Bring the sound of legendary mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain's vintage analog flanger and phaser modules to your digital tracks with Apogee Electronics' Clearmountain's Phases modulation plug-in.

Combining current technology for accurate authentic models with the experience and ears of Bob Clearmountain, this plug-in delivers classic, psychedelic effects from the 60s and 70s heard on records by bands like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and many others.

Start with instrument-specific presets (created by Bob Clearmountain) designed to replicate the processing used on an extensive list of hit songs, or create your own using the plug-in's variety of parameters. Adjust distortion, aliasing, and aging to emulate original hardware, or go beyond analog units with expanded settings like custom routing and LFO sync.

Highlights:

• Authentic emulations of Bob Clearmountain's vintage flanger and phaser modules
• Presets give you access to Clearmountain's personal settings for iconic songs and apps
• Use Module Configuration to combine flanger and phaser for complex, evolving soundscapes
• Expanded configuration modules offer a universe of possibilities beyond the original units
• Adjust distortion, aliasing and aging of hardware unit components or keep the sound clean
• AAX, Audio Units, VST, and VST3 plug-in formats
• Compatible with macOS and Windows

Clearmountain's Favorite Flanger

Originally created through a labor-intensive process that required two tape machines playing the same material in sync, but with a slight variation in speed on one of the machines, the flanging effect required a lot of equipment, setup time and expertise to accomplish. Clearmountain's Phases brings Bob Clearmountain's favorite hardware flanger processor to your hands, with control over the original manual sweep, sweep oscillator, and mixing.

With expanded controls, including feedback, LFO phase, high-pass filters, and polarity inversion controls, you can emulate plugin workflows that originally required outboard gear with vintage modules. True zero-crossing tape flange mode reproduces the dramatic effect that happens when two tape machines flange perfectly. You can even swap out the emulation of the central bucket-brigade delay (BBD) chip to explore much larger sweep ranges. Finally, to really add the harshness and flavor of the original hardware to your tracks, adjust the desired amount of distortion and aliasing.

Phase, Feedback and More

The Phaser offers a softer modulation that Bob uses to create the essential wavy, watery electric piano, occasional psychedelic drums, and more extreme textures in combination with the flanger. Many of the same original and expanded flanger controls are present on the phaser—feedback, LFO phase, high-pass filters, and polarity inversion controls—for a consistent user experience.

With the Stages button, you can reproduce the sonic characteristics of hardware phasers, from stompbox favorites, to vintage hardware units and modern plug-ins. Adjust the feedback to intensify the effect with added resonance, then adjust the feedback tap for even more sonic variation. Turn on the Analog button to more closely model the original hardware feedback implementation. Finally, take the plug-in back in time with the Age trimpot to reproduce the smoothing effects of aging hardware components.

Customizable Configuration

When Bob was looking to create a richer, more extreme texture, he sent his tracks through the flanger and phaser modules, and you can do the same with the Module Config feature. Flange the phaser, phase the flanger, or apply both and mix to achieve the sound of your imagination.

To add a rotating width that moves across the stereo image, he connected several modules and then set different scan rates for the left and right sides of each module. Listen to Mick's vocal on the Stones' Heaven or Bowie's recording of China Girl to hear the result. You can recreate these special sounds with the Module Config feature and Sweep Rate Select.

Iconic Presets

When the Clearmountain name is on the packaging, rest assured that Bob himself reviewed every detail — including the presets you get with the plug-in. You don't need an engineering degree to get started; instead, look over the shoulder of a legendary mixing engineer.

Bob carefully created each preset based on specific instruments and processing from his extensive catalog of timeless hit mixes. Want to experience the Stones' Heaven vocal sound described above? Just load the preset.

Specifications: