JHS Pedals founder has built some crazy pedals, often based on classic or cult favorite designs. The infamous Flerb setting of the EHX Holy Grail has been one that fans have been dying for him to turn his hands to, and now he’s done just that… almost.
According to company founder Josh Scott, the JHS Pedals comments sections, its Discord channel and email boxes are all unanimous in their requests: “Josh,” they say, “build us a Flerb.”
But here, Scott doesn’t want to be a copyist, so he’s made the JHS Pedals Pherb instead – a “dark, moody lo-fi reverb”.
The term Flerb is an amalgamation of flanger and reverb, which is what you get with that quirky Holy Grail setting. But Scott has gone slightly off-piste, this time combining phaser and flanger.
Impressively, the whole pedal was turned around in 35 hours, making it the quickest pedal to go from dream to reality in JHS history. Its very simple-but-effective core is largely to thank for that.
Of its three controls, Mix dials in the amount of phaser and reverb (which are tied to the same dial), Speed is for just the phaser alone, and Length controls reverb decay and pre-delay.
There’s also a Break mode, which, JHS says, “takes the whole signal – reverb, phaser and your dry guitar – and destroys it.”
In literal terms, it adds a bit crusher with analog-style clipping before it hits the twin effects. To our ears, it produces an altogether more mangled sound, ideal for those wanting to sprinkle a little more chaos and carnage into the mix.
Finally, there are two other key perks. With the Break switch turned off the phaser can actually be turned off completely via the Speed switch, and turning the Mix dial down and engaging the Break mode finds the bit crusher operating solo.
“You asked us for Flerb, says Josh Scott. “You're getting Pherb.”
Honestly, it seems a really cool compromise, and puts a nice spin on an effect that has, over the years, become half-adored, and half-meme. Scott is on the latter side.
“Flanger inside of a reverb just makes my skin itch,” he notes. “Phaser inside of a reverb however, is a different story, and that's the one nobody ever built. So I'm giving you the thing that should have been and never was.
“The reverb is dark, moody and lo-fi on purpose,” he adds. “Not a plate. Not a hall. It's chorused and chunky, and at longer decay times it slightly pulses.
“The phaser is a four-stage vintage style phase shifter (think MXR Phase 90) with the feedback left off and the notch sweeps moved up through the frequency spectrum, so they stay out of the way of the reverb's low mids.”
The JHS Pedals Pherb can be yours today for $99.99.
See JHS Pedals for more.
Scott, meanwhile, is sticking some weird and wonderful items from his personal gear collection onto Reverb, after cramming two of its best-loved overdrive pedals into one ultimate stompbox.
