Roland AP-5 Phase V

Easy operation. Basically plug it in, and experiment with the knobs. The only thing to get used to is the touch sensitive control, depending on how "hot" your input, it can go from normal to insanity in an instant. The mode control is very basic, and self explanatory.

I have 2 strats and a Hamer Special running through a Mesa Subway amp. On high gain with copious amounts of distortion it becomes noisy but any older pedal has the same weakness. Alone it sounds great and with distortion of fuzz it produces some unique tones. To me it sounds like uni-vibe clone without the $1,000 price tag, I recently came into possesion of one of those. The tone is not exact but you can create your style with this one.

I aquired it used about 10 years ago. The power switch on the right hand side was broke since I owned it. The lights on the left and right hand sides tell you what mode the pedal is in. I haven't had any problems from the pedal.

This pedal hasnt been built since the late 1970's so I'm not sure if roland would be interested in helping any phase 5 owners out. I have seen a couple of these on ebay in the $200-$300 range. I would be hard pressed to find another cheap.

I play a variety of different styles, and it seems to come in handy for a variety of reasons. I have been playing for 15 years and own about 20 other vintage and newer pedals to create a new tonal palette.

Easy as pie!

I'm using a couple of Teles through an old Super Reverb amp. The AP-5 isn't noisey at all considering it's over 20 years old. It's whisper quite in fact.
There's a couple of things that make this phaser different from others. First is it has enveloped control or touch sensitive phase. This means the hard you play or the loud the signal going in, the fast the rate of phase. There is a knob to control the sensitivity of this function. This feature pretty cool but I haven't found a place to use it yet. Second is it has a footswitch that switches between fast and slow settings. There are knobs that control both settings. What's cool about this is there is a rise time. So when you switch from slow to fast it's not instantanious it takes a bit of time to get all the way fast. This mimics the sound of the leslie rotating speaker starting up. Very cool. I'd imagine it would be even cooler on keyboards. There is also a knob for intensity. When this knob is at zero it gives a sound similar to the original uni-vibe. when it is all the way up it get pretty intense. When the rate and intensity are at 10 it's sound very much like a real leslie. I can't really think of any bad sound characteristics so I think I'll give it a 10.

It's built like a tank. I have never had any problems and don't forsee any.

It's an old pedal not made anymore.

I give it a 9/10 because it's HUGE. It's not really pedalboard friendly but it sounds fantastic.