Arion Stereo Phaser SPH-1

[Urban777]

I haven't seen many reviews of this anywhere, so thought I'd post one right here right now. This is my first review ever, so don't ridicule me too much, eh?

So yeh, this is the review for the Arion Stereo Phaser SPH-1. To start, I'm using the phaser on it's direct option, rather than its Stereo option, through the Output 1 jack.

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I hear a lot from many bassists, if not all, that you can only get decent pedals for a high price (ie. Don't get Behringer ). But when it comes to old analogue vintage (as I'd class this Arion as vintage), or certainly phasers, you don't need to be made of money. I picked this pedal up second hand from eBay for a total of £6.39, postage included.

The phaser has three dials on it: Rate, Depth and Resonance. It also has a switch that goes from Direct to Stereo. As you can see from the picture, the most high tech part of the use is two outputs for the stereo option. So not exactly rocket science.

The sound quality is superb on this thing, there's no need to spend your wages on a more expensive pedal, for instance the Electro Harmonix Small Stone. I started off with all the dials low; at about 9 o'clock. This gave a slow groove style to the tunes I played, while certainly keeping that low end that I love ( I don't understand why people buy basses, only to put mass amounts of treble on to it?). I then put the Rate to about 10 o'clock, depth to around 2 o'clock and resonance at 12 o'clock. This I found is the best setting for this pedal, there's just a perfect amount of everything while keeping that low end again. This style, in my opinion, can be played with anything. Except maybe classical. After, I decided to see what it sounds like with all dials on full. Horrible. So I turned the rate down to around 10 o'clock again, and I found quite a nice surprise. The style coming out from the pedal sounded like (but not as good) an EHX Q-Tron. Very similar to Sir Psycho Sexy by RHCP.

The reliability is average for this pedal, one of the only downsides in comparison to the EHX Small Stone. It's made of plastic, I haven't gigged with it yet but I get the impression that if you stomp it really hard during an eventful tune then it'll break, which, let's face it, isn't great while performing. But for such a small price I wouldn't expect it to be made of metal, and it does the job. These pedals are quite old and I haven't heard of any breaking yet, which is a plus for reliability. So yeah, it's made of plastic. But it's a phaser and it does the job incredibly well.

Overall, this is one hell of a pedal. You can get so many effects and tones and can be used with a lot of styles. For so cheap aswell! When it comes to a phaser, don't worry about expensive brands like Electro Harmonix or Boss, turn to the Arion Phaser SPH-1. Seriously. Do it.

Wrote this quickly and I'm incredibly tired, so sorry if it ain't too good. I might upload a video of its sounds onto youtube. Thanks for reading this, if you got this far.

[SuperMaximo]

Nice! I might have to look into one of these...

Sound clips please! Btw what's the bypass like?

[Urban777]

I'm upload sound clips hopefully this week. Will be good quality as my brother has an Mbox I can use.

The bybass is great, there is no leak at all. Hasn't got true bypass but it doesn't need it in my opinion. Yeh do look into it. I'd say it doesnt go as deep as the EHX Phaser, but I found the EHX went too deep (the frquency that it).

[NoiseNoiseNoise]

I had an Arion Flanger back in the 1980's, and that was quite sturdy when gigged. The only iffy bit was the battery cover, but a bit of gaffer tape secures it quite well.