Three experiments examined whether the survival of the phonological similarity effect (PSE) under articulatory suppression for auditory but not visual to-be-serially recalled lists is a perceptual effect rather than an effect arising from the action of a bespoke phonological store. Using a list of 5 auditory items, a list length at which the expression of phonological storage should, ostensibly, be strong, the PSE under suppression was removed at recency by a suffix (Experiment 1) and removed throughout by a suffix combined with a prefix (Experiment 2). Finally, the PSE under suppression could be restored simply by decreasing the acoustic similarity between the prefix-and-suffix and the to-be-remembered list (Experiment 3). The results favour a perceptual-gestural view over a dedicated-system view of short-term "memory."