The trippy, undulating sound of flanging and phasing debuted in the ‘60s and ‘70s with songs like Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” and Hendrix’ “Bold as Love.” And it’s made its mark on every decade since, playing key moments on tracks by David Bowie, Roxy Music, The Clash, The Cult, U2, Daft Punk, not to mention dozens of tracks by Van Halen.
Clearmountain’s Phases brings you the sounds of classic flanger and phaser processors used in mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain’s studio, meticulously modeling his rare, vintage flanger and phaser rack modules from the mid-seventies. The plugin adds Expanded settings modules, so you can replicate Bob’s advanced workflow, easily dialing in the distinct, engaging modulation effects heard on songs from the world’s most influential artists.
Clearmountain's favorite flanger at your fingertips
Originally created through a laborious process requiring two tape machines playing back the same material in sync, but with a slight varispeed on one of the machines, the Flanger effect required a lot of gear, setup and expertise to pull off. Clearmountain’s Phases brings Bob Clearmountain’s favorite hardware Flanger processor to your fingertips, with control over the original manual sweep, sweep oscillator and mix.
With Expanded controls including feedback, LFO Phase, high-pass filters, and polarity reverse controls, you can emulate workflows in the plugin that required external gear with the original modules. The true “zero crossing” Tape Flange mode reproduces the dramatic effect when two tape machines flange perfectly. You can even “swap out” the core bucket brigade delay (BBD) chip to explore vastly greater sweep ranges. Finally, to really add the grit and flavor of the original hardware to your tracks, dial in your desired amount of distortion and aliasing.
Highlights
- Authentic emulations of Bob Clearmountain’s vintage Flanger and Phaser Rack Modules
- Phases Presets offers access to Clearmountain’s personal settings for iconic songs and applications
- Use Module Config to combine the flanger and phaser for complex, evolving soundscapes
- Expanded Settings Modules offer a universe of possibilities beyond the original units
- Dial in the distortion, aliasing and component aging of the hardware units, or keep it clean.
Technical Specifications
- AAX Native, AU, VST or VST 3 Compatible Host Application
System Requirements
PC
- Validated on Windows 10 20H2 and above
- Operational on any Windows 10 version
- Free Pace iLok account – physical iLok not required
Mac
- Validated on macOS 10.14.6 and above
- Operational on Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan and above
- Free Pace iLok account – physical iLok not required
