Nick James has built a reputation for making quality replica guitar effects pedals and his take on the Foxx foot phaser made famous by Brian May of Queen should be of particular interest to enthusiasts. Foxx released several versions of the foot phaser with different number of phase stages and circuit design. However it is the Mk 1 design that is most synonymous with Brian May. The pedal has a distinctive orange powder coated standard sized case with custom screen printed black fox graphic and lettering. It has a heavy duty on/off footswitch, two rotary potentiometers controlling depth and speed and a toggle switch to select the required range. It would make a versatile addition to any amateur or professional Queen/Brian May guitar player’s pedalboard, assuming that you are still a traditionalist and haven’t transitioned to rack-mounted multi-effects processor!
The build quality of this pedal is a match for any commercially available equipment from big name pedal manufacturers as you can see from the pictures in the gallery above. As any self-respecting effects pedal builder will admit, building a quality pedal with high signal-to-noise ratio and authentic tonal reproduction requires exhaustive testing to find components with tight tolerances and in this case, a set of ten matching transistors. This involves manually testing thousands of transistors to get the perfect result.
The two embedded videos below show a demonstration of this pedal at the 2019 U.K. Red Special meet-up at Theale Village Hall near Reading, hosted by Martin Pitcher playing his Guyton Brian May Red Special replica and Mark Reynolds operating the pedals and a review by Italian Brian May tribute band guitarist Marco G. di Marco on his YouTube channel. The opinion of the Brian May enthusiasts who attended the meet-up event was very favourable but you can decide for yourself how accurate the tone is.
Check out a version of this pedal made in collaboration with PastFX who are based in Brisbane, Australia:
http://www.pastfx.com/index.php/effects/nick-james-foot-phaser
Specifications
- 10 hand matched JFET transistors
- Speed knob
- Depth knob
- 2 speed range switch
- 9 V DC power
- Quality components including Neutrik 1/4″ jack sockets and Lumberg DC power socket
- LED on/off indicator
- Powder coated enclosure with UV printed graphic
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