Chorus- are you a yay or a nay?

BoopDeWoop

Despite being a huge Nirvana fan when I picked up the guitar I never liked chorus. But last year I picked up a EQD Sea Machine and it's changed my mind. It's not on my pedal board but if i want a one pedal and amp play it's amazing. Really musical and not fake/obnoxious. It can go batshit crazy if you want it to be though.

crunchman

I put my chorus back on my board recently.  I was playing for We WIll Rock You at my daughters' school and there are a few of those 80's Queen songs that need chorus to sound right.  There's actually a Brian May Toneprint for the TC Corona!  I think I'm going to leave it on the board.

I've got modulation on my delay and reverb pedals so I had been using that a lot, plus faking it with a POG 2 but there seems to be a slight delay with the POG that annoys me.

andyoz

Well, I'm sniffing around ones of these I've spotted...

baddog01

Interesting Flanger. 

mike_l

Chorus is good.
I like the MXR Microchorus is front of my amp, and/or the Digitech Multichorus in the loop. As an extra putting the multi between 2 digital delays (not set too high) goes straight to 80's awesomeness.

maidenfan

Love chorus in a glorious 80's way, landau, huff et al

RocknRollDave

mike_l said:

Chorus is good.
I like the MXR Microchorus is front of my amp, and/or the Digitech Multichorus in the loop. As an extra putting the multi between 2 digital delays (not set too high) goes straight to 80's awesomeness.

There is no such thing as '80's awesomeness'........ 

siraxeman

I got sick of using chorus 10 yrs ago.....think it was my constant overuse going for that 80s clean chorus with some verb and a bit of delay. Anyway after those years of total abstinence i can again tolerate it for occasional use....my bands now doing purple rain in our set list and without it ,it just sounds wrong.  So for some songs its a must but i still hate it if used without subtlety. Can't stand that under water sound if you go OTT with it....yuck!

mike_l

RocknRollDave said:

mike_l said:

Chorus is good.
I like the MXR Microchorus is front of my amp, and/or the Digitech Multichorus in the loop. As an extra putting the multi between 2 digital delays (not set too high) goes straight to 80's awesomeness.

There is no such thing as '80's awesomeness'........ 

Now then youngman, I want you to go to your room and think about what you've said.
Then when it's fully sunk in, come and apologise.

Mostly cos you know I'm right. ;-) 

baddog01

Some of the 80's were cool. I went through my teens in the 80's and like some of the music. but I also like classic rock , hard rock, Metal and even some country.  The country simply because it reminds me of simpler time. 

xSkarloey

Time is a great healer and bringer of perspective, and while I think the 80s in Britain quote clearly were a time of great upheaval socially and politically in ways which perhaps have only just in the last ten years started to bear rather ugly fruit, I think that culturally it was no better or worse than any other decade. The best of the 80s stands up incredibly well with any other time. 

rockmonster

First after the wah and it's a joyo analog chorus! Cheapskate lol!

JCA2550

Nay here it took me years to realise that the chorus sounds I loved were usually Leslie or rotary sounds. Think Badge by Cream.

EricTheWeary

Skarloey said:

Time is a great healer and bringer of perspective, and while I think the 80s in Britain quote clearly were a time of great upheaval socially and politically in ways which perhaps have only just in the last ten years started to bear rather ugly fruit, I think that culturally it was no better or worse than any other decade. The best of the 80s stands up incredibly well with any other time. 

The last great decade of British pop. I've just got up so how well I've thought this through I don't know...

Duran Duran, Human League, Culture Club, Iron Maiden,etc...bands making innovative music of its time. British bands who became world famous, pop and rock as cultural phenomena (Live Aid 1985 for example). 
By the 90s we start to see the decline of British bands leading the way. Grunge as American, as anti pop, as recycling older ideas - that we'd reached the point where the 50s, 60s, 70s were now so far away you could steal from them and not expect people to notice. Into the 21st century we see the decline of the charts, the physical object replaced by downloads, streaming, YouTube, access to everything all at once so Elvis and Rhianna become all much the same.

I say this as someone who really wasn't all that interested at the time. But as a peice the 80s was the last golden era of British pop. 

andyoz

It took me a while to realise it's actually a flanger sound with a chorus twist that does it for me.  That's why I've snapped up the Boss BF1 as seems to do it well. My Supa Puss delay can also modulate the delays a bit too which I like.

xSkarloey

@andyoz BF2 into the Super Chorus for me. 


Glorious combination. If flanger and chorus is good enough for The Cult  it's good for me. 

Cue rude comments about Billy Duffy now I suppose...

andyoz

Jesus, I was just having a bash at Cult riffs last night.

menamestom

I vote yes, but strictly for funky chops, preferably for a limited number of bars.  If I see anybody strumming with chorus on I would probably leave the building.  But funky chords and leslieish wobble on the odd phrase ala John Scofield it's ace.  I'm using a Mooer at the moment, which is nice, but can leak clock noise in bybass if you leave it with the rate high.

thermionic

I remember coming home from school on Fridays and watching The Tube for 3 hours, There always seemed to be a band on there using JC120 amps, and I grew to dislike that thin,weedy sound. For me, chorus is for jangly arpeggios played on a clean or possibly chimey amp, preferably using that sweet middle position on a humbucker guitar. Nothing like it.

Never really liked chorus on a distorted sound, apart from a few moments from the Cult and the most quintessentially 80s song ever - Eighties by Killing Joke.

Interestingly, there's a great clip of James Dean Bradfield demonstrating his greatest riffs, and Motorcyle Emptiness has a Boss CH-1 on it.

As an aside, whenever I hear a nice analogue chorus sound, I can visualise that distinctive CE-2 shade of blue, like some kind of mild synaesthesia.

Ro_S

I like chorus sometimes.

I insist on analogue for chorus (and modulation generally).

Chorus pedals I own:

Visual Sound V2 Liquid Chorus

Voodoo Lab Analog Chorus   [''sonic replica" of Boss CE1]

biyang tonfancier [ce-2 clone]

Aria CH-5 Chorus (MIJ, mid 1980s)


Some really nice mid-1980s Japanese analogue choruses - other than the obvious Boss and Ibanez models - can be found very affordably. brands such as Pearl, Yamaha, Aria, Guyatone.