The Roland/Boss Chorus sound.

Voxsupertwin

In the mid 70’s Roland produced the JC120 combo with its, at the time, unique chorus sound ….
One feature of this sound, which did sound remarkable, was the routing and phasing…
the chorus effect was applied to one of the internal 60watt amps and a dry single to the other amp but 180 degrees out of phase ….
thus creating the spatial effect….
The CE-1 mains chorus pedal from Boss released soon after did the same thing if you had two separate amps…
IMO this was the original and best sounding chorus …

The CE-300 also featured the same configuration but I don’t know of any other chorus units that work this way …
Most seem to have chorus on both sides in stereo and pan the chorus signal back and forth across the sound stage ….

Anyone know what the new CE-2W does in stereo …. demos don’t seem to delve this deep ?

Supportact

I believe that if you use both outputs on the CE-2w then it gives you one full wet and one dry signal only. So not proper 'stereo', but you can use it into two amps. The CE-1 mode on it sounds great but possibly not what you want, if i understand you correctly. 

Voxsupertwin

Supportact said:

I believe that if you use both outputs on the CE-2w then it gives you one full wet and one dry signal only. So not proper 'stereo', but you can use it into two amps. The CE-1 mode on it sounds great but possibly not what you want, if i understand you correctly. 

Is the dry side 180degrees out  of phase ?

Winny_Pooh

I had a JC-77 and a CE-2, AB'ed the difference was not worth thinking about. 

Supportact

Voxsupertwin said:

Supportact said:

I believe that if you use both outputs on the CE-2w then it gives you one full wet and one dry signal only. So not proper 'stereo', but you can use it into two amps. The CE-1 mode on it sounds great but possibly not what you want, if i understand you correctly. 

Is the dry side 180degrees out  of phase ?

No idea, sorry. 

Winny_Pooh

Voxsupertwin said:

Supportact said:

I believe that if you use both outputs on the CE-2w then it gives you one full wet and one dry signal only. So not proper 'stereo', but you can use it into two amps. The CE-1 mode on it sounds great but possibly not what you want, if i understand you correctly. 

Is the dry side 180degrees out  of phase ?

That would be full cancellation no? So i doubt it. More like partial phase and short delays.

Voxsupertwin

Winny_Pooh said:

Voxsupertwin said:

Supportact said:

I believe that if you use both outputs on the CE-2w then it gives you one full wet and one dry signal only. So not proper 'stereo', but you can use it into two amps. The CE-1 mode on it sounds great but possibly not what you want, if i understand you correctly. 

Is the dry side 180degrees out  of phase ?

That would be full cancellation no? So i doubt it. More like partial phase and short delays.

It reduces the bass content and makes the sound appear to be all over place ?

Funkfingers

The BOSS CE-20 twin pedal has a CE-1 emulation mode. 

Voxsupertwin

Funkfingers said:

The BOSS CE-20 twin pedal has a CE-1 emulation mode. 

But does it have the same configuration as the original ?

Voxsupertwin

Voxsupertwin said:

Funkfingers said:

The BOSS CE-20 twin pedal has a CE-1 emulation mode. 

But does it have the same configuration as the original ?

The manual just says it gives an analogue CE-1 chorus sound ……

Voxsupertwin

Listening in stereo ….



there’s chorus on both sides….

ICBM

The CE-3 has the dry/effect split as the second of its two modes. Not especially rare or expensive even though they're from the same era as the original CE-2.

thermionic

Most stereo chorus pedals have a dry output and a wet output, which is actually vibrato. Mix the dry signal with the vibrato signal (either from two separate amps, or as a mono signal), you get the chorus effect. You can confirm this by plugging the wet output into an amp with a dummy plug in the the dry output (the output you normally use with a single amp). I have done this for instance with a Boss CE-3B. The old CE-3 had two stereo outputs, what I just described and another mode where both outputs produce a chorus sound - I think this has the outputs 180 degrees out of phase?

The JC120 worked in a similar way - one power amp/speaker reproduces the dry signal, with other amp/speaker produces the vibrato signal. Stand in front of the amp, or mike up both speakers and you hear the spread out chorus sound. There might be some phase reversal going on as well, but I’m not sure… this video might help explain it.

https://youtu.be/7GVw10FRfFo?si=jR3tjy61z9oh4CrI

ICBM

thermionic said:

Most stereo chorus pedals have a dry output and a wet output, which is actually vibrato. Mix the dry signal with the vibrato signal (either from two separate amps, or as a mono signal), you get the chorus effect. You can confirm this by plugging the wet output into an amp with a dummy plug in the the dry output (the output you normally use with a single amp). I have done this for instance with a Boss CE-3B. The old CE-3 had two stereo outputs, what I just described and another mode where both outputs produce a chorus sound - I think this has the outputs 180 degrees out of phase?

The JC120 worked in a similar way - one power amp/speaker reproduces the dry signal, with other amp/speaker produces the vibrato signal. Stand in front of the amp, or mike up both speakers and you hear the spread out chorus sound. There might be some phase reversal going on as well, but I’m not sure… this video might help explain it.

It's just the wet part of the effect signal which is phase-reversed - the dry part is in phase in both the pedal and the amp.

The problem with this is that if you use both outputs/mic both speakers and then mix back to mono - as often done for PA at gigs - the effect disappears because the out-of-phase parts of the sound cancel out.

Of course, the problem with the wet/dry mode is that if you *don't* use both sides, you get either dry or vibrato... although can intentionally do that with the CE-3 as well if you want, by plugging a spare cable into the dry output and use just the effect output.