Is the LFO always engaged? Can the phaser be used as a static comb filter?
Thanks,
Bryan
The Depth knob controls the LFO depth.
It can be turned to zero for no LFO.
Thanks. I wanted to clarify, as the manual says
The AMOUNT control varies the depth of phaser modulation, from barely
perceptible to the full sweep range of the phaser.
I’m hoping that “barely perceptible” means no LFO, but wanted to make sure.
Bryan
how does this compare to the boss ph3? Other than the price difference I’m having a tough time picking between the 2.
I’ve used a PH-3, but the MF-103 is one hell-of-a-lot thicker, and has CV etc.. I found the Boss unit only really sounded good (thick-ish) on the 4-stage mode and it was almost nesassary to have the depth and res knobs fully up, and drive it with a distortion pedal to get decent sounds. The “Rise” and “Fall” modes are a nice touch, but they are a little gimmicky. The “Step” mode is a sample and hold mod on the centre frequency, but being digital, the modulation repeats itself. Of course, the tap tempo is nice, but I don’t miss it on the Moog - if it’s out of time, it’s meant to be.
plus, the LFO is really nice and long - longer than the one in the LP and the CP-251, or at least that’s been my experience.
if I get the chance, I’ll try and see what happens with the LFO at the absolute lowest setting - something I don’t think I’ve ever tried, or at least not recently.
I’d be curious to hear about what you find.
What got my mind turning was playing with an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress on the “Filter Matrix” mode. Basically, it acts as a static comb filter in that setting. Tweaking the range control produces some beautiful timbres. It would be great to be able to control those by foot. I suspect the Moog Phaser is capable of similar tones, but I need to make sure the LFO can be turned off.
Bryan
You can reduce the speed of the Phaser LFO by applying a negative voltage to the RATE jack. This will extend the period well below the minimum panel setting. You can also do the same thing with LFO in the CP-251 (use the Mixer OFFSET control for the negative voltage).
The Phaser’s LFO is off when the AMOUNT control is set to ‘0’, resulting in a static comb filter. This allows you to adjust the Resonance and Sweep controls for tonal variations - it works great! (In the past, I’ve used a vintage Ibanez FL-301 Flanger the same way, turning the SPEED control all the way down and adusting the WIDTH and REGEN controls for some cool tonal sonics.)
Have fun!
Thanks for the tip - I never knew that!
The mistake I’ve always made has been to turn the RATE knob down to zero, rather than the AMOUNT knob.
Thanks for the help. Looks like there is definitely a phaser in my future to go with my LPF, Ring Mod, and CP-251. The problem is that I also want the delay and MuRF!
Bryan
And the Freqbox and the…
The problem is that U can get only one MF
A quick update and I feel really bad about it - I tried turning the LFO amount to zero, but it didn’t turn off the LFO. I should point out that I have one of the old Big Briar units - maybe more recent ones actually turn off?
The reason I feel bad is that I never actually went back and experimented with turning the LFO amount to zero - I just assumed that I had done the wrong thing by turning the rate to zero. 
you can also add some voltage in the resonance socket for some sick noises when everything goes into self oscillation
Careful now - you don’t want to break it…