Todd Rundgren made his debut in the group Nazz and they had this classic song "Open My Eyes".
There was a characteristic dirty allpass-phaser-comb effect in the song. If you've heard it you know it.
I've been trying to accomplish this effect, but digital stuff is so precise and too clean.
What was the unit used to make that effect originally? Does anyone know the magic needed to do this with more modern stuff.
 
I've tried various stages of all-pass filters and comb units with different types of feedback.
 
The basic effect is to sweep the all-pass frequency and/or comb frequency with an LFO - that gives you that take-off effect and it's easy and well-known.
 
But I can't get that magic grit to happen. Some sort of saturator or noise seems to be added - or maybe a vocoder with a comb carrier.
 

Hmm...  Can't help since I use my G-Force for this type of effect (a modified version of the patch "Lipstick") and that probably falls under the too precise and clean heading. 

I'm not a guitarist, I was looking for some basic VST-like suggestions, not external hardware.
 
I'm getting fair results with this in Reaktor, but I need more tweaks:
 
 

Why not try a saturator or distortion plug along with your phaser?

Yes saturation would be my next step.
 
A few LFOs here and there keep the patterns in the sound from becoming apparent.
 
Once I get one stage sounding right, I can gang together as many as I like for greater depth and intensity.
 
I was hoping some of the old guitarists here might know what the unit may have been and I could check on the original design. It was probably a few op amps in an all-pass circuit and maybe a diode bridge in the feedback path as a non-linear distorter. This album was made in the 60's - for those to whom it is unfamiliar (around 2:20 is the sound I'm looking for) :
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPuNg0QaduQ
 
 

Back then the only thing like that available at my little piddly assed music store was a "Phase 90" by MXR.

Two other candidates...one earlier, one later...

Earlier...UniVibe
Later...MuTron BiPhase

Heh, I still have my Phase 90!
 
Rundgren uses a lot of effects (including a Clavenet through a phaser), but I'm thinking he may have used some kind of fuzz box (think Big Muff type) on that song.  I don't know.  I tend to just keep trying combinations until I get the effect I'm looking for (even if it's not exactly how the original artist made that sound).

There's a clone of that. The circuit is just an all-pass, a few stages, with feedback. No delay lines.
 
http://buildyourownclone.com/phaseroyal.html
 
I believe the noisy quality was probably due to the available electronics back then. 
 
I remember seeing designs like this in Popular Electronics during that time. A friend built one that had this sound, but I don't remember how he did it. I think it was just a simple op-amp circuit like the schematic in the clone.
 
I think I'll look through my Guitar Rig presets - there's probably something that does this already.
 
Thanks.
 
I'm pretty sure now that no delays are needed unless this was a flange effect done in the studio on the reel-to-reel. Todd was always into the weird stuff, so maybe he did that. But the flange effect wouldn't be that noisy.

I'm not trying to reproduce that exact effect or anything about the song.
 
I'm trying to build a carrier signal for the new MeldaProduction MVocoder I just bought.
 
I thought something with raspy phasiness would work nicely and that song came to mind.
 
 

By the way, I tried making a matrix of vocoders.
 
The carrier of the vocoder was one separate vocoder and the modulator was a third vocoder.
 
Had some success, but the sounds have to stay in sync pretty tightly.
 
So much depends on the sound sources.