Solid Gold FX Athena Vibraphase

Athena; daughter of Zeus. She’s recognized as strong, yet merciful, she has at least some roots in music, having invented the aulos, a double-reeded flute-like instrument. She’s the goddess of wisdom, war, and in our case, handicraft. She’s also the half-sister of Apollo, which coincidentally shares its name with an awesome phaser we make.

Our Athena vibra-phase unit fittingly contains two of the four stages of the Apollo, giving you the juicy, chewy swoosh of our full-featured with a little less brashness and with tons of character to spare. However, like the goddess herself, Athena is much more than a simple feature set and design parameters.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: A Uni-Vibe is essentially a souped up phaser. Well, yes and no. While they are topologically similar, the Uni-Vibe requires a little more fine tuning—asymmetric tuning in this case. Athena has all that. It’s perfectly voiced to hold court with the rest of your effects and your instrument’s natural tone. In short: It’s highly musical and dynamic, just like your playing.

Speed, depth, level—these come standard. But where the Athena really earns its keep is in its mode and color switches. The mode switch lets you change between different levels of blending to let a little or a lot of wet signal through. One mode position sets Athena to manual mode, where an optional expression pedal lets you manipulate the sweep of Athena without having to bow.

Color gives you three levels of oomph that push the Uni-Vibe character into overdrive, essentially giving you a high, medium and low amount of throb for some truly inspiring textures. Adding Athena to any of your solos or chordal work is an excellent idea, dredging up rich harmonics while generating serious spatial movement. It’s time to pay tribute to your tone.

KNOBS

• Speed: This changes the rate of Athena’s LFO, from syrupy slow to blazing fast. When the mode toggle is set to manual mode, this knob controls the position of the phase shift.
• Depth: Changes the amount of throb in the circuit, from a wading pool to the Aegean Sea.
• Level: Adjusts the output volume. The Athena has a little extra volume on tap to combat perceived volume loss commonly associated with modulation effects.

TOGGLE SWITCHES

• Mode: This three-way toggle changes the depth settings of Athena. You get a 50-50 full-range vibro-phase tone (left), an 80-20 wet-dry setting for some vibrato sounds (center) and manual mode (right). Manual mode allows expression control over the sweep.
• Color: Adjusting this tinkers with the throb and texture of the asymmetrical phase stages. You are given a choice of a balanced stock setting (left), a thick and chewy Uni-Vibe-like setting (center) and a subtle setting that leaves mids flat while just affecting the highs and lows (right). This particular setting is excellent for Bass applications.

AUXILIARY

• EXP Jack: Connect an expression pedal with a TRS cable to get hands-free control over the LFO speed. In manual mode, you can adjust the phase in real-time with your expression device.