JHS PHERB answers the Flerb requests with a phaser-reverb hybrid
JHS skipped the Flerb fans kept asking for and built the 3 Series PHERB, a lo-fi reverb running into a four-stage phaser with a bitcrushing BREAK mode.
Fans kept asking JHS for a Flerb, the flanger-and-reverb mode on Electro-Harmonix reverbs such as the Holy Grail Nano. Josh Scott said no and built something next door instead. The 3 Series PHERB feeds a dark, lo-fi reverb into a four-stage phaser, and JHS says both effects are on all the time.
On the product page, Scott writes that a flanger inside a reverb makes his skin itch, while a phaser inside one is the pairing nobody ever built. He adds that it is no slam on Electro-Harmonix, a company he loves. JHS also says the pedal went from decision to approved prototype in about 35 hours, the fastest turnaround in its history.
Three knobs and a BREAK toggle
JHS describes the reverb as deliberately not a plate, hall or room: it is chorused and chunky, and at longer decay times it pulses slightly. Length sets decay and pre-delay together, so longer tails also start later, and the spec sheet gives a decay range of roughly a quarter of a second to almost 50 seconds. The phaser is a four-stage vintage-style design that JHS likens to a Phase 90, with the feedback left off and the notch sweeps moved higher so they stay clear of the reverb's low mids. Speed covers 0.05 to 5 Hz.
There is no blend control between the two effects and no order switch. Mix sets the amount of reverb and phaser, and the only way to hear the reverb alone is to turn Speed fully anticlockwise in normal mode.
Flip BREAK up and the input first hits what JHS calls an “asymmetric bitcrusher” with analog-style clipping, with the reverb and phaser built on top of the wreckage. In this mode the phaser cannot be switched out. JHS aims the pedal at shoegaze, industrial, noise and ambient players, and is blunt that it is no spring reverb for a blues gig.
It comes in the compact 3 Series enclosure, with the input on the right, the output on the left and 9 V DC power at 70 mA. Full specs are on our PHERB product page, and the pedal is listed on JHS's own store. The video below is a tongue-in-cheek making-of that also runs through Mix, Speed, Length and BREAK.
Video: JHS Pedals, “You Asked for a Flerb. I Built PHERB Instead.”.
