JHS Pedals has released the Pherb, a phaser-plus-reverb pedal in its $99 3 Series. It started as a joke. For years JHS's audience kept asking for a "Flerb," a nod to the flanger-into-reverb setting on the EHX Holy Grail that almost nobody can actually get to sound good. Josh Scott didn't clone it. He made a phaser version with a dark, lo-fi reverb, and then added a toggle that wrecks your signal before either effect sees it.
It's in stock now at Sweetwater and Thomann (about £96 / €114 in Europe).
What's on it, per JHS and retailer listings:
- Mix: one knob for how much of the combined phaser and reverb you hear
- Speed: phaser rate, 0.05 Hz to 5 Hz. All the way counterclockwise (in normal mode) the phaser switches out and you get reverb only
- Length: reverb decay and pre-delay together, on one knob. Decay runs from about 241 ms to almost 50 seconds
- BREAK toggle: puts an asymmetric bitcrusher with analog-style clipping in front of the reverb and phaser. JHS pitches it as anything from fuzzy and aggressive to long, degraded ambient wash
- The phaser is a 4-stage, Phase 90-style design, with its notches deliberately placed higher so they don't pile into the reverb's low mids
- The reverb is described as dark, lo-fi and chorused
- One input, one output (it reads as mono, like the rest of the 3 Series), 9V center-negative, 70 mA
I haven't played one. Gearnews called it a niche pedal for ambient and shoegaze players and not much use to anyone else, which is fair. But there's an idea inside it that's useful no matter what you play, and you can try it on whatever you already own.
The Phaser Comes After the Reverb
In normal mode the signal goes into the reverb first, then the phaser. That's backwards from how most people build a board, and it's the whole reason this pedal sounds like itself.
If the phaser comes first, you're phasing the guitar and then putting the phased guitar in a room. The sweep is printed on the dry note, and the reverb smears it into a gentle wobble. That's the polite version, and it's what most modeler presets do by default because "modulation before ambience" is the rule everyone learns. Our signal chain order guide teaches it too, for good reason.
Put the phaser after the reverb and you're sweeping the tail itself. The whole wash, dry note plus fifty seconds of decay, moves together. On a held chord it sounds less like a phaser and more like the room is breathing. It's the same family as a modulated reverb, just with a much more obvious, whooshing motion. Modulated reverb: movement on the tail covers the subtle version. The Pherb is the unsubtle one.
That's also why JHS put the phaser notches up high. A 4-stage phaser sweeping a long, dark tail will choke the low mids if the notches land there, and your chords turn to mud. Push them up and the motion lives in the upper mids while the body of the chord stays put.
Build It on Your Modeler Tonight
You don't need the pedal to hear this. On basically any modeler, it's three blocks after the amp.
The chain: amp → reverb → phaser. Then, for the BREAK version, add a bitcrusher or a gated, splatty fuzz in front of the amp (or in front of everything if you're running into a clean amp block).
On a Helix or HX Stomp:
- Reverb: pick something dark. A spring or a plate with High Cut down around 3–4 kHz gets you close to "lo-fi." Turn the decay up further than you think. The effect only shows up once there's a tail to sweep
- Phaser: the Script Mod Phase is Helix's Phase 90-style model, a good match for the Pherb's 4-stage circuit. Start the rate slow, around 0.3–0.5 Hz. At 5 Hz on a 30-second tail it just sounds seasick
- Mix: here's one thing your modeler does better than the pedal. The Pherb has one Mix knob for both effects. You get two. Keep the reverb mix high and leave the phaser's Mix at its default (a phaser makes its notches by blending dry and shifted signal, so pushing it fully wet thins the effect out rather than deepening it). If it's too much, back off the reverb mix, not the phaser
On a Quad Cortex, same idea: reverb block, then a phaser block, both after the amp. Use the reverb's high cut to darken the tail before it hits the phaser.
The A/B test: build it once with the phaser before the reverb and once after. Hold a big open chord and let it ring for ten seconds. If you can't hear the difference, your decay is too short. Once you can, you'll know which one you want, and it probably depends on the song.
For the BREAK sound, if your modeler has a bitcrusher block, put it first, before the amp. If it doesn't, the closest thing is a gated, velcro-style fuzz with the gain cranked. The point is the same as the pedal: break the note up before it reaches the reverb, so the tail you're sweeping is all grit and debris instead of clean sustain. Neo-shoegaze tone has the amp and gain settings that sit under this kind of wash.
Should You Buy One
If you play ambient, shoegaze or lo-fi stuff on a real board: $99 for a reverb, a phaser, a bitcrusher and an unusual chain order is cheap. I can't think of another $99 pedal that puts the phaser after the reverb in one box, and a 50-second decay on a 3 Series pedal is more than I expected.
If you're on a modeler: build the chain first. It costs you nothing, and if it doesn't do anything for you, the pedal won't either. If it does, and you want it on a footswitch next to your modeler for one song, then fine, that's what $99 pedals are for.
If you play worship or anything where the band has to hear the chords: a 50-second phased tail will eat the pad and the keys. You can still use the idea at a short decay and a slow rate, but set it at rehearsal volume, not in your bedroom.
Dig Deeper on Fader & Knob
- Modulated reverb: movement on the tail: the subtle version of what the Pherb does
- Reverb before or after delay: the same "what goes first" argument with time effects
- Dream pop clean chain order: where modulation and ambience usually sit, and when to break the rule
- Neo-shoegaze tone: the gain and amp side of the wash
- Signal chain order guide: the conventional order this pedal deliberately flips
