Harley Benton Vintage Phase

The Harley Benton Vintage Phase is a phaser pedal designed, in the maker's words, to give your tone more depth and character. It is a classic analog circuit with true bypass switching, and it keeps things simple: one Speed control is all it uses to shape the effect on your sound¹. If you are new to the effect, a phaser sweeps a moving notch through your signal to produce that swirling, jet-like shift familiar from countless rock and funk records; see the site's Phaser Pedals page for how the type works.

Controls and sound

There is a single control, and it does one job:

That is the whole interface. Harley Benton describes the pedal as enormous fun to play through and says the effect feels at home in countless styles of music, from funk to grunge to rock¹. The company also notes that it is the secret weapon of many a keyboard player, so it works beyond guitar¹. For a player used to multi-knob modulation pedals, the single-control layout means there is nothing to dial in beyond sweep rate: set it where the swirl sits right for the song and step on it.

Power and specifications

The Vintage Phase runs on a 9V battery or a power supply, and Harley Benton notes that both are not included, so plan to supply your own¹. At 13 mA of current draw¹, it is a light load that any standard pedalboard supply output can handle, and it will not strain a daisy chain.

How it compares

Other phasers take different approaches to the same effect, and power is one of the clearest differences:

The Vintage Phase accepts either a battery or a power supply¹, which makes it more flexible on a powered board than the battery-only designs in the table. As a point of comparison on tone, Pedal of the Day's review of the Rockready VP-1 Vintage Phase, another analog true bypass phaser, described its sound this way:

That is the general character players expect from this style of circuit, and it is the territory Harley Benton's take on it occupies.

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