering sounds- and make no mistake, it will be a process of discovery. You can't sit down and decide to make it sound a particular way (at least I can't), not at the first try, but you can certainly start somewhere and find something you like.

Synth owners will remember the good old days of analog- no patches! Not only that, but without a bunch of pretty preset patches, you are faced with the reality of a tool that can sound great, but which has a number of settings that are not useful at all. For someone who wants to effortlessly dial up pre-scultped settings, you're out of luck- this thing gives you power, more power than you want, with little guidance- go ahead, wander off the path, way off. Lots of things don't work at all.

But once you adopt an exploratory attitude, and begin to learn how to use it, you start discovering tons to like- it's a really good idea to take notes of particular settings you like, so you can come back to them later. I'd go so far as to say this pedal should come with an accessory notebook attached.

So- ease of use- at first? 2. It's bewildering and discouraging, and just barely gives you enough encounragement to keep you from giving up. But then once you get the hang of it- 10. You just jump into the garden and dial the sweetness up effortlessly, without really thinking about what you're doing- and for me this is ideal for really using it for playing music- when I'm caught up in the music I don't want to turn my rational mind back on and think about how I'm programming it, I just want to reach over and caress it and prod it until it sings- and that's exactly what the Flanger Hoax does.

I was surprised, because it really was tough at first. I didn't expect it to become so effortless to use, that really took me by surprise.

It sounds great. You know what I like the best about it? It's subtle, amazingly subtle. Shockingly, disarmingly subtle. At first when you're learning it you can hardly even tell what it's doing.

And that's the beauty of it. You know how msot flangers or phasers get repetitive, because you get used to the timing of the sweep? Not so with the multiple modulation complexity of this thing. It has all the regularity of the ocean lapping at the shore- perfectly consistent yet amazingly unpredictable.

Granted, there's a lot of different settings. But the ones I like are the ones where you can hardly tell there's anything but clean guitar (and it does have a wonderful clean bright tone), mm, yeah, a little flange there, whOOPS WHAM, and back, WHam and out again, like smoke contrails twisting across the sky, like sound reverberating across a canyon and echoing back across an organic landscape, not in the sterile tank of a studio multieffects box. You don't get the feeling of the guitar through an effect, you just get a feeling of your guitar soaring through the sky and over the landscape of your music.

Most effects draw so much attention to themselves that they're corny, and you have to dial them down to that narrow range where theyr'e not overpowering, yet still there at all! The Flanger Hoax is the ultimate stealth effect- your listener may swear at first there's no effect at all, then it sneaks up on you, changes direction, and leaves you uncertain what it even was.

This thing is subtle, and beautiful, either to add a beautiful wind-like texture to a clean sound or as a wonderful swirling dervish on your distorted channel.

Noisy? Sure, a little bit and so are single coil pickups on most guitars. So are tubes when you overdrive them. Get over it. It's part of the ambient landscape of the thing- and the amount of headroom eaten by the noise is tiny compared to the aural depth as it gives your head room.

Bottom line- it changes your sound by appearing not to change your sound. It still sounds exactly like your guitar... powerful yet capable of huge subtlety with immense power. Wow.

EH boxes are premium, steel construction, and have survived abuse since Muff was Pi. I expect this will do the same.

The only complaint I have is that the silkscreened stuff on the box is really fragile- I stuck a piece of tape on thinking I'd make setting notations, and when I removed the tape it lifted the blue & purple paint. Bummer! Oh well, it's a relic already- with sound like this I don't care what it looks like.

unknown

OK, how to get started with this monster?

First, read the excellent article at http://www.modezero.com/flanger-hoax.htm
this will guide you in your way, leading you through how to learn the controls and what's going on inside.

Hopefully people will start posting their favorite settings. In the meantime, here are some things to try:

plug cables to input and blend. set blend to 100% clockwise.

Flanger:
switch both phasers to bypass.
turn Modulator Mode to DC.
turn feedback to off.
this will engage both delays in manual, unmodulated mode (they are very short 1ms- 11ms range delays, so don't expect to hear any slapback).
Now twiddle the two delay time knobs and find sweet spots.
Try changing the invert switch for more combinations.

Swept Flanger:
do the above, then:
Turn delay mode to one of the 1-4 settings.
Adjust the modulator knob to a rate you like.
Twiddle the delay times some more to find sweet spots.

Phase swept flange:
do the above then:
try un-bypassing the two phasers (each one feeds one of the delays).
try different settings of the modulator mode and amount.
I like a linear response to start with.
Twiddle the two delay amount knobs and the modulator amount and mode.

Now that you've started unlocking the Flanger Hoax, try turning up the intensity of the effect by turning up the feedback for any of the above settings:

Switch feedback to swept.
Turn feedback up until it becomes too much, then ease it back.
Try wet instead of swept feedback.

FInally, when you get all the above where you like it, try turning the blend back down. Try seeing how low you can set it and still get an effect. I like a blend setting around 30-50% for clean, 100% for distortion.

(If it seems like the way to proceed with this pedal is right to left, you're pretty much correct. )

For the impatient, here's a nice setting to get you into the thick of it:

Blend: 5 o'clock
Feedback: 3 o'clock
Feedback switch: swept
Response: Linear
Rate: 10 o'clock
Invert: up
Fixed: up
Swept: up
Modulator amount: 3 o'clock
Modulator mode: 270
Delay mode: 3
Delay amount: 12 o'clock for both

That will get your feet into the garden, from there it's all discovery.

Thanks EH for stepping outside the box to make something as unusual as the Flanger Hoax- it's stunning.

The manual explains what each control does, but not really how they behave or interact. Good & bad sounds are equally easy to get from the Hoax.

User-friendliness really depends on your aptitude for figuring things out on your own - If you like experimenting, guessing or breaking something to learn how to fix it, you'll have no problem. If you're looking for a simple flanger, look elsewhere! A pedal with nine knobs, four switches and three outputs is by nature NOT immediately easy to use.

I use a mix of solid, semi & hollowbodies, single-coils & humbuckers, class A & AB amps, etc... As usual, EH effects work well with any type of gear. It is somewhat noisy (especially at high gain), but that's pretty par for the course with EH. Like I said, good & bad sounds abound. Now, by "bad" I mean crazy, over-the-top aural apocalypse - which may very well be what you're after. The wonderful thing about EH effects is that the knobs go to 11 (literally - they go past the 'maximum' mark), creating some outrageous sounds. The Hoax is no exception. What it does, it does well - it even does well at what it doesn't (or, shouldn't) do.

It's held up so far, and worked fine right out of the box - which isn't always the case with EH (Mr. POG, I am looking in your direction...). I just wish they'd go with a sturdier enclosure, like their tube-series pedals. Brushed sheet metal looks cool, but pedals were designed to be stomped on, not looked at.

They were quick to fix the problems I had with another pedal (the aforementioned POG), so top marks in that department.

The Hoax (like most EH pedals) can do "normal" effects, but is capable of so much more. If you're into experimenting, this is about as off-the-beaten-track an effect as you can get (outside of Moog territory, that is).