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Ibanez PH5 Phaser

Posted on 14/02/2014 by mirosol

PH5

What is it?
Ibanez PH5 Phaser from the Soundtank series. Made in taiwan around 1996.

I’ll admit it. I love phasers. Don’t use them much (or at all) on my standard pedal board, but i always have a couple of differently voiced ones with me when i’m in studio. Some phasers are bad, while some can really improve your tone. This one sinks easily into the latter category. Opening this puppy up shows oldschool acidy corners on the traces, which always make me feel warm and fuzzy.

PH5-guts2

As i couldn’t find a reasonable schematic floating around, i’m going to assume couple of things by just looking at the component side of the board. To me this looks like a four stage design with JRC1458s acting as LFOs and single TL022 taking care of the mixing. Some folks on forums were talking about this being quite close to the PT9, which may very well be true. If you get a chance to read the schematic for this, the phasing JFET biasing should not be overlooked. Forum folks say that it’s unconventional.

PH5-guts1

With just three controls, this is quite versatile phaser. Speed and Depth act as they should and the Feedback control can take this thing in to space. Bad swithing, as is natural for the series, but simply swapping it makes this run happily again. I do have couple of other phasers in my collection, but it seems that i take this one with me a lot.

How does it sound?
Soft and powerful. From slow and mild to fast, vibe-like and swirly wild. Despite the near-standard Phase90-style circuitry, this is versatile phaser that sounds quite natural. Biasing sounds on point and accurate as there are no “broken” parts on the phasing sweep. Really nice sounding design which makes this one of the best sounding phaser tools i know.

4 thoughts on “Ibanez PH5 Phaser”

  1. traskVT says:
    6/03/2014 at 06:20

    I got a steal on one of these for $10 shipped, so I bought it, completely expecting a really crappy pedal. I must say, I was amazed and slightly in awe of how great it sounds and how usable it is. I was blown away! I’m in the same boat where I don’t really use phasers that much either, but I like to have them around. This one is definitely staying in my collection as well!

    Reply
  2. Leon says:
    12/02/2021 at 21:22

    I know it’s been a while since this was posted but wanted to say thanks for the ‘reviews’ and just picked one of these up for £19 delivered. My 3rd Soundtank, thanks to you and I don’t even really use pedals….LOL

    But I do advise beginners on what might be the best gear to start with on a tight budget and you have helped in that respect as with these cheaper pedals, in the usual forums most are disregarded, due to corksniffness. :)

    Looking forward to it and I do use your site as a personal reference as it seems you actually use the pedals you talk about which is much better than some salesman on YT telling people what they want to hear.

    Thanks.

    Leon

    Reply
  3. Brandon says:
    24/09/2022 at 04:48

    What’s the yellow trim pot looking thing and what does it do?

    Reply
    1. mirosol says:
      22/10/2022 at 17:11

      Hi. Check Dirk’s schematic: http://www.dirk-hendrik.com/temp/ibanez_ph5.pdf
      The 1k trim sets the depth bias for the JFETs and the 100K sets the feedback path bias.
      +m

      Reply

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here used to be a short description of me. however, it wasn't exactly accurate anymore. so i'm replacing it with this placeholder for now. and yes. it's been a long time since my last post. but let me assure you. i'm very much still alive.

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