Rowin Flanger

The Rowin Flanger is a flanger pedal made by Rowin, a maker of compact, budget-friendly effects. A flanger is a modulation effect: it takes your guitar signal, splits it, and mixes the two copies back together with a slight, continuously varying delay applied to one of them¹. The result is the effect most players know as the jet-engine sweep, a whooshing, harmonic-rich movement across the note.

What a flanger does

Under the hood, a flanger works on time delay. Two signals are mixed together, and one is played back at a slightly slower speed, with an LFO (a low-frequency oscillator, the same thing that sweeps a wah or a tremolo) modulating the timing of that delay to give a sweeping, whooshing effect². Strymon describes the mechanism plainly: the flanging effect is created by mixing two identical audio signals, applying a slight delay to one signal, and slightly varying that delay over time¹.

That varying delay is what makes the effect move. Because the two copies are nearly identical, their frequencies collide and reinforce or cancel each other as the delay changes, which players hear as a comb filter sweeping up and down. EarthQuaker Devices compares the sound to a jet engine: two identical signals are mixed together, with one playing at a slightly slower speed, creating a swooshing effect³.

The character of the sweep depends on the delay range and on feedback:

• Shortest delay times give more airplane-like, conventional flanger sounds; increasing the delay brings in very short repeats⁴.
• Feedback (sometimes called resonance or regeneration) feeds part of the output back into the delay, intensifying the sweep. Cusack Music sums up the recipe: a flanger uses a much shorter delay with feedback, giving the jet-engine sweep⁵.
• The overall range is wide. Drolo's documentation describes everything from ear-piercing accelerated jet plane sounds to super boing rubber sounds⁴.

On many flangers, a resonance or feedback control is the difference between a subtle shimmer and full jet takeoff. On the Fender Hammertone Flanger, for example, the resonance switch moves between three presets, from subtle flanging to more extreme sounds, and Premier Guitar's reviewer called it "an even more valuable escape hatch, or portal to weirdness"⁶.

Where flanging came from

Flanging began in the studio, not on a pedalboard. Kemper notes that flangers originated in the studio by manipulating tape machines, producing their jet-like sweep⁷. Engineers worked with two reel-to-reel machines playing the same recording, and pressed a finger on the flange of one reel to slow it down, sometimes changing the position of the machines to make them run slower uphill or faster downhill⁸. The effect's name comes from that physical contact with the tape reel's flange.

The effect moved from tape to pedals, and vintage units are still talked about today. The Ross R-60 Flanger, reviewed by Pedal of the Day over the course of its 40-year life, was described as producing a chewy, warm flanger sound with the fullness and bold sonic flavors of the late 70's⁹. Rush used flanging on "The Spirit of Radio", where it helps the opening arpeggio feel like it is building even though it is the same part repeating⁸.

Companies like Strymon, TC Electronic, Electro-Harmonix, Universal Audio, and many more all make their own versions of modulation pedals with flanging⁸, alongside smaller builders and budget makers like Rowin.

Flanger vs. chorus

The two effects are close cousins, and the difference is mostly a matter of delay time. Both mix two copies of the signal with a slight delay on one; a flanger simply uses shorter delay times than a chorus, and adds feedback for the jet sweep¹. Pedal of the Day's history of the effect puts it the same way: depending on how much the signals are delayed or their frequencies altered, you land in other effects like chorus, phase, and echoes⁸.

In practice the border is blurry, and makers lean on it:

• Red Witch describes its Eleutheria Analog Flanger as covering jetty flanger sounds right through to "is it flange or chorus?" shimmer tones.
• Korg's FLG-1 was reviewed as moving easily from a lighter, chorus-infused tone to oscillating, pulsing, off-the-wall flanging.
• The Ibanez DCF10 Digital Chorus/Flanger is a pedal that operates either as a chorus or a flanger.
• Premier Guitar's reviewer found the Fender Hammertone Flanger generates great chorus tones, some of which were preferred to roughly equivalent sounds from the Hammertone Chorus, while noting the basic voice is colored by a high-mid focus that can read as harsh in places⁶.

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