It all started with the Phase 90, created by engineer Keith Barr after he decided that he could build a more reliable and better sounding phaser than the bulky and poorly built options on the market at the time. The resulting pedal’s compact size, superior construction, and refined sound put MXR on the map, and it set the standard by which all other phasers are judged.

A couple years after MXR released the Phase 90, the Phase 45 was born. In contrast to the Phase 90’s 4-stage phasing, the Phase 45 was designed with a mellower 2-stage circuit that is favored for its ability to easily blend into a band’s mix.

As MXR transitioned from script logo to block logo housings, MXR’s engineers added a feedback resistor to the Phase 90 circuit. Whereas the first Phase 90 circuit—now called Script—had a subtle and more subdued swoosh, the feedback resistor gave what is now called the Block circuit a dirtier, more pronounced phasing sound. A small number of early Block logo housings contain the original Script circuit, so it’s not always accurate to rely just on the pedal’s housing when identifying a vintage Phase 90.

In the late 1970s, MXR released the Phase 100, which has an altogether different circuit from the Phase 90 and Phase 45, with a different range of sounds. Along with the Speed control, it features a 4-position rotary switch that selects between four different intensities.

MXR went out of business in the early 1980s, but Dunlop resurrected the brand toward the end of the decade. The first pedals to be released under Dunlop’s stewardship were the Distortion+, the Dyna Comp® Compressor, the Blue Box™ Fuzz, and of course the Phase 90, all in Block form with the on/off status LEDs and AC power jacks that MXR eventually added. Since then, Dunlop has re-released each of MXR’s original phasers and has continued to develop new ones along the way.

Our first Phase 90 innovation came in the form of the EVH Phase 90.

When Eddie Van Halen expressed interest in recreating some of his classic MXR pedals, Dunlop engineer Bob Cedro thought of the spacey swirls and hypnotic warbles heard on early Eddie’s early recordings and pulled out his original 1974 script logo Phase 90. Using that as his base, Bob built a prototype Script-style Phase 90 that he hot-rodded for increased headroom and dynamic range. For testing purposes, he included a switch that Eddie could use to toggle between the two sounds for comparison. Eddie loved it, but he wanted to keep the Script/Block switch so that he could have both circuits in hot-rodded form.

The huge success of the EVH Phase 90 led Bob back to his original 1974 Phase 90. He used it to create the ’74 Vintage Phase 90, which features a hand-wired board with select resistors and hand-matched FETs and comes housed in the classic orange finished box with the unmistakable Script logo. For further authenticity, this box has no LED and can only be powered by a battery. For those who wanted a Script version with modern upgrades such as the on/off status LED and an AC power jack, Bob and the MXR team created the Script Phase 90.

To date, Dunlop has only produced one standalone version of the Phase 45: the ’75 Vintage Phase 45, a reissue of the original built to exacting specifications. As with the Vintage Phase 90, it features hand-matched FETs and a hand-wired circuit board.

Now let’s talk about the incredibly versatile Phase 95. First, you get both the mellow two-stage phasing of the Phase 45 and the more intense four-stage phasing of the Phase 90, with a 45/90 switch to toggle between the two. Once you select between those two iconic MXR phasers, you can choose to go with the lush, subdued sound and clarity of the original Script circuit or the light harmonic distortion and accentuated swoosh of the modern Block circuit thanks to the Script switch. As always, the familiar Speed control sets the rate of the effect.

What you’re getting with the Phase 95 is four different pedals in one: a Script Phase 45, a Script Phase 90, a Block Phase 45—which has never been offered before—and a Block Phase 90. Oh, and as we mentioned, it all comes in a mini housing that takes up a fraction of the space occupied by a standard pedal. Here’s how it looks on a mini travel board with a Germanium Fuzz Face® Mini Distortion and a Cry Baby® Mini Wah:

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have the EP-3’s sonic mojo for yourself. We created the Echoplex line of pedals to give you that sound in a convenient, pedalboard-friendly form that you can take on the road. Last year, we came out with the Echoplex Preamp. This year, we’re releasing the second component of the EP-3’s signature sound in the form of the Echoplex Delay. Like the Echoplex Preamp, it’s the size of a Phase 90, and it delivers the EP-3’s legendary tones with a simple control interface and a hi-fi all-analog dry path.

If you’re not an advanced tonechaser, you may never have heard of the Echoplex EP-3. But you’ve definitely heard what it can do. Eddie Van Halen is known to have used them religiously in the early days, even taking his units on tour. Jimmy Page, who originally used the Echoplex EP-2 unit, switched over to the EP-3 as soon as it came out, and it remains an essential part of his rig. Brian May had his EP-3s modified to extend delay time. Eric Johnson has used them for years, even putting them directly on his pedalboard on occasion. And that’s just to name a few.

To get at what made the EP-3 so appealing to these and other guitar greats, we had to focus on the EP-3 in two separate elements: the preamp and the delay effect.

THE PREAMP

There’s nothing transparent about the EP-3. If your signal goes through it, your tone changes—even if you don’t use the delay effect. Turned out some guitar players loved that tonal seasoning. It’s all thanks to EP-3’s preamp.

The Echoplex EP-1 and EP-2 machines sounded rich and warm thanks to the tubes in their preamp sections, but their repeats tended toward muddiness. The EP-3, on the other had, uses a solid-state preamp—providing much needed clarity—with a Field Effect Transistor (FET) supplying depth and warmth in place of tubes.

The Echoplex Preamp sweetens up your sound in the same way. Its circuitry follows the exact same signal path as the EP-3, including the FET circuit, so when you kick it on, you’re adding the same secret ingredient to your tonal recipe that was favored by the aforementioned guitar greats. The Preamp’s single Gain control sets the pedal’s volume and can boost your signal up to +11dB. At higher settings, you’ll hear slight asymmetrical clipping for some very smooth and organic grit.

THE DELAY

The charm of the EP-3’s delay effect is that each repetition is unique. When you play a note, it’s recorded onto the tape and played back. The first repeat is clear, but because of the slight pitch changes inherent to tape machines that are imparted onto the signal, it’s not identical. That slightly imperfect first repeat is itself recorded for the second repeat, which now includes new imperfections in addition to the old ones.

We created the Echoplex Delay pedal to provide that same charming “copy of a copy” magic and more. Rather than just recreate the sound of a pristine EP-3, we wanted this pedal to give players the full range of tones available from an EP-3 machine throughout its lifetime.

To start, we gathered up seven different EP-3 units. These machines are 40 or so years old by now, so quality and condition are all over the place, and we wanted to be sure we had a good selection of units to evaluate. We chose five of them to be serviced and calibrated, and then we picked the best sounding one—the one with the least wow and flutter—to be the default sound.

We used the other machines to dial in the range of sounds for the Age control, which allows you to “age” the delay signal from clean and clear to dark and distorted. Tape echo machines have a lot of moving parts, and over the years, they lose functionality and break down. This can add gain, distortion, and wow and flutter while darkening up the tone—characteristics that many guitar players have come to love about their maturing EP-3s. We simulated those changes so you can use the Age control to make your repeats sound like a brand new EP-3 or one that’s been sitting in your garage for a few decades. Taking the Age control fully clockwise can take you into freakout territory, beyond the aging effects found in any of the units we worked with.

With the Delay control, you can set the time between repeats to anywhere from 40ms to 750ms, but the Echoplex Delay can be connected to an MXR Tap Tempo Switch to set delay time up to 4 seconds.

COMBINING THE ECHOPLEX PREAMP AND ECHOPLEX DELAY

Combining the Echoplex Preamp and the Echoplex Delay pedals allows you to condition your guitar tone as an “always on” effect with the preamp and kick on the delay effect as you need it.

All you need to do is put the Echoplex Preamp in front of the Echoplex Delay in your signal chain. While the Echoplex Delay’s effect signal is already conditioned with the tonality of the Preamp, putting the Preamp in front of the Delay ensures that the “dry” signal going through the Delay is also sweetened up by the Preamp.

It’s like having the full EP-3 on your pedalboard, but instead of having to dial the delay function up or down with a knob, you can step in and out of it with a footswitch.

How were you introduced to the wah, and who influenced your use of it?

John Petrucci: My introduction to the wah was gradual. I kept hearing it on all these songs, and I couldn’t help wanting to find out what it was when I was learning to play as a teenager. At that time, I was a big fan of Iron Maiden, and I’d listen to how Dave Murray used the wah.

But it was Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien that really changed everything for me, though. The way that he uses it as an extension of the expression of his playing, and the way he shapes the notes to make them envelope or be more mellow or more open or sustain or get feedback—that’s probably the biggest influence on the way that I use the wah today.

How do you incorporate the wah into your own playing?

JP: Using the Cry Baby Wah is like bending, or sliding, or using vibrato on your guitar. It’s a way to add more expression and dynamics to what you’re playing. If you get the hang of it, you can really control where the note blossoms. Generally, I use that expressive character to shape my leads, but there are certain situation where it does become an integral component of the songwriting.

The combination of playing hard, playing fast, and stepping on the wah really sets the whole thing on fire.

I remember when the 535Q first came out, with the adjustable Q and frequency range, when we were writing the Scenes from Memory album. I dialed in the perfect sound with that pedal, one I’d never really heard before. We wrote this song “Home,” which has this big wah riff to it. The wah simply accentuates the riff, but it created a unique sound that’s crucial to the impact of the song. If you play that riff without the wah, it just doesn’t sound the same.

Another way I like to use my Cry Baby Wah is to take an aggressive lick to the next level, opening up the notes and getting them to scream and feedback. The combination of playing hard, playing fast, and stepping on the wah really sets the whole thing on fire.

But first, we want to introduce you to the MXR Double-Double Overdrive. It combines a classic Japanese overdrive circuit, famous for its rich, fiery midrange, and a modern American overdrive circuit known for its abundant supply of gain and greater emphasis on high and low frequencies. The result is a versatile array of overdrive tones that are designed to enhance the sound of your guitar and amp setup. Rather than a simple tone control, the this pedal features separate Treble and Bass controls for greater control over the tone of your overdriven sound.

We’ll be using the Double-Double Overdrive to help explain some of our points below.

What do you want your overdrive pedal to do for you?

Boost. Sometimes, all you need is a touch of boost with a little bit of color. In other words, you want to bump up the output of your guitar signal so that it’s mostly clean, but it has just a slight bit of tonal coloration. Like getting the sound of a blackface type amp on “10” but at a lower volume.

Getting this colorful boosted sound would go something like this: Set your amp to your preferred clean setting. Using the Double-Double Overdrive, choose the Hi or Lo setting for your preferred tonal profile and keep the Drive knob nearly fully counterclockwise. Then use the Treble and Bass controls to shape the sound of your signal and the Level control to set how much you want to boost it. Obviously your taste will vary, but that’s a place to start.

Complement. Players often use overdrive pedals to enhance or complement an already overdriven amplifier. One reason might be to boost the signal with a little bit of color. Another reason might be to fill in or focus specific frequencies for a sound that better cuts through the mix. Or maybe you just want a bigger and more intense sound by adding a whole new gain stage to your signal chain.

Set your amp to your preferred level of overdrive. From there, it’s all up to your experimentation with the pedal’s controls. The Double-Double Overdrive provides plenty of options with its two different OD circuits and separate Treble and Bass controls—tweak until you find a sound that works well with your amp’s natural overdrive.

Replace. Sometimes the sound of your overdrive pedal is so good that that’s all you want to hear. This is pretty much the “plug in and go for it” approach, but if you have a tweakable pedal such as the Double-Double Overdrive, you should take some time to figure out the breadth of options available to you. Since you’re starting with a clean amp, you’ve also got a clean slate. Set your amp the way you want it and tweak the pedal to your heart’s content.

Pickup & Amp Considerations

Your overdrive pedal is just a small part of your tonal recipe. A number of other factors can affect your sound depending on how elaborate your setup is, but we’re going to focus on two components that every electric guitar player has in common: pickups and amplifiers.

Pickups. Most players use single-coil pickups or humbucking pickups. Generally speaking, single-coil pickups produce a greater tonal range (more highs and lows) with a lower output, while humbuckers sound more focused in the mids and low mids and produce a higher output. What does this have to do with overdrive pedal settings? Well, a setting configuration that sounds great with single-coil pickups may not sound that great with humbuckers, and vice versa.

Take the Double-Double Overdrive as an example. To get a good baseline, set the Volume at noon, the Drive very low, Bass off, and Treble at noon. Listen to how everything sounds and adjust as necessary. If you need beef up your single-coil signal, choose the Hi setting, you’ll want to turn up the Drive, roll off the Treble, and add some Bass. If you want to tighten up your humbucker signal for a more focused lead tone, try the Lo setting with Bass off, Treble at 2 o’clock, and Drive to taste. Ultimately, it depends on what your goals are: do you want the overdrive sound to complement the tonal profile of your pickups or give it something it may be missing?

Amps. Two of the most popular amp styles are the plexi and the blackface. Plexi-style amps generally have more mid-focused gain, whereas blackface-style amps have a cleaner, more scooped sound. The same question applies here as it does with pickups and any other piece of gear: what sound do you want?

If you’re running a guitar with single-coil pickups through a blackface-style amp and your overdrive signal sounds a bit thin, try turning up the Drive and Bass on the Double-Double Overdrive. If you’re running a guitar with humbuckers through a plexi-style amp, you may want to accentuate and boost the mids for a searing solo that cuts through the cacophony of the band. Try a lower Bass setting and bring the Drive down while letting the amp providing most of the distortion.

A quick note on blackface-style amps: they have a lot of headroom. Cranking them into overdrive territory can result in unusable volume levels. So how do you combine the natural overdrive of a blackface-style amplifier with that of an overdrive pedal? Use the pedal’s volume control—it’ll make the amp work harder than it normally would at usable volume settings, and you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Dialing in Specific Tones

Now let’s look at how all those factors might come into play to create a specific sound.

For a classic rock sound, you’ll want a guitar with low to medium output humbuckers and a plexi-style amp that’s already pushing into overdrive territory. Try the setting the Double-Double Overdrive to its Lo setting with the Treble control around 1 o’clock, the Bass around 11 o’clock, Level around 1 o’clock, and Drive around 12 o’clock.

For a Texas blues rock sound, use a guitar with single-coil pickups and a blackface-style amp turned up loud. Set the Double-Double Overdrive to its Lo setting, with Bass set low, Treble turned up, and Drive to taste (but not too much).

For a classic thrash metal setting, use a guitar with active humbuckers and a high-gain 6L6 blackface-style amp that’s already overdriven. With the Double-Double Overdrive’s Lo setting selected, set the Bass knob low, Treble around 12 o’clock, Level around 2 o’clock, and Drive about 11 o’clock.

Remember, these are just guidelines. Your gear and sonic needs may require different pedal settings, but hopefully you have a better understanding of some of the ways that an overdrive pedal such as the Double-Double Overdrive can interact with your guitar and amplifier. Always use your ears to dial in the sound you want, not your eyes.