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I've tried every setting imaginable and while it's lush and pretty much unity volume, if I hit the strings anywhere harder than soft, it's like I've got an overdrive on. What can I do to fix it?

It makes me sad because I love the actual phasing, but that distortion keeps me from ever even using it.

Boy, that sure doesn't sound right! Suggest you post some good quality close-ups so we can have a look-see.

Hopefully those are good enough. My camera is a horrible piece and that's the best I could get out of it.

Have you adjusted the trim pot? And have you tried it by itself in the chain with no other pedals?

Yest on the by itself half. It does it then too. I messed with the trim pot once. Literally anywhere at all left or right and there was no effect. It took forever to get it to that spot that would actually do something......and that was with the mix and depth maxed.

Do you have a signal tester?

Nope. I'm still slacking as a builder.

You should build one. There's a diagram of how to build one with left over parts over in the troubleshooting section of DIY Stompboxes. Mmarsh has posted it in this forum a bunch; if you search his posts, you should find it.

Try pulling IC4 and seeing if the distortion is still there. Pulling IC4 will kill the wet signal path so you can see if the dry path is distorting (make sure you keep the pedal in 4-stage mode while you do this). If the distortion is still there, it's probably Q7 that is clipping. This happens a lot in Phase 90-based circuits. You can socket R27 and try different values there. I've had luck with a 120K. Best if you can splice in a 250K or greater pot and just dial in what sounds best then replace with the appropriate resistor.

Bumping an old thread because I had the same problem.

I followed Morgan's tips and pulled IC4 and the OD went away along with the effect, so I put a pot in to R27 and it was clipping pretty much the same from 0 ohms all the way up to 500k. The volume/output changed with the pot so I set it back to unity and flipped my guitar over to the neck pickup from the bridge HB and it went away.

When I took the pot out and measured it I was at 146k so I just dropped the stock 150k back in and decided to put it in the effects loop on my amp.

The OD/distortion was gone so I guess you might have this problem with some pickups.

If only I had been smarter and tested this thing in my effects loop after the first sign of trouble, I wouldn't have had to do some ugly desoldering...

I guess my point is, do the simple things first! Don't be a tard like myself

I know this is an ancient post, but something jumped out at me.

With the mix knob maxed, aren't you not really getting phasing anyway? I thought the mix needed to be in the center for an equal blend of wet and drie (i.e. full phased signal). Maxed would just be dry signal, right?

from http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/debug.html

Yes, and full CCW is 'vibrato' mode, which you shouldn't miss cause it's way cool!

Hey Lrock, did you ever solve this?

I'm pretty sure this was covered at some length in a another post on the Phase Royal. The best and simplest fix is to connect a 68K resistor between the base and the emitter of Q7 (don't change R27 the 150K). Here is why -

The BYOC Phase Royal is, I believe, based on an MXR Phaser design. This has a weakness in that the output buffer is restricted in its output swing and can distort with high input levels.

The output buffer uses a PNP transistor, it is collector / base biased through R27, the emitter is connected to Vref (5.1V in the BYOC, 3V in the MXR) and in the MXR circuit is also DC coupled to the wet/dry mix, which in the MXR is fixed ratio - it does not have a mix pot. In the BYOC version this output buffer is A.C. coupled through C11 so the stage bias is independent of the preceding op-amps, it does not actually need the emitter connected to Vref (5.1V) but could be returned to +9 which would allow it more room for the collector voltage to swing before clipping (distortion).

As set-up by the kit components the bias of Q7 is not optimum, the collector voltage sits at 4.45V (very near the supply of 5.1v for that stage) and the mixer and output stage will tolerate no more than 0.7 pk to pk signal at the output of the op-amps before clipping sets in. If this stage is re-biased by connecting a 68K resistor between the base and emitter of Q7 (leaving R27 150K as it is), the collector voltage sits at 3.19, and the op-amp output before clipping rises to 2.5 v pk-to-pk. Connecting the emitter to +9V and biasing with a 33K, improves this to 3V pk-to-pk.

Seems to me this is a must-do mod on all Phase Royals.

Thanks Tark. If you get a chance please check out my new thread on this.

Would a different value maybe reduce this distortion even more?

Nope - the values I gave provide optimum bias.

Ok. I had put a 68k and still have a good amount of distortion althought it did take out a lot of it which means I had a freakin' ton prior to adding it. Must be another issue then.