Grateful Dead Music Forum

So this has come up a few times recently, and I thought a post with an example of the "sound" of the device in question was in order.

The following Candyman is from the Spring of '84.
Weir is on his custom Cutler Manual Rocker Pedal Phaser pretty much though the whole song:

Candyphase!

Total Weir .... he is very original .... he has a sound like no one else.

This sounds like a mixture of the AF-9 and phase or flanger from the UE. I get this sound when I can't push my AF to really squawk. To me it's undesirable

Dozin wrote:This sounds like a mixture of the AF-9 and phase or flanger from the UE. I get this sound when I can't push my AF to really squawk. To me it's undesirable

thats the thing,and what makes this manual phaser unique: it does have wah properties, but it is not an auto wah, the sweep is way to slow at certain points, faster at others and you cannot change the af-9 midstream like that without bending over and screwing with sliders and switches......;also the properties of the effect change, he will rock it steep, he will do subtle rocks, and there are a couple points where he has it in fixed position......


forget all that though: I am 1000% positive it is not the AF-9 and a UE effect, because I was at the show this candyman was taken from (4/24/84 new Haven coliseum) and watched Weir's foot on a crybabay like wah/rocker for the whole song. I was in High School and already playing Bobby parts in a GD cover band, so I watched everything he did.

I haven't gotten around to working the wah portion into it yet, but:

http://www.rukind.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=309&t=7986

My opinion is that the non-sweeping phaser portion was on almost constantly in that era, just not being rocked on most tunes. I would bet that the phaser was set so his base position that he liked the most was with the pedal all the way back and he could vary it when he wanted to.