Notes:
1) Sorry, no clips. I don't have the ability at all to do good sound clips (I don't even have a computer right now!) and the mic on my phone is nowhere near enough to get to the subtleties the differences we're talking about here.
2) My test criteria are: Noise, headroom, sound, ability to do true vibrato, ability to cop a Leslie, flexibility, and of course, sound.
3) Test bass is a custom T bird with wilkinson humbuckers, a relatively low output bass most similar to a p bass, strung with la Bella allow tension flats. I run that into a traynor yba200-2 with a 12au7 preamp tube, set clean. To test headroom and pairings I'll run my 3leaf octavbre mini (output 1 o'clock, mix full wet, tone fully oc2 circuit) and Wren and Cuff Tall Font Russian (output 11 o'clock, tone noon, distortion dimed) into each pedal.
MXR ANALOG CHORUS:
First of all let me clear up something I was confused about. MXR says that the low and high controls are cut only, which led me naturally to believe that the pedal couldn't add any bass or treble. What I've found is that this pedal inherently adds BOTH bass and treble, which you can dial back with the two controls if you desire. For both controls unity is about 2 o'clock on the dial, anything above that adds frequencies.
Noise is present but pretty mild, and the two band eq gives it a lot of flexibility. My favorite setting is low and high both at 2 o'clock (or flat), level and depth both dimed, and rate at 11 o'clock, and then adding or subtracting eq frequencies from there. It can also do a pretty good Leslie with the level still dimed, the rate dimed, and the depth at noon.
It's not the warmest chorus ever, definitely on the icy side of things, but not in a sterile way. The chorus sound seems to sit on top of your original sound, regardless of the setting for me. This became very apparent when running the octavbre and tfr into it. With the low control at 2 o'clock, you got a nice icy sheen over the bass tone. If you rolled the low control cw instead of it thickening the low end I get this sort of resonant hump that sounds muddy and blown out. Adding high frequencies sounds great tho. I'd say it doesn't seem to handle very bassy signals super well. It doesn't ever seem to otherwise distort with a hot signal in my experience.
Verdict: Great for the money. Good standard sound, good Leslie, pairs pretty well with other fx so long as you roll of the lows of the chorus signal a bit. Also the led is insanely bright.
7/10
BOSS CE-3:
I don't think this is a great pedal for bass. I have a noticeable if not entirely unworkable drop in both overall volume and in deep bass frequencies when I engage it. The drop in the deep lows is pretty subtle on clean tones but much clearer when I hit it with my tfr or octavbre.
That being said it does nail that classic subtle chorus sound, and seems to me to react to you playing in a very organic cool way. It's also pretty low noise.
I tried the trick of setting knob 3 to setting I and plugging into output b and it while did sound different it wasn't vibrato and it had the same issues on bass as the normal configuration.
Verdict: I'd say that if you only want a set and forget Chorus for a basic sound and don't plan on pairing it with other effects this is a decent option.
4/10
MXR STEREO CHORUS:
This pedal is magic. It's on the subtler side of things but what it does is does absolutely beautifully. I'll also note that for whatever reason it stands out better in the mix than I thought it would hearing with just me playing.
This is the pedal for somebody who wants to add width and girth to your sound. It sort of smears your tone, in a lush, organic way.
The eq section is a big part of its charm. The.bass knob adds some serious womp without getting muddy, and the treble adds wonderful sparkle or bite.
My favorite setting is
Low pass off
Bass 1 o'clock
Treble 1 o'clock
Intensity dimed
Width dimed
Rate 10 o'clock
At this setting you get a healthy boost and a present yet subtle and deep sound. Compared with their analog chorus, this one meshes with your tone much better, instead of sitting apart from it.
Because it's so subtle it's hard to get a great Leslie tone from it. With intensity, width, and rate maxed you get close, but I think the MXR analog chorus does that better.
It's a very quiet pedal, unless you crank the treble knob, at which point it's way noisier than I think it deserves to be.
Another note is that there isn't a bad sound in this pedal, as in, I haven't found a setting where I kick it on and find it messing something up for me, except maybe when the bass is just too much.
At first, I thought the high pass was pretty useless. For clean sounds it basically makes the chorus sound disappear in the mix. But when running it in combo with the tfr or octavbre I did find it useful at times to clean up the sound.
I desperately want to give this pedal a perfect rating but I can't for a couple reasons. First, I just don't understand why it has to be so big. MXR managed to fit pretty much everything this pedal does into their bass Chorus Deluxe pedal (and I'll compare the two in a minute) AND add a flanger and got into one of their standard size boxes, instead of the double wide. I'm disclipining myself to staying on a pedaltrain 2 and the space is hard to justify.
Second, it can be distorted by a hot signal, which confuses my greatly considering it runs at 18v. Running the octavbre it becomes especially obvious that there's this fuzzy distorted sound in the background. It's not a bad sound, I sort of like it, but it frustrates me that there's no dialing it out.
Verdict: For a stand alone, subtle sound to add width and depth to your playing, this pedal is a real winner. It's not in your face and it's Chorus sound isnt terribly versatile (though it's eq is), but it's definitely one of those special pedals. Whenever this is on my board I'm tempted to have it on all the time, twisting the intensity and width to taste for the song.
9/10
MXR BASS CHORUS DELUXE:
First off let me clear up the relationship between this pedal and the stereo chorus. From owning both and playing them side by side it seems to me that MXR built the BCD on the same basic layout as their stereo chorus, with some tweaks. If you put the knobs in all the same places you get similar results (and just to clarify they have EXACTLY the same knobs). The eq section seems to be voiced similarly.
So a lot of what I just said about the stereo chorus also basically describes the bcd.
This pedal is very good. But the magic of the stereo chorus is gone, for me. The BCD sits the chorus tone somewhat apart from your clean, and never achieves the wonderful meshing of the two the stereo chorus nails. It can get close, but it never quite gets there entirely.
Also, the eq section does seem near as powerful as the stereo chorus's. It does seem to be somewhat lower noise.
It has similar issues with hot signals, worse than the stereo chorus though not unworkably bad. With the octavbre the lfo started phasing out parts of the spectrum, which is kind of annoying but also kind of cool.
As many others have noted the flanger is one of the hidden gems of this pedal. I don't have a lot of experience with flangers
so I can't compare but it is an excellent sound that I find a lot of use for.
Verdict: A really good all around pedal in the end. Not quite as magic as the stereo chorus, but a little quieter, smaller, easier to power, and you get a pretty great flanger.
8.5/10
Arion SCH-1 (grey box):
This is a vintage knock off japanese pedal from the 80s with somewhat of a cult following. It is notable for having a tone knob (rare for pedals of this era), for the rate control being able to go absurdly fast, and for doing a great Leslie.
This pedal has some noise but it's not bad, comparable with the MXR analog chorus.
The standard chorus sound on this pedal is really great, very thick in a unique way. With tone at noon, depth dimed, and rate at 11 o'clock you get a classic deep chorus sound with a nice throb.
What's unique to this pedal is that at most settings it very much sounds like there is a second signal with true pitch vibrato being applied to it. As in, this pedal is the opposite of the MXR stereo chorus in that regard - you hear the lfo modulating quite clearly. What's strange to me is that it still seems to do a good job mixing the two signals back together, it just doesn't obscure the vibrato on the wet signal in the process.
I tried to listen carefully to discern, I think this may be because it's a sine wave lfo as opposed to the traditional triangle wave in most chorus pedals, but I'm not 100% sure.
The tone control is great for adding some high end sparkle. I can't see wanting to roll off highs (if you turn it ccw from noon) but it can darken things up if you want that.
But the thing that makes this pedal sought after is the Leslie-esq sound, and it does a great job of that. With the rate at 3 o'clock, the depth at noon, and the tone at one o'clock you get a great static Leslie sound, very warm and present and lush. The only pedal that comes close
out of this group is the MXR analog chorus, which does a pretty good job actually, tho the Arion does it better.
The rate control goes even higher than what I need, almost into the audio spectrum. With rate and depth dimed you're very much in ring mod territory, which can be a real asset for some users.
I was able to get it to distort feeding it my octavbre in much the same way as the stereo chorus; not unpleasant but definitely there. For some it may even be a nice sound. With both the octavbre and the tfr the vibrato on the wet signal being present was more obvious.
Verdict: This pedal is in its own category. The fact that it always sort of sounds like a vibrato pedal (except at very slow speeds), that it has a very good Leslie sound (for a chorus pedal, that is), and that it goes into ring mod territory sets it apart from other pedals. Buyer beware though; these were cheap pedals when they were made 30-40 years ago out of plastic, and might not hold up to the rigors of the road. I've had mine for less than a month and already broke one knob.
9/10
TECH 21 BASS BOOST CHORUS:
I get why everyone loves this pedal. It is by far the most versatile of the bunch, with the detune knob, the voice switch, a post effect boost, and a mix knob that can go 100% wet, which means it can also do true pitch vibrato.
The pitch vibrato is fantastic, really present and snake-like.
It's very quiet, and handles the signals of both the tfr and the octavbre well, save a few resonant peaks occasionally.
For some people, I imagine that this would be THE perfect chorus pedal. I however have two main complaints with it that prevent it from being my chorus of choice.
First, like with a lot of tech 21 pedals the knobs are all
somewhat sensitive, they all interact, and there a lot of them, making it difficult to
change sounds mid set in a live situation. For such a versatile
pedal this is especially frustrating, as it really limits how useful that versatility is for me.
Second, though it can do a lot of things I haven't been able to get it to do a thick, wide chorus like the MXR stereo chorus excels at. For some people that
may not be a deal breaker, but for me that's the flavor of chorus I prize the most.
Third is that the speed tops out at kind of a low setting. If this were one of the simple two or three knob choruses that would be understandable but for as complex and versatile as this pedal is otherwise I find this inexplicable. I'm SURE this pedal could do a great Leslie tone, probably better than the Arion, if it only went a little faster.
Verdict: For some people this is as good as it gets, it just doesn't happen to be for me. When I paint my masterpiece and have a tricked out home studio I will absolutely own one and precisely dial in all sorts of sounds, but for right now it won't find a spot on my board.
8.5/10
DOD BASS STEREO CHORUS:
Another classic sounding vintage bass chorus, that features the famed mn3007 bucket brigade chip.
Doesn't really add or subtract frequencies, but with delay time at noon, rate at minimum, and depth dimed you get a classic hollow sounding beautiful chorus. If you turn the delay time up it can get some of the smear of the MXR stereo chorus, but never really ventures too far into that territory.
At higher rate settings and with the other two knobs past noon you can get some pleasant throb. It never gets fast enough to do a Leslie, but I like the medium-high speed settings more than pretty much any other pedal; it sounds way more organic, and never seasick.
It handles the signals of the octavbre and the tfr quite well, if making them sound slightly muddled at some settings. Rolling back the delay time helps with this.
I'll also give another buyer beware warning. These old DOD pedals are great but the years have exposed some design issues. Mine is missing the battery door (like so many from
this era) and has some sort of issue with the power jack that makes me unable to use it currently. Taking the backplate off doesn't expose the power jack so I can't get at it, and it would cost as much to have a tech look at it as it does used, and I don't love it so much that I've bought a second one.
Verdict: For someone who wants a straight ahead chorus tone, and to use with other effects, this pedal is an incredible bargain. It doesn't add sparkle, or a great deal of dimension, but it does make a damn good basic chorus sound.
7/10
Last edited:
