Flange-Chorus FC-1

Flange-Chorus FC-1Download User's Manual The late 1970s and early '80s produced some legendary flangers. Those effects utilized bucket brigade device (BBD) chips that allowed them to produce super wide delay sweeps from 15ms all the way down to 0. 4ms (about the limit of perception by the human ear). Unfortunately, by the mid '80s those BBDs were out of production and since then most analog flangers have been limited to minimum delay times of well above 1ms. Some

Download User's Manual

The late 1970s and early '80s produced some legendary flangers.  Those effects utilized bucket brigade device (BBD) chips that allowed them to produce super wide delay sweeps from 15ms all the way down to 0.4ms (about the limit of perception by the human ear).  Unfortunately, by the mid '80s those BBDs were out of production and since then most analog flangers have been limited to minimum delay times of well-above 1ms.  Some perfectly fine flangers have been made with those limitations, but truly versatile flanging requires more.

Another key in flanging is that the ideal modulation sweep character changes as the speed setting of the flanger is adjusted - very slow and wide settings sound best with a hybrid triangular/sinusoidal sweep waveform, whereas fast and narrow settings can sometimes sound best with a triangular shaped oscillation.  Most flangers get by without addressing this simply because they have limited speed and depth settings.

The AXiom Flange-Chorus FC-1 is a 100% analog flanger designed to match or better the performance characteristics of the greatest flangers of the BBD glory days.  It can produce flange delay times from 0ms (through-zero) to 20ms - meaning it can achieve a flange effect so rich it seems to be coming down from the stratosphere, cross through the magic zero point, or even produce authentic chorus, depending on how you set it.  The RATE control lets you adjust the sweep speed from 0.07 secs to almost a full minute (59 secs); the DEPTH control determines the range of the sweep; the MANUAL control adjusts the sweep center (delay time) of the modulation; the REGEN control allows you to dial in the 'swoosh' intensity from mild to jet-plane levels; the ZERO control determines the ‘zero’ crossover point; the MIX control adjusts the blend of dry to effected signal so you can go from subtle to dramatic; and there’s a SENSitivity (i.e. effect gate) control that senses your picking dynamics and applies flanging based on how aggressively you strike the strings and also acts as a noise gate to cut off the 'swishing' sound as the note fades.  Plus, there’s an internal HYPER trimpot that adjusts the oscillation shape from triangular to an optimized hypertriangular waveform for a more natural turnaround at the bottom of the sweep.

Simply put, the AXiom Flange-Chorus FC-1 was designed to be the most powerful 100% analog flanger ever made.  You don't have to spend a fortune on a vintage flanger to get the performance standards of the analog glory days, you don't have to go digital to get the advanced control you want, and you don't have to buy another pedal to get a first-class chorus along with it.

Question:  I don't get it.  Is the FC-1 a flanger or a chorus?

Answer:  It's both.  Flangers and choruses are actually very similar in design.  Both are based on modulation of a delayed signal mixed with the dry signal.  The main differences are that flangers typically sweep across a wide delay range whereas choruses tend to sweep through a much narrower range and flangers have internal resonance feedback whereas choruses do not.  The AXiom Flange-Chorus FC-1 gives you precise control over all of these parameters so it can be set for truly authentic chorusing or flanging as you wish.

• 100% analog circuitry
• BBD delay times from 0ms (through-zero) to 20ms
• Additive or subtractive (ie. odd/even) flanging
• Oscillation speed adjustable from 0.07 to 59 seconds
• Individually handmade
• True bypass