Van Halen flanger settings?

Hi skyhighrocks.....i definitely back you up on this because apart of being a crazy fan of Eddie (I'm 47), i.'m looking for a flanger on the same album, which is the one on the clean guitar intro on tell you about it later...

Let me know when you get one of those......

Heve a look at the local presets!

Let this thread LIVE!!!!

I wanted to share the settings I used. Unfortunately I don't have my KPA in front of me. From memory, I think they were about as follows:
Flanger in pre (Stomp) placement
Rate: 0.1 HZ (1/10 s)
Depth: ~3.3
Manual: ~3.0
Feedback: ~85%
Mix: ~70%

Here's a breakdown of how I got there.

The first question is pre or post. For EVH, the answer is pre (aka Stomp). This will make the flanging effect more subtle - it is still quite clearly noticeable, but the giant swooshing is a bit more mellow. What it really affects is the resulting distortion tone from the amp. I tend not to like a flanger in post placement - the effect is too prominent and distracting to your actual playing IMO. But in pre, it plays more with the distortion tone, which is more interesting, but without burying your actual playing with the effect.

The most obvious parameter to adjust is rate. For EVH, it's a nice slow rate. I'm not exactly sure, but it's going to be something like 0.05 to 0.2 HZ. What I do is I play the main riff from Unchained. The first time through you want to hear the Flanger sweep "upwards" on the palm mutes after the initial D chords. The second time through, you want to hear the sweep go "downwards" on the palm mutes. The rate itself can be difficult to hear if you don't set the other parameters correctly. So I usually set it around 0.1 HZ initially, dial in the other parameters, then come back and get the precise rate I want last.

The important thing to realize about Depth and Manual is that they play against each other. If you have Depth set high and Manual set low, you'll get a weird double-swoosh sound at the extremes of the sweep, instead of a nice smooth swoosh that moves up and down on a perfect sine wave pattern. The lower you set Depth, the lower you can set Manual without hearing the off-putting double-swoosh.

Manual is a bit counter-untuitive at first. It is really designed so that you can set Depth to 0 and set Manual to an expression pedal, where you can manually control the swoosh. However, it will affect the operation of the effect even if you don't actively manipulate it. Flangers work by delaying a signal and mixing it with the original to get a comb filter effect. By constantly changing the delay amount, the filtered frequencies move up and down the frequency spectrum. Manual is a fixed delay amount. Now it makes sense how you can control the flanger sweep using this parameter - you are manually altering the delay amount.

Now when you use Depth > 0, Manual is the "baseline" delay amount. Depth will sweep the delay from x ms below to x ms above whatever you set Manual. So for instance, if Depth is 3 ms and Manual is 20 ms, the sweep would cycle from 17 - 23 ms and back. I believe the double-swoosh is caused by going past the 0 delay point. For example, if Depth is 10 ms and Manual is 5 ms, the sweep would be -5 to +15 ms. When you go past 0, you are essentially inverting the expected result - a swoosh downwards suddenly reverses into a swoosh upwards.

The key to the EVH sound is to only set Depth high enough to sweep the sweet spot, where you have the clear swoosh effect on palm mutes. You can also hear it on single notes very well, while chords tend to sound only slightly affected. This is good - it lets the chords shine through instead of turning everything into a swirly mess.

But first you have the sweet spot. This is best done by setting Depth very low or even to 0 and turning the Manual parameter as you play palm mutes. I find a lower settings work best, where you are sweeping from around 1 - 6. The sweet spot is the center of that range. I find it's around 3 or 3.5.

Now slowly turn Depth up as you keep playing palm mutes. Now you can hear more and more of a swoosh. If you go too high, you find you'll get the double-swoosh mentioned above. But even before you hit that point, you'll notice the high point of your sweep seems to "get lost", where you don't hear the strong effect on palm mutes anymore. And if you try to play chords, the flanger clearly affects them more heavily on the "high" side of the sweep. Again, you ONLY want to set Depth high enough so that the sweep is clearly affecting palm mutes. I find the value is around 3.5.

Feedback is what really makes the flanger sound crazy. Without any feedback, you're left with a boring comb filter. With 100% feedback, it sounds like you're on Los Angeles International's main runway. I find I like to set this value pretty high - like 75-90%. This can be a bit extreme - I compensate with the Mix parameter. A mix of anywhere from 50-80% tends to work well.

Awesome, thanks for such a thorough explanation! Depth and Manual have always confused me and I just resorted to turning those knobs arbitrarily. Can't wait to apply your tips.

Depth and Manual should not confuse you. It's the only way to give you full control about the effect, beyond the one knob control of some other Flangers and Phasers.

Manual is the base setting. With non-zero Depth settings the Flanger will swing around (!) the Manual setting.
Only when Manual is full left or right the swing is into one direction, so it does not hit the limit.

The Flanger does not swing through zero.

Thanks for the clarification, Christoph. I'm still curious about the "double-swoosh" at the sweep's extremes, though.

So let's say I set Manual to wherever 5 ms would be with Depth at 0 ms. Then I turn Depth up towards +/- 10 ms. When Depth hits +/- 5 ms, does this mean the Manual setting automatically adjusts upwards so that the sweep follows its normal sine wave pattern with a minimum of 0 ms? IE, when Depth is +/- 10 ms, Manual is set to 10 ms.

Or is the sweep pattern altered (clipped, phase inverted, etc.) to accommodate never crossing 0?

Also, what is the maximum delay? I assume that's perfect cancellation of a 20 HZ frequency, so 100 ms?

What are the max/min Manual settings?

Your first thesis is right. You can easily check it out by yourself!

For a double or triple "swosh" no zero crossing is needed.
Whenever a multiple of the wavelengh you play is hit by the delay, you get a sound like a zero crossing.