Starlight flanger architecture
Complete redesign
This is not the flanger I intended to make. The original Starlight Quantum was meant to be a super simple and easy to use. Simplicity is appealing for anyone wanting easy to dial in tones or even set and forget functionality. I wanted to stick with the same ethos. I wanted to improve the delay line filtering, but this required some additional components. Even in the original fitting everything inside the box was a challenge.
I built a few prototypes and ended up listening a lot while testing them out. It sounded better. It was more transparent, but had a girthy resonance with the regen cranked. There was more headroom, better dynamics, way more clarity… But after a while I couldn’t help feeling completely bored.
Those 6 LFO shapes were cool and all, but it just wasn’t fun. After messing around with an old 117 (and even kind of longing for the old Pearl flanger I seem to have lost) I ended up hacking depth and manual controls into the circuit and changed the delay line IC for more range. It was already a cramped design, but i decided right then that the extra controls were absolutely necessary. If the fun wouldn’t fit in the box I wasn’t even going to bother. Simplicity has it’s place, but I’ve never been really drawn to simple pedals like single knob modulators. I like options, so long as there’s not a lot of confusion that goes along with them.
I actually gave up on it several times. It sat on the prototype bench, but I never put it away. I’d come back to it occasionally. Then I’d remember how it seemed impossible to make it work in a compact pedal. It needed to sound phenomenal over a wide range. It needed to fit in our standard pedal enclosure. It really didn’t seem possible.
Eventually I decided I needed to just finish it or put it up on the shelf and forget about it. I gave myself a week and locked myself away in the prototype dungeon and ignored all the distractions. Persistence paid off. I was able to check off all the boxes with a new pedal I’m really proud of. It’s the most excited I’ve been about a new design since the Prometheus DLX.
We are still absorbing the wonderment of this new creation… And maybe absorbing beer too.
check back soon for awesome sample settings.