Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
The first of Death By Audio's Destroyer Series has landed - the superb 6-Mode, 6-Stage Analog Moonbeam Phaser
Strange as it may seem - this is my very first ever Death By Audio pedal - where I’m determined to acquire all of the Destroyer Series - where the Stereo Dream Station Echo-Verb will most likely be my next target. I was hugely impressed by the demos, and while many DBA pedals are somewhat oversized for my preference - including the Fuzz War. These Destroyer Series ones are perfect compact variants.
It’s not that I haven’t intended to get DBA pedals before - but it’s just not happened yet - I do of course have hundreds of other brands to contend with - and the priorities are often based on opportunistic acquisitions - where I don’t have any direct connection with DBA or one of their dealers - so I can’t typically acquire these opportunistically - and I have to balance the budget very smartly each month!
In any case I'm very enamoured with my new Moonbeam - it's 6-Mode switch does a lot of the heavy lifting, and delivers so many cool and unusual sounds that in a granular fashion would likely require several more controls. The potency of this circuit is in part that you get so many killer sounds with just 3 controls - where the strip-LED lights up and animates per each of the Mode colours.
Controls - Frequency, Depth, Mode : RED Sweeping HPF/Trem | YELLOW Sweeping Resonant Notch Filter | GREEN Phaser/Harmonic Trem / CYAN Classic Phaser | BLUE more intense resonance + Treble Focus | PURPLE Full Bassy Chewy Phaser
Ports - TS / TRS In (M/S), 9V DC [-] 72mA, TRS Out
Frequency is Speed / Oscillation, and Depth is Intensity. Where you need to adjust both those dials per mode - as say a high Depth of 3 o'c for the Red HPF / Tremolo mode - will be way too intense for the other modes - for each Mode I find I need to adjust both dials somewhat.
All 6 Modes are pretty great - they are all useful - where my favourites are 1 RED, 3 GREEN, and 4 CYAN Modes.
I have around 30 phaser pedals now - and I just landed 2 this month - also the Seymour Duncan Polaron. Both of those are excellent, and worthy additions to the Reference Collection.
I look forward to landing the Dream Station in the next month or two - there's definitely plenty happening already, and January is already a bumper month for me - the board has rarely sounded this consistently great!
Moonbeam Key Features
- Analog Stereo 6-Stage Phaser pedal
- Perfect for both mono and stereo chains, because of the onboard input configuration switch S/TRS and TS to TRS compatible
- Phase Selector control for switching between the different phasers, indicated by the LED’s colour
- RED – A sweeping high pass filter and tremolo
- YELLOW – A sweeping notch filter with resonant peaks on each side
- GREEN – A cross between a phaser and a harmonic tremolo
- CYAN – the most famous, classic phaser sound you know and love
- BLUE – Adds in more intense resonance and treble focus to the 4-phase sound
- PURPLE – A full, bassy, and chewy-sounding phaser sound
- Wide frequency range from 0,006 Hz to 140 Hz
- Super slow phasing with up to over two minutes of phase sweeps
- Controls for Frequency and Depth
- Top-mounted Jacks
- Hand-made in New York, USA
- Powered by (opt.) 9V DC PSU (centre -, 2.1 mm, ~ 72 mA current draw, not included)
- MAP / RRP : $250 / €299 / £259
Demos
