Hi.
Ich habe dazu für ein anderes Forum mein Chorus-Quest aufgeschrieben. Ich kopier das einfachg makl hier rein, okay? Ist viel Text aber wird ja keiner gezwungen, das zu lesen.
Okay, here goes my small personal chorus pedal shootout, touching upon 7 chorus pedals. Starting with this line, everything is ubjective and imho and afaik and ymmw and fwiw and stuff. I'll say that right up front in case I may insult somebody's favorite pedal along the way.
It has become a long post so you might wanna get yourself something to drink or sump'n.
A good chorus is a problem, I find. Either you're not hearing it and might as well leave it out of the signal or it is too overpowering and tends to cheese up everything. So, you (i.e. I) want a chorus that weaves into the guitar sound naturally and that can give abundance of effect without being reminiscent of 80's L.A. Metal fingerpicking parts or tacky pop songs. I only know this one song that improves with massive overdone chorussing but I'll make sure I never play it ever ever again: "Yellow River".
I was young and I needed the ... Hey, wait! Come to think of it: we didn't even get paid that much.
Oh, well. Live and learn. But I'm digressing. Is there anybody still left reading this? Good.
I had a Boss CE-5 for years and years. Great pedal, great Andy Summers sound when you want it and a chorus sound that had a certain light touch at every setting. At extreme settings it had an extremely thorough light touch, so to speak. Very airy. Georgeous.
But since I wasn't using a chorus for something like 5 years, it collected dust and when I pulled it out again behind the book shelve, I realized that in the meantime my ear for sound had improved dramatically and that I know heard how much the pedal ate my sound in bypass mode.
Much as I enjoyed the effect, the enjoyment was spoiled as I was constantly in mourning over all the signal purity I imagined were being killed every second.
So I sold the pedal.
Borrowed a Boss CH-1 from a friend to try. Good sound, if somewhat reduced options because it didn't have the high- and low-filter knobs that the CE-5 has. Also, it was more or less the same approach in its way to chorus up the signal. Good, but as I was looking for something new, I might as well go for something new entirely. Bypass was better but still the thing didn't grab my attention.
I gave it back and went without a chorus for a while.
Then I joined a cover band with Police songs in their repertoire. Okay, now. Time to go chorus hunting again. I bought a used Marshall Supervibe without test driving it. The specs sounded good enough to warrant a blind buy. It was even supposed to do a vibe sound as well.
Yeah, right. Somebody get those guys at Marshall a dictionary. It is *also* a vibe in much the same way that William Shatner is *also* a singer and a book author.
Still, in its main line of work, chorussing, it was half way decent, even if among all the knobs there was surprisingly little territory that gave a good chorus between the two extremes of "Is it on yet?" and "Stop it. You're making me sea sick!"
Also, the entire effect seemed to me to not weave in with the signal but rather to chorus it by laying a large plastic, slightly sterile chorus plating all over it. It was an Andy Summers sound on the surface but if you were listening closely, it didn't really breath but just shimmered from the top into the signal.
The effect itself (regardless of the tone knob setting) took place predominantly in the higher frequencies so that either you were sacrificing effect when you turned it darker or that you had to play its own ball game and turn its higher frequencies up which left you with a sticky chorussy sugar coating that I didn't like (though I could imagine John Scofield liking it).
Additionally, there was the problem that there was a jump in volume when you had a decent sound dialed in and switched it on. I know that some people like that, argueing that a chorussed sound loses definition and needs the volume to compensate. I think the other way: For me a chorus must be all the more able to blend and flow in the music context. If there's too much sticking out, it screams "Check it out! It's the chorus part of the song!" which makes it all the more cheesy than the effect itself already is.
(The attentive reader might have already noticed the irony of this entire story: Somebody that actually doesn't like a chorus sound all that much, still wants one.)
Some weeks later, I saw an Arion Chorus for 10 $ and bought it because I heard it is supposed to be an insider secret that Arion got lucky once and that even Michael Landau, Somebody Else Famous, and A Third Famous Guy were using these things.
Wow! What a great sound for 10 $. It has a certain cornyness about it but within this it sounds far more lively than the Supervibe. I know why it is something of a secret weapon. It is easy to dial in a decent sound and it has a tone knob that works very crudely but still very effectively. Want a shimmering "Bed's too big without you"-sound, tweak it to high. Want to emulate a warm analog sound, turn it down a little.
There is something about the sound of the thing that makes me not mind leaving it on for some time whereas I usually get tired of chorus sounds after a song or two.
If you find one very cheap, give it a try. Look out for the SCH-1 with the blue batterie compartment cover. The follow-up was a Z(something)-1 that is rumoured to suck, though I didn't try it.
Unfortunately, the delay time the chorus effect is based on is rather long which means that there is an actually audible short slap back echo if you have no delay or reverb to cover it up. If you play with no other effects, the sound is a little reminiscent of playing in a small room with tiles. If you use it to play finger picking, or distorted or slow parts, it works great.
Still, awful bypass sound, though.
I kept the Arion and chanced upon a used Voodoo Lab analog chorus and thought, "Let's try that as well".
I could not get myself to like this thing. I have the suspicion that it was trying to impress me and draw attention to itself. I can't stand that. It didn't work with me and my guitar but it had a sound that seemed to say "Hey, watch how I swoosh your sound around! Ain't I grand?" The Marshall had that also, come to think of it.
The effect was working with the middle frequencies so that it sounded very natural but still there was something too - how do I put this? It was too elegant, somehow. It seemed to say "I was made to emulate a noble family of well-revered, certified vintage chorusses. If you dislike me, You'll have no street credibilty with the vintage crowd."
Also, there was no tone knob or anything and the sound was constantly a little too dark for my taste.
[Anmerkung: später lernte ich dass Voodoo Lab Pedale eigentlich alle innen Trimmpotis haben und dass der Chorus dabei höhentrimmbar ist.]
You know the feeling when a phaser or flanger swooshes with your frequencies and you wait for the turnaround in its cycle that will open up the top presence frequencies again? That's what it felt like with this chorus.
The Voodoolab also had the unfortunate problem of "warbling" the signal at the turnaround point of the chorus cycle. Imagine yourself driving a car in a very vast line of curves like you were driving in a sinus wave shape. Now imagine you don't just turn elegantly around the peak points but that you do a fast 370 degress turn at every peak instead. Imagine that happen to your guitar signal. You feel the chorus wave come up and then a short "wobble" and the wave descents again. If you push this, you'll get sea sick.
Of course, that gets less pronouned with with more subtle settings but I found that very irritating and managed to sell the thing again without much loss. Thank god bcause it is such a costly device.
I tried the Danelectro Cool Cat (i think its called) in a store but even though I recognized what some of my friends love in it, it didn't do anything special for me that could keep me fascinated. It was a great pedal. I didn't buy it.
As I was about to order the next chorus I found the same item used for half the price and bought it immediately. Don't you love those precious coincedences? Rare enough as they are.
Now I am the owner of a Jacques meistersinger. I instantly loved the thing and integrated it into my board. It is somewhat of an amalgam of the virtues I found in previous pedals. It has the nice analog warm sound but doesn't darken my signal up. Its basic point of effect is the middle frequency area and it has a very gentle and cooperative manner, even at fast settings.
I would love to rave more about it but there is nothing exceedingly spectacular about the thing, really. What it doesn't do is the big Cinemascope surround sound thing (if I wanted that, I should have kept the Boss CE-5 which handled those things very well). What it does do is a chorus that sounds very natural and has the best qualities that the term "analog" implies: organic, friendly in character, lively yet not too dominating. It cooperates with the signal and it doesn't show off for its own sake. It works with me.
(I'm sorry for lapsing into the metaphysical every now and then. It is not a neutral and objective criterium but *I'm* not objective and neutral and neither - I like to believe - is my sound.)
Also, it is even slightly smaller than a Boss unit, which I love because I hate large clunky boxes to lump around or clutter up the stage floor with. That ruled out Electro Harmonix right from the start.
The meistersinger has no stereo but that's okay as I'm only playing mono setups and my sound is much too earthy and "rock'n'roll-y" to ever use such space-y sounds in recording. No TB either which is a shame really but, hey, I built a loop box for it.
That rounds up my little quest, as I don't know of any other pedals to try that are within easy second-hand market reach. I believe that in the meistersinger I have found the best match for my needs. I love it. We go well together, so to speak.
I realize that one of the most most promising contenders is missing: TC Electronics. Unfortunately, they are too expensive (even on ebay) for a device that is hailed for being hi-fi, a label which makes the thing suspicious for my taste already. Therefore, my willingness to spent 160 $ on such a basis is almost zero.
Anmerkung: Seit damals habe ich noch spasseshalber einen alten 80er Jahre Ibanez Tandem-Chorus erstanden für 20 Euro oder so. Sollte ein Geheimtipp sein und ist es auch auf seine eigene Weise. Ein Bi-Mode aus der 9-er Serie der auch wirklich in jene 80er Jahre passt. Schön spacig. Aber von organischem Sound und dergleichen kann keine Rede mehr sein. Klingt steril aber irgendwie auch auf eine interessante Art. Bypas in typischer Normalo-Qualität.
Den Meistersinger habe ich irgendwann gegen einen sehr alten (noch japanischen) Boss CE-2 getauscht, der wirklich, wirklich gut klang und ich habe zwischen den beiden alterniert weil ich mich nie entscheiden konnte.
Jetzt kann ich das und habe einfach KEINEN Chorus mehr auf dem Brett und besitze nur noch den CE-2, der irgendwo im Fundus verstaubt.
Gruß,
robert
