From JHS:

THE WHAT-SHOULD-HAVE-BEEN OF PEDAL HISTORY.

The JHS Facebook fan page, our comment sections everywhere, our Discord and our inbox have all been overtaken by the same cry of desperation: JOSH! BUILD A JHS FLERB!

But I refuse.

You asked us for Flerb. You're getting PHERB.

A dark, moody lo-fi reverb running into a four-stage phase shifter. Both on, all the time.

BREAK mode takes the whole signal — reverb, phaser and your dry guitar — and destroys it.

Decided, designed, prototyped and approved for production in just 35 hours. The fastest pedal we have ever made. Probably the most fun one as well.

PHERB > FLERB

I love the Holy Grail reverb — it's legendary, but the Flerb setting is a monstrosity. I wrote a 500-plus page book on the history of Electro-Harmonix out of pure love for the company, so this is no slam on them. Flanger inside of a reverb just makes my skin itch. Phaser inside of a reverb however, is a different story, and that's the one nobody ever built. So I'm giving you the thing that should have been and never was.

PHERB is Phaser + Reverb, built from the ground up, in house, in October 2026, by way of a manic 35-hour push of engineering and panic. That isn't a marketing number — it's the fastest anything at JHS has ever gone from a decision to a finished, approved prototype, and the old record holder, the Twin 12, wasn't really close.

The reverb is dark, moody and lo-fi on purpose. Not a plate. Not a hall. Not a room anybody measured. It's chorused and chunky, and at longer decay times it slightly pulses.

The phaser is a four-stage vintage style phase shifter (think Phase 90) with the feedback left off and the notch sweeps moved up through the frequency spectrum, so they stay out of the way of the reverb's low mids. You still get the swish. It just doesn't swallow everything underneath it. Speed covers 0.05 Hz to 5 Hz, from barely moving to seasick.

BOTH EFFECTS, ALWAYS ON

There's no blend on purpose, no order switch because we wanted it one way and no way to run one effect without the other (because it's called PHERB) — with one exception. Turn Speed all the way left in normal mode and the phaser steps out, which leaves you the reverb by itself. Three knobs and a toggle, and every position on all of them does something worth hearing.

BREAK MODE

Flip the toggle up and your signal hits an “asymmetric bitcrusher” with analog-style clipping on the way in. The reverb and phaser are built on top of the wreckage. The phaser can't be stepped out in this mode. The destruction sounds amazing — it reminds us of an old Jordan Bosstone fuzz from the 60s if it collided with a DOD Grunge!

WHAT SURPRISED US

How usable it is. The plan was a novelty, a fun joke for our fans, and we were fine with that. Then the first prototype landed on my bench and there were good sounds at every location on the knobs. The bit turned into a pedal that we knew we had to make for the masses — it’s musical, inspiring and most of all fun!

HOW TO USE IT

Put it near the end of your board where you would normally put a reverb, after your dirt, and leave your amp set the way you already like it. Or don’t. Maybe “just try stuff?”

Mix low, Length low, Speed around ten o'clock: the feeling of a lively room instead of an effect you can point at.

Length all the way up, Speed slow: a pulsing drone that sits under everything and keeps breathing like a synth pad.

BREAK with a short Length: a fuzz that screams out of the speaker. Good for riffs that need to sound broken.

BREAK with a long Length: the sound of a nightmare you wouldn’t mind having again. This is the setting that some people will hate but a lot of people are going to love!

WHO THIS IS FOR

Players who love building sounds instead of chasing tones. Shoegaze, industrial, noise, experimental pop, ambient records where the reverb is the floor of the sound rather than something poured on top of it later. Anyone who has ever wanted a reverb that fights back — this is it.

WHO THIS ISN'T FOR

If you want a vintage style spring reverb for a blues gig, this is not that pedal and we won't pretend it is. If you want a precise phaser to sit politely under a clean chord, it isn't that either. And if you came here for a Flerb, we've already explained ourselves…

P.S. We hope the Phineas and Ferb theme song gets stuck in your head. We've decided that's a feature.

CONTROLS

MIX – Controls the amount of reverb/phaser. Clockwise increases the level, counterclockwise decreases it.

SPEED – Controls the speed of the phase shifter. Clockwise is faster, counterclockwise is slower. Fully counterclockwise disables the phaser when the BREAK toggle is in the down position (normal mode).

LENGTH – Controls the decay time and pre-delay of the reverb. As the decay time increases, the pre-delay increases proportionally. Higher settings naturally allow more phasing to be present. Clockwise is more, counterclockwise is less.

BREAK – Toggle up engages BREAK mode, which distorts your incoming guitar signal before it hits the reverb and phaser.. Toggle Down is normal.

JACKS

INPUT – 1/4" jack, right side.

OUTPUT – 1/4" jack, left side.

POWER – 9VDC center negative, 70mA. Do not exceed 9VDC or the warranty is void.

SPECS

Three controls: Mix, Speed, Length

BREAK toggle

Reverb into a four-stage phase shifter, recombined with your dry signal

Phaser rate 0.05 Hz to 5 Hz

Reverb decay (RT60) 241 ms to 49.83 seconds

9VDC center negative, 70mA