MXR Phase 90

The MXR (Dunlop, new) is a one-knobber that couldn't be easier. I'm writing about a unit modded by FX Doctor to incorporate the Script mod (no adjustment) as well as the Intensity and Blend mods, which are both adjustable. The stock settings are excellent; making adjustments via the mods is easy.

Great, great sound. The Dunlop MXRs are basically fine units; the Script mod (by FX Doctor) restores a softer liquid quality that is really beautiful. Making small adjustment via the Blend and Intensity mods allows exceptional fine-tuning to your guitar and rig, which is what you want. For crazy junk, get a flanger! Fabulous sound. The best.

Brick.

Can't speak for Dunlop/MXR; I doubt if they ever get much customer contact since their units are indestructible (even if the pots are now scrratchy and cheap). FX Doctor is instantly responsive and helpful. Really nice service, advice. I paid $59 for a new Phase 90, paid FX Doctor $70 for four mods: rate pulsing LED, script mod, blend mod, intensity mod. Result = custom pedal w/ great features for low dough.

I play all kinds of rock but no jazz or country. Have Fender Custom Shop Strat and McNaught G4, play through Klon, some Way Huge, other spiffy pedals as needed. Top Hat, Vox, and Orange amps. Nice rig. The Phase 90, especially modded and adjusted somewhat to be less "in your face," performs great w/ chimy clean tones right through full rage distortion.

One knob = perfect

Great

A little hard to get my jack in the side.

I play mostly Heavy Metal. I have had a dozen different effects pedals from Noise Compressors, Delay, Blues, Fuzz etc. This pedal creates a wave which helps give your sound that ALIVE feeling. I turn the single knob to the 9 oclock position and this gives it a heartbeat tempo. This has helped me stay on Tempo. This wave also creates tremollo effect. Playing heavy metal I pick the top string open and repeatedly for sometimes 20 seconds, the wave makes it sound like I'm moving my hand around just a little. Ever since I got this pedal 6 months ago I always turn it on for all of my music styles. It's as important to me as my EMG Zack Wylde pickups that are always on -- -- .

It's pretty rare these days to see a pedal with just one knob, but that's what the Phase 90 has. One knob for speed and a footswitch and that's it. The only reason I don't give it a ten is because the battery isn't easy to get to. Unlike some pedals with latches or that have the battery under the footswitch, you've gotta unscrew the back to get to it on this pedal.

AMAZING! But let me begin at the beginning. I guess you could consider me the keyboard player who wants as much attension and style as a guitar player while not wanting to actually play guitar. My solution is a Rhodes Stage 73 (elold-school electric-piano) into the Phase 90, then Boss CE-2 Chorus, then a Tubescreamer, and finally into a Fender Twin Reverb (silverface). The Phase 90 has this tubey, warm sound that even a Smallstone can't get. People complain about the overdrive at the low end, but you guys have to do some research. The R28 mod will fix this and it's not a hard mod to do yourself. I actually opted not to do the mod cause I LOVE that little crunch that just overflows warm vibes. Also, cause I'm using a Tubescreamer, you should be able to tell that I like a little drive once and a while. I use the phaser on almost every song of mine. Somebody else here mentioned that Donald Fagen (Steely Dan) uses one and this is absolutely true! On the last two albums, Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go, he uses it on every Rhodes track. Back in the day, he also used it once and a while on his Wurlitzer to great effect (listen to Black Friday or Dr. Wu). Stevie Wonder also used it a lot on his Rhodes and I think Wurlitzer too. In fact, I would say that this might be THE ultimate phaser. The phase 100 is nice, but it doesn't quite have the tubeyness that this one does.

It's a solid metal pedal and it's really simple electronically, so there's not much to go wrong. I've used it at countless gigs without a single problem, though as someone else said, it does really go through nine-volts, especially if you leave it plugged in by accident. The only worry I have is the protruding footswitch, but it hasn't snapped off yet, so I'm not too concerned about it. I'll give it a ten.

Well, dunlop is in charge of these pedals now and they're pretty good.

A spectacular pedal! I'd claim it's THE phaser for keyboardists of all kinds and I'd also recommend it to any guitarist looking for a good quality phaser. For those not wanting the really dirty tone it can produce, do the R28 mod and you'll love this pedal all over again. 10/10!

The speed range is very versatile, no comment here. I bought it new in 98, so it is the current model.

without mod the effect is good and the distortion you get can add some nice vibe if you only use single PUs. It is almost unusable with humbuckers as many already said.

I did two major mods to reduce the problem:

1) made an adjustable feedback resistor(the famous R28)
2) replace the internal trimmer with an external pot to adjust the sound a bit further (helps a lot to clarify and clean).

The R28 was very usefull but I still found myself coming back sometimes to the higher feedback value (i.e bigger sweep of the effect). The trimmer replaced was a very good idea as I can taylor my sound with ease according to my needs and combine both mods on the fly.

However, I don't think I took all distortion out with the mods, I just took it to a minimum, would it sound as rich or warm without it ?

Now, the basic sound is definitely rich and warm while keeping the clarity, this is what I like about this pedal. My small stone is a bit muddy on the bass, it is never the case with a Phase90.

So modded this unit would deserve a 9 or 10, unmodded I cannot give it more than 7.

No problem, the quality and construction are fair. This is not a boutique pedal but it is reliable.

I have to play wathever is asked of me and the Phase90 has been used several times on many styles.

If stolen or lost I would probably try a Phase100 or another boutique brand but might come back to this model and just mod it again.

The exagerated distortion is definitely not acceptable. MXR should correct their design. But I suspect they will keep it that way and hope the mod fashion just keep their product on the map ?!

Had one of the originals in the 70's. One knob...Simple.

Well, This one from Guitar Center was dead right out of the box....I have "memories" of what they sounded like.....

Well, Guitar Center when I returned it just gave me another one. I had them check it before I took it.....Wellll, all SIX that they had were defective right out of the box !!!!

Who the hell knows?????? If it don't work, return it, get your money back, and go to Sam Ash and get one that works..

I play blues/rock etc. I play mostly Gibson Firebirds, Strats, Teles, and 335's and I use Music Man Amps and 60's Twin Reverbs. MXR 'used" to be a sign of quality....guess not anymore.

It was pretty hard to get a decent sound out of it using humbuckers.
Then again, it only has one knob.

I wanted to like this. I play humbuckers. Not going to work. It
sounded like ass with my JB and HB-103 bridge pickups. The effect
would sieze up and just distort until the chord or note started to
fade out. It didn't happen as much with my '59 neck pickups, which
are lower output.

It doesn't freak out as much if you use palm-muting--I finally
figured out why Eddie VH palm muted the intro to "Ain't Talkin'
Bout Love..." ...because else the phaser won't work!

I didn't try it with single coils. I don't own a single coil
pickup. I have too much testosterone for that.

You can rely on it to suck with high-output humbuckers. Everyone
below says that the construction quality is shoddy.

I got an instruction sheet for a wah pedal in the box.

Uhhhh....yeah.

I returned it after owning it for about an hour. I've ordered
a Guyatone PS-3, hopefully that will be better. I also considered
the Maxon PT-999, but the effect sound was too subtle. I went
through a phase (ha ha ha) of serious pining for the Maxon PH-350,
but I don't use phasing enough to justify spending that much money
on it. I also tried the Digitech Hyper Phase, but that sounded
computer-y and thin. I've played with the Boss PH-3, but that sucked
even worse than this. If the Guyatone doesn't work out, maybe I'll
get a Voodoo Lab Microvibe, or just swear off phasing all together.

SOMEBODY BUILD A HIGH-OUTPUT HUMBUCKER-FRIENDLY PHASER!!!!

I wouldn't know, broken right out of the box !!!!

Broken right out of the box-have they ever heard of quality control ??? I recently tried, and returned, an MXR reissue Micro AMp as the switch was very flimsy.

I had a defective wah pedal last summer and they offered to repair it,NOT REPLACE, which took three-four weeks. If a product is defective right out of the box why should the customer be forced to wait while you do repairs on a NEW product !!!

Dunlop is gaining quite a reputation for low quality products. What sucks is MXR used to be thought of as a quality unit, at least back in the day BEFORE Dunlop took over the name, certainly not the quality. Maybe this is why most players hunt down the older units even if the price is much higher. They sound much better and they actually work.

Easy

Not intended for humbucking pickups IMHO. If you want to use this for clean through HB pickups, be prepared for squashed tone and solid state distortion edge to come along for the ride. There might be mods out there, but what a pain in the ass. I hate the idea of buying something with the intention of modding it because the engineers couldn't get it together in the first place. Would you buy any other good like this? ("I love this new car, but when I get it, the first thing I'll do is swap out the engine for one with more horsepower!" Huh?). Anyway, they say it sounds great with single coils - which doesn't help me much.

At low signal input, sounds great. Crank up the clean volume through a humbucking pickup (not a hot Super Distortion, just a medium output 'buckers) and you're in the squashed zone with distortion reminicent of a Crate SS amp cranked to 10 in the clean channel - ouch.

It's one knob!!! I like not having to twiddle 2 or 3 knobs to change settings. One quick twist and your ready to go!!

I did the R28 mod almost immediately. I use a les paul with dimarzio super distortion p-ups and an old marshall that you have to push the signal hard to get a good overdrive sound with, and the stock 90' just sounds like crap. It breaks up way to much. But once the mod is done it sounds great!!!!

I have to say I was disapointed with the hardware. the older mxr stuff had the switches and knobs wired to the circuit board. The reissues components are soldered right to the board...meaning if the footswitch nut comes loose and you step on it...ouch!! you're squashing the fragile circuit board. The same goes for the knobs, and the jacks too. The shafts on the new models are also plastic, and snap like twigs if you step on the knobs the wrong way.

Haven't called them, but probably should complain about the issues I mentioned in the reliability section. I know people that have had problems in the areas that I spoke of.

The quality issues are important to me,and I do think that MXR needs to find a happy medium with the whole midrange gain thing.You shouldn't have to mod these to make them sound nice. You can't deny the great phase sound you get either.It's really versatile and I've found that it sounds great with almost any genre. It's hard not to just leave it on all the time!!! But then like any effect, IF YOU OVER USE IT, IT CEASES TO BE AN EFFECT.

One knob....very easy

Very vintage and rather noisy.....you won't care

HOW TO TELL A ?SCRIPT? FROM A ?BLOCK? INTERNALLY.

Some of the mid ?70s ?block? logo stenciled MXR Phase 90 units contain the board and components of the most popular and expensive ?script? logo units. The change of the logo markings and the internal electronics did NOT happen at the same time.

But how can you tell the difference between the two internally?

By looking at the components:

The older ?script? used six (6) of the 741-style op amps (black, rectangular things with eight ?legs? connecting it to the board). This is the most popular, collectable and expensive vintage version.

Around 1975, the board was redesigned to the board you?d see in a typical ?block? logo vintage MXR Phase 90.

First versions of this new board were using Raytheon brand 4558 op amps. These had quality control problems. Only used for a short time.

So MXR then switched to Texas Instruments sourced op amps like the 4558 or TL062.

Because the newer version was now using dual op amps, you only find THREE (3) of them of the later version board in the ?block? logo units.

The easiest way to be sure is to count the number of op amps.

It's a classic in it's vintage form. Great with guitar and electric piano. Don't overlook the MXR Phase 45 if you find one....also a great underrated pedal.