Synth-Werk Recreating Harald Bode Barberpole Phaser

Ahead of Superbooth 2023, SYNTH-WERK has announced a collaboration with the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and University of Music in Karlsruhe to reconstruct the first device out of the Harald Bode archive, the extremely rare Barberpole Phaser.

The Barberpole Phaser is based on the psychoacoustic principles of the Shepard scale and the Shepard-Risset glissando, discovered in the 1960s. A tone or sound input to the Barberpole Phaser seemingly has an everlasting glissando upwards or downwards, as long as the tone is played.

Bode created the effect using comb filter peaks in 1981.  The Barberpole Phaser turned out to be Bode’s last completed instrument.

Features:

  • Infinite phasing, either direction
  • No glitches, no splices
  • Standard up & down phasing & freeze
  • Multiple phasing
  • Variable number of comb filter peaks
  • Rotating sound effects
  • Built-in variable fuzz

Details are still to be announced,  but it looks like SYNTH-WERK is creating a reissue of the original design.

 

Photo credit: ZKM

17 thoughts on “Synth-Werk Recreating Harald Bode Barberpole Phaser

  1. Looks like a nice reissue of a rare piece of vintage gear. Looking forward to hear some sound demos.
    But what`s also great is that I`ve learned something new today: If you make a 100% one-on-one copy of old gear, you are “reconstructing” and you “create a reissue of the original design”, but if you reissue old gear, maybe even with some added new features like usb, midi-in, fx and a smaller size, you “make a knockoff”.
    Thank you Synthopia for this eye-opener; lesson learned!

    1. It’s funny how some people manage to make every post on Synthtopia about their insecurities toward their Behringer gear. Just enjoy making music with whatever you have mate, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

      1. Exactly.

        People are butthurt over the term ‘knockoff’, but if you look at Behringer’s Facebook page, just about 100% of the comments are people asking them to make a cheap copy of another company’s gear.

      2. I’d leave the first half and keep the second part for every future Synthtopia post. I think people get defensive on both ends because they see pro-B posts as unethical and anti-B posts as elitist, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Behringer does make some junk (like their pedals; decent sound but horrible bypass and very cheap enclosures), but they also have some hits (TD-3-MO, Model-D, Neutron, etc.). Honestly, if someone wants to rip a fat analog synth but only has a few hundred dollars, they shouldn’t hesitate to buy a Behringer (even though I’d recommend a Typhon), regardless of what a bunch of people say in the forums.

    2. ‘Knockoff’ – cheap, unofficial copy of a product, marketed as a cheap copy of the original, typically has obvious design changes to make it cheaper to manufacturer or to avoid lawsuits
      ‘clone’ – functionally an exact copy of a product
      ‘reissue’ – official rerelease of the original product
      ‘inspired by’, ‘based on’ – uses ideas from earlier designs, but isn’t designed to be a copy of a specific product.

      SYNTH-WERK’s Bode Barberpole Phaser isn’t officially a product yet, but it looks like it will be Bode branded and not have design changes to make it cheaper to manufacture, so it doesn’t make sense to categorize it as a knockoff, but it would be more accurate to call it a clone or reissue.

    3. Admin: Personal attack deleted.

      State your perspective without the personal attacks or just keep your comments on topic and constructive.

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