The Starlight v2 does more than your typical flanger. In our first demo for the Starlight v2 we covered a lot of sonic territory, but there was little in the way of explanation. Hell, we didn’t even show the pedal settings throughout the shoot or even say anything about it. That led to a a few questions that are just easier to answer with a deeper exploration of the controls and setup.
Most of the demo was recorded with a Music Man Axis guitar and a 69 Fender Twin Reverb. There’s some Stratocaster in there. This pedal loves dirty sounds so the Variac Overdrive was used liberally.
For most of the shoot the flanger is set up after the overdrive, but we do switch it up for a bit at 2:28. There’s a different sound there for sure. Running your flanger before overdrive gives the effect a little more girth. It’s also slightly less forgiving and can get throbby or washed out.
The first half of the demo uses the triangle LFO shape and explores the other controls, especially the depth and regen.
3:03 Sine wave LFO… Vibrato flanger!
Most flangers use a triagle LFO for modulation. Turn it down really slow and you’ve got the well known jet plane sweep tone all day long. The sine LFO really excels with faster modulation bringing out vibrato tones that most other flangers just can’t quite do. Like most Subdecay pedals we let you color outside the lines. Typically as the speed ramps up you’ll need to manually turn down the depth. With full depth and fast modulation it will get crazy. Some people like crazy, so we opted not to add artificial limitations. At slow speeds the sine LFO will spend more of it’s time in the depths and peeks. It’s a subtle difference, but with a distinctly different feel.
4:27 Square / Triangle LFO:
This LFO setting mixes two different shapes together. Slow Triangle and fast Square. It brings a “shaking” quality to the flanger that can either be jarring or mesmerizing.
6:14 Random Sample/Hold:
Similar idea to the old Sample/hold voltage controlled filter, but with a flanger. There’s a chaotic underwater and alien characteristic that. It adds a bunch of sub-aquatic depth to simple chords. Something perfect for highlighting passages in a song.
6:34 8 & 16 Step:
The step shapes are similar to Random Sample/Hold, but without the Randomness. They “step” through triangle and the repeat making it feel like the acoustics and space are shifting around you.