Sitek Guitar Electronics has released the Phasia, a highly tweakable phaser pedal with a comprehensive suite of features that affords you plenty of control over its old-school chewy phase-shifting sounds.
The Phasia offers the best of both worlds with classic tones and modern functionality. Choose from three switchable LFO shapes – hypertriangular, triangular and sine – and from 4, 5 or 6 analogue filter stages to adjust the effect's voicing.
There is an onboard tap tempo function and controls for Rate, Feedback, Depth and Symmetry. While Rate and Depth are self-explanatory, and Feedback controls how much signal is sent back through the filter stages – at extreme clock-wise settings it'll get very intense with a resonant filter quality. Symmetry is an interesting one, allowing you to play around with the LFO waveform's rise and fall times.
Set at noon, the Symmetry dial presents the LFO as perfectly balanced, but turn it counterclockwise and the LFO will take a longer to rise and a shorter time to fall. Turn it clockwise and the reverse happens, with the LFO's rise truncated and its fall extended.
These are good options to have, and used in conjunction with the filter stage selection, the Symmetry control will help change the feel and response of the phaser.
Featuring an analogue OTA-based circuit, the Phasia can be used for subtle modulation or for sounds so washy and wet you'd wished you'd taken a couple of Dramamine pills before playing.
There are two footswitches on the enclosure, one to engage or bypass the effect, the other to set a quarter-note tap tempo. And the unit features top-mounted jacks to help keep your pedalboard tidy. Sitek has used premium DeMont Smooth-Click footswitches and each unit is built by hand in Poland.
The Phasia is available now direct from Sitek, priced €220. See Sitek Guitar Electronics for more details.
