The pitch‐excited vocoder invented by Dudley can be greatly improved and, it appears, made to produce very natural speech by the inclusion of (a) very precise pitch extraction and buzz‐hiss indication, (b) pre‐modulation spectral flattening of the exciting signal, and (c) more speechlike phase. This paper outlines a technique that induces more speechlike phase in a spectrally flattened pitch‐excited vocoder. Results obtained thus far from a computer‐simulated vocoder are quite hopeful.