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Sound Clips:

Quasar with post overdrive, then pre-distortion added.

Clean 

Clean and bouncy 

Clean with positive feedback 

Pre-distortion 

Pre-distortion with delay and amp feedback

A note for quasar owners:
The first Quasars produced had issues with LFO noise (ticking) when used in front of a high gain pedal or amplifier, and sometimes modulation would stop after the battery voltage dropped below 8 volts.  This issue can be fixed, but involves installing a second small circuit board beneath the main board, and can only be in our shop.  This modification will also give the rate knob a larger range, making the modulation even faster and slower.  If you would like to have your pedal updated please email or call us for more information.

Reviews:
At Harmony-Central

Features:

The Quasar Phase Shifter is hand made in Dundee Oregon with high quality components.
Die cast metal enclosures for durability.
3PDT switches for true bypass switching.
Powered by a  9 volt battery, or can be powered by a 9VDC adapter. 
4 stage Vactrol based phaser circuit for distortionless operation.

Controls: Rate, Feedback, Frequency, Depth and Mix.

Red LED indicator blinks in time with rate control (on units manufactured after Jan 1 2006)
Three-year limited warranty.

A four stage phaser offering ultimate control and loads of headroom.  Feedback, Frequency, Depth, Mix, and a rate control that goes from super slow to way too fast, allows the quasar to produce an infinite number of sounds.

What is the Quasar?

The Quasar is a  vactrol based phase shifter that does everything from rotating speaker sounds, to bouncy odd ball filter effects.  All knobs are very active in altering the effect, and it will not add noise to your signal like a lot of jfet based phasers.

There's a load of sounds packed in this box. 

• Rate control takes you from super slow to way too fast. 
• Feedback control radically alters the voice of the effect using both positive and negative feedback.
• The frequency and mix knobs are somewhat interactive and have a huge range.  Turn the frequency knob way down, and you will hear the LFO become non symmetrical, as it bounces against the lower end of the frequency range. 
• Mix control allows you to change the level of the overall effect versus the unaffected signal.
• As of September 2007 all new Quasars have an internal volume trim pot.

Why its different?

The Quasar uses Vactrols to vary the phase shift frequency, instead of jfets, which most other phasers use.  In a phaser circuit Jfets typically add a mild distortion to the guitar signal, which increase as the input to the effect increases.  Vactrols are more expensive, but offer offer a cleaner audio path, a wider frequency range for the phaser effect, and far more headroom.

Simply put the Quasar offers great versatility, but still fits nicely on your pedalboard.

Notes from the engineer:

Most modulation effects, even the good ones, always seem to leave me wanting more.  Over the years, I have owned a number of phasers, some of which sounded awesome, and others were just plain awful. 

Even the good ones would get boring after a while, because of the limitations in their controls.  Others which had offered great control over the effect, were either too "obvious" sounding, or lacked the proper headroom to stay clean when strumming an open chord.  Then there's the studio gear, often integrated in to a large bulky rack mount unit that had to be run through a mixer or at line level, and far too expensive, and/or physically large to want to carry around on your pedal board.

When I started work on the Quasar, I wanted ultimate control, but also did not want to get stuck with knobs that barely did anything or only sounded good in one spot... That would simply be unacceptable.

For cleanest operation use with a fresh 9V alkaline battery or 9VDC adaptor with a negative center 2.1mm barrel style plug.  Current draw is less than 30mA.  One alkaline battery should last over thirty hours.