Eventide H910 Harmonizer

The Eventide H910 Harmonizer was an early digital effects unit released in 1975 by Eventide Clock works. It featured a pitch shifter, feedback and delay functions. The possibilities this device brought were exploited in the work of many famous artists by the likes of AC/DC, David Bowie, Queen and Frank Zappa (to name a few).

The Eventide H910 was used a lot on Peter Gabriel's voice, on the third album especially (a.k.a. Melt) - engineer Hugh Padgham even commented Peter "would feel naked without it", hence the harmonizer can be heard on the majority of tracks. His voice would normally have a mono chorusing effect or a slight delay produced - any stereo chorusing would have probably been achieved with an AMS delay.

Hugh Padgham also created a similar chorusing/delay effect on Phil's voice with the Harmonizer during the early 1980s, on his early solo efforts (Face Value and Hello, I Must Be Going albums) and probably on Genesis' Abacab. He later preferred the AMS instead for voices.

Peter Gabriel purchased his own Eventide H910, which he went on the Melt tour. The Eventide was among the rack units available at his home studio during the making of the So record (and possibly Security), but at that time the AMS DMX 15-80S delay/harmonizer seemed to be more heavily relied on. The Eventide nonetheless remained, later being moved to the Writing Room at Real World Studios.

Larry Fast also used the Harmonizer (one that belonged to the studio) to treat his synthesizers on the Melt album - for instance, the detuning of synths on "Biko". It also became one of his rack units on the Melt and Security tours.