My interpretation of the BYOC Phase Royal

[Ch0jin]

I've long been intrigued by the kits BYOC offer, but living in Australia as I do, I can't buy direct from them. That put me off buying from them for quite a while, instead doing some vero builds and GGG kits. Then, while looking around on ebay I saw the BYOC Phase Royal kit for the same price as BYOC so I thought "OK Why Not" and bought it. Fast forward to now...

My mini-review.

The Kit.
As has been said time and time again by builders, the kits are great and the quality of the PCB's is excellent. The only PCB I've been more impressed with is the Boss CE-2 one I bought from tonepad, it's a work of art!

Instructions aren't provided in the kit, so you'll need to print them off from the website, but this is standard practice so no issue there.

The kit goes together perfectly and it really is paint by numbers. I'm sure anyone who knows how to solder would have this kit up and running in a matter of hours whether they know anything about electronics or not.

I do have some critiques though.

Whilst I appreciate being able to cram all those controls into a 125B is advantageous to someone with a crowded pedalbaord, it leaves things very tight control wise if you decide, as I did, to ditch the boring generic black plastic knobs. I used the smallest knobs I could find for the lower two controls and they still only miss each other by a millimetre. This is accentuated a little by the fact the case was not drilled exactly right either. The "Blend" control is actually about 3mm too high.

Of course I could have used a different case and not board mounted the pots, but these aren't particularly cheap kits so tossing away a case seemed like a substantial waste to me.

The only circuit modification I made was to wire a new white LED in a chrome bezel to pulse in time with the LFO which was electronically simple, but physically a tight squeeze as I could no longer use the board mounting.

The circuit is based on the MXR Phase 90 with all the popular mods already done, plus, an extra two stages on tap. There is a huge variety of tone shaping available through knob twisting, but for me, I think I probably could have just built a straight up phase 90 as I find I usually leave all the "mods" basically out of circuit.

The Sound
I wasn't immediately in love with the sound either to be frank. Using my Maton with the SD SH1/SH4 combo actually overloads the circuit causing distortion when you pick hard. I've since read that this is "normal" and part of the circuits inherent design. No, running it at 18V doesn't help. That said, I think phasers sound better with some kind of drive in front of them anyway and once you do that, the distortion isn't noticeable so it's not really a big deal. It does tend to be quite trebly in the top part of the sweep and I find myself wishing it had a basic tone control, but I could also do some component tweaking to see if I could smooth it out a bit as another option.

All up it's not a bad pedal and I'll probably hang on to it, but if I were to build another phaser I'd either go for a straight Phase90 or a Small Stone clone using a tonepad PCB. Bear in mind I'd consider myself an advanced builder though, that would not be my recommendation for a beginner.

Anyway... Beauty shot on the bench...


Six Four Phaser by Ch0jiN, on Flickr

and short demo...(Maton BB1200 W/B90's and old strings into OCD based drive all at noon into the RC-2, then I just run the loop into the phaser so I can film and tweak

[syo***]

Great demo Ch0, enjoyed it. I thought it sounded quite good really. Looks great too. The speed/mix knobs do look painfully close together. I think you should change your strings though...

[Tig***]

I like the use of the looper for this kind of demo. It makes for a better, more inclusive demo of the various setting and how they interact, than if you are playing live, stop, adjust, play, etc...

It sounds good with plenty of range. It looks fantastic!

[bcdon***]

Great review!

I've wanted to build a pedal but as I don't have much room at the place I've been putting it of. However, I'm back at a company that has a nice lab so I might just build one there. Thanks again for the nice review!

[Ch0jin]

Thanks for the kind words guys

bcdon, truth be told, that pedal was assembled on the coffee table in my lounge room, spray painted on my little balcony and epoxy coated in my kitchen. You don't need much space, you just need to live alone so nobody complains about you wet sanding in the same sink you prepare your meals A lab however sounds like the perfect place to start building, assuming it's an electronics type lab and not a chemistry lab or something

I've since set up a little table to work on, in what would typically be a dining area (but mine is full of amps, guitars, photography stuff and my computer area, so no dining room table in my place) as I've got the urge to try and build a couple of pedals for sale, maybe see if I can subsidise the expensive delay I want.

Tig, The looper idea just came to me as I was holding my video camera in one hand and my guitar in the other thinking "this is never gunna work". It's the way to do it for sure.

SYO, I agree on the strings, I actually ordered sets for all three guitars yesterday so I should have them in the post today. I just had some free time for that demo so I went for it, dull strings, cheap curly cord and all