A/DA Flanger

The A/DA Flanger is an analog flanger pedal designed by engineer Dave Tarnowski and first sold by A/DA (Analog/Digital Associates) in the late 1970s. Premier Guitar has called the original "the most legendary pedal flanger ever built," and it colored countless heavy-rock, funk and reggae tracks¹. A flanger varies the speed of a duplicate of your signal, and the A/DA's sweep reaches up to infinity delay time, which is what true tape flanging sounds like¹².

Guitar World's Chris Gill describes its range as much broader than most competing flangers: deep, dramatic jet-like flanging, rich and thick chorus and vibrato, brilliant metallic textures, laser gun zaps, rotating speaker-style sounds and even pitch-bending auto-whammy effects². The pedal is no longer in production: A/DA stopped building it in recent years when its supply of bucket brigade chips ran out, and prices on the used market have soared since².

What the A/DA Flanger does

Flanging works by delaying a copy of your signal and sweeping that delay time, which creates the characteristic whooshing, jet-like effect. The A/DA's distinguishing trick is that its sweep extends to infinity delay time, the behavior you get by pressing a finger on the flange of a tape reel, which most pedal flangers cannot reach².

The reissue also covers ground beyond straight flanging. Premier Guitar's reviewer found some of its most effective sounds to be the Leslie- and UniVibe-like voices, along with rotary-style, auto-wah-like and true flanging settings¹. A/DA marketed the original as "studio quiet," backed by a built-in noise gate with a Threshold control knob²³.

The controls

The control set stayed consistent from the original through the reissues: Sweep Range, Speed, Enhance, Manual delay range, an Even/Odd harmonics switch, and Threshold⁴. The controls sit in a recessed panel that protects them from being kicked out of setting, inside a cast aluminum case with period-correct graphics¹.

The original also had an input for an optional control voltage pedal that manually adjusted the delay time, the same function as the Manual knob². The reissue keeps this: an input that lets you plug in an expression pedal and put control of the Manual function at your feet¹.

Power across the versions

Power is where vintage and reissue units differ most, and it matters if you own an original³⁵.

• Early versions: 12VDC external wall-wart power transformer with a positive tip plug³
• Later revisions: hardwired AC cord³
• Mid-1990s reissue: MN3010 BBD circuit with a built-in AC power cord; no longer in production³
• Current reissue: built by hand in California, with true hardwire bypass and through-hole construction⁶

History: Dave Tarnowski, the BBD chips and the reissues

A/DA arose from the ashes of Berkeley, California's Seamoon Ltd., where Tarnowski devised the Seamoon Studio Flanger, a precursor of the A/DA Flanger²³. The Flanger was the first product of his new company, launched in January 1978². It was expensive for its day, originally selling for a price equivalent to the cost of a decent entry-level guitar².

The circuit changed early. The first version used the Reticon SAD1024A bucket brigade device, and in May 1978 the circuit was revised to use the Panasonic MN3010 chip³. The current reissue uses Panasonic bucket-brigade transistors, which Tarnowski considers essential to recreating the original unit's sound¹.

• 1981: discontinued after about 50,000 units, as A/DA moved to rackmount effects²³
• Mid-1990s: a limited reissue run using the MN3010 BBD and a built-in AC power cord²³
• 2009: Tarnowski resurrected the brand and the Flanger as a replica of the original²
• 2010: the A/DA Reissue Flanger launched, hand-built in California, listing at $349⁶⁴
• 2016: the compact, pedalboard-friendly A/DA PBF Flanger, with the same features as the full-size unit²
• Recent years: production ended when the supply of bucket brigade chips ran out²

The A/DA circuit lives on in other makers' pedals. The PastFX 80/A Flanger is a vintage-correct reimagining using a Matsushita/Panasonic 512-stage bucket brigade device, with an expression pedal jack for external Manual control⁷, and Lectric-FX's Flintlock Flanger is a recreation of the circuit adapted to the more common MN3007 BBD chip⁸.

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar's 2026 review of the reissue tested it with a Rickenbacker 330, a Danelectro Standard Reissue and a Les Paul Studio through Fender amps, and concluded¹:

Tom Hughes, writing Premier Guitar's Stompbox Classics history of the pedal, is a longtime owner³:

Hughes also found it super quiet with plenty of headroom and thick, juicy tones³. On the used market, he noted the sale price had been fairly stable across six or seven years of auction records before a recent spike on eBay³.

Who uses it

Juan Alderete used the A/DA Flanger during his entire time in The Mars Volta, telling Stompbox Book: "I used this the entire time I was in Mars Volta."⁹

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