Home Forums The Lounge Origin of the word “flanger”

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  • #80100
    cameronspg
    Participant

    on the EHX Flanger page “We don’t know how John Lennon came up with the name Flanger but thankfully he did”

    I’d heard that the Beatles would use their fingers on the flange of the tape reel to modify the sound of a double track recording…

    Is that right? Does it help with the John Lennon question?

    #108877
    BlueSteel
    Participant

    yea, im pretty sure thats how the story goes, or its something similar.

    #108879
    Toonster
    Member

    That is how I’ve read it on the internet here and there..

    #108880
    TenSecondTed
    Member

    A ‘flange’ is an edge or rim of something, in engineering terms. I think “moving the ‘edge’ of the tape as it runs” sounds perfectly plausible as an origin of the word flanger.

    By the way, I’m so much more flanger than phaser. How about you guys?

    #108881
    BlueSteel
    Participant

    idk, i think im a bit of both. i used to like flanging a lot more than phasing, but now both are sort of equal.

    #108892
    Toonster
    Member

    For me flanging is way more useable than phasing, so yes:)

    #108896
    SanquiFlerb
    Member

    Both are filters, but the flanger has way more notches. Phaser it’s more dramatic, so, I prefer it to make something rythmical, and I prefer flanging for more subtle things, arpegiated, and the flanger must be subtle, wide, slow, not very resonant (or feedbacked) and sound natural, not metallic.

    #108910
    Kevin Demuth
    Member
    Quote:
    on the EHX Flanger page “We don’t know how John Lennon came up with the name Flanger but thankfully he did”

    I’d heard that the Beatles would use their fingers on the flange of the tape reel to modify the sound of a double track recording…

    Is that right? Does it help with the John Lennon question?

    i’m sure i read somewhere, that an engineer named Ken Townsend(?) at Abbey Road studios actually pioneered the effect… when John Lennon asked George Martin how the effect was produced, Martin gave him a nonsense answer; deliberately trying to confuse him but mentioning something about running the sound through a ‘flange’.
    so then, whenever Lennon wanted that effect, he would ask for the ‘flanger’.

    #108916
    remedyblue
    Member

    Legend has it that Andy Summers used an Electric Mistress to get that GREAT chorus sound.

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