Who's That Flanger

["samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

  From a Mix magazine interview w/Synthesists Robert Margouleff and 
Malcolm 
Cecil who engineered the Isley's  "Who's That 
Lady"<http://mixonline.com/recording/interviews/audio_isley_brothers_lady/>
 
Margouleff says he bought the 3rd or 4thMoog produced.These guys also 
worked 
w/ Stevie Wonder teaching him to use synths.

“What happened was, Ernie Isley was nine years old when Jimi Hendrix was 
playing with his brothers, and he was very, very motivated by Jimi. Jimi 
came to him one day and gave him his first guitar, showed him a few things 
and said to him, ‘You know what, when you grow up, you'll be playing with 
your brothers.’ He was right, of course, and this totally changed Ernie's 
life!

“When he came to us, he brought his Stratocaster and I took him over to 
meet 
Roger Mayer, who was another Englishman I'd known since my childhood in 
England in the late '40s, when we'd go over to surplus stores on Edgeware 
Road in London to pick up old bits and pieces to build equipment, because 
that's what we liked to do. There were all sorts of surplus equipment 
around 
after the war. Roger went on to become Jimi Hendrix's guitar tech and then 
Jimi brought him back to the States. I bumped into him in New York and he 
helped me build some of TONTO, as well as working on audio treatments and 
[building] limiters.

“Anyway, he took Ernie's guitar and completely re-modified it exactly the 
way Hendrix had his, and he also built him an Octavia box, which is part 
of 
what allowed Hendrix to get that screaming sound. And Roger taught Ernie 
how 
to use it. So, we essentially Jimi Hendrix-ized Ernie when he was 18. He 
was 
so blown away and enamored with it; he took to it like a duck to water. 
He'd 
be in there just playing and playing; he wouldn't give it up .  ...The 
lead 
guitar part alone took several tracks: “We had the Octavia box, a direct 
from the guitar, a Berwin noise suppressor, limiters, all sorts of things 
going,” Cecil says. “The Octavia made a tremendous amount of noise, so we 
had to use whatever means were available to minimize it. One small turn of 
a 
knob and all the parameters would change. It was trial-and-error. Ernie 
would play a line and we'd try different sounds on it. He'd come back in 
the 
control room and we'd listen to it, decide if it was right. Then, when it 
came time to mix, because we had four or five tracks for the guitar, we'd 
find the blend that worked best. Ernie was always very cooperative, and he 
could really play.”
  Other sources say he used a Maestro PSA-I phaser,the first commercial 
phaser,with the octavia. ( I have one I'll sell for $100) wich would be 
the 
flanger sound.It's myunderstanding that both names originally reffered to 
pressing againtst the flange of a tape reel to get an out of phase 
effect,which people later figured out how to do electronically)There are 
interviews in Guitar Player magazine w/Ernie Isley,and they definately 
would 
say what his gear was,but the archives can't be accessed online.here are 
the 
dates: Isley, Ernie: 9/81, 5/90, 4/01 I .If you can find one of these it 
probably says what his gear was,Esp the first.