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Chorus/Flanger?


Thundarr

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What's a good chorus and/or flanger for getting good 80's one hit wonder clean guitar sounds? I haven't tried too many. The only chorus I've owned was the old Dano Cool Cat, which was okay, but looked cooler than it sounded. For flanger I like the Electric Mistress but the one I used to have was a prone to noise and not always reliable.

 

 

 

 

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If it's a cheesy ballad/hardrock tone you're after, a Boss CE-5 would probably do the job. It's like a time machine that takes you to 1984. Which is why I f*cking hated mine, couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

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The two big Boss chorus pedals of the era were the Dimension C and the CE-2. Of the two, I prefer the adjustability of the CE-2, but a lot of people love the four-button presets of the Dimension C. Either one should be able to get you a solid sounding 80s era chorus - after all, both were widely used by players of the era. Of course, you could get a CE-1 - they were made before the CE-2 and Dimension C, but still commonly used in the 80s - and they sound fantastic too. In fact, most people would say the CE-1 is the one to get... but they're harder to find, and more expensive.

 

All of the pedals mentioned above are now discontinued. The closest thing available "new" in the Boss lineup would be the CE-5. There are also tons of other cool chorus pedals available from a variety of other companies.

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Chorus wasn't as popular back then, at least for live guitar. It was mostly Flanger and Phases being used. You had some Lexicon effects for PA. Rolland space echos had chorus but they were mostly used for vocals as the word "chorus" suggests.

 

Guitar players sis have acces to drive boxes, wahs, Phase shifters, and echo units. Flangers started coming out in the late 70's early 80s. They weren't all that great because they required memory chips to create the short echo that gets flanged. Mutron was big as were other Mestro phasers. Big stone and small stone stuff by electro harmonix was big sellers. Other then that, there just weren't that many good stomp boxes back then being sold in music stores guitarists could afford until maybe the later 80's and 90's.

 

For a Flanger, the Electric Mistress was the big one used back then. http://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/products/electro-harmonix-classics-deluxe-electric-mistress-flanger-filter-matrix?utm_source=googlepla&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CMDUu8j4tsACFWoR7AoddGQASQ

 

 

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Chorus wasn't as popular back then, at least for live guitar. It was mostly Flanger and Phases being used. You had some Lexicon effects for PA. Rolland space echos had chorus but they were mostly used for vocals as the word "chorus" suggests.

 

Guitar players sis have acces to drive boxes, wahs, Phase shifters, and echo units. Flangers started coming out in the late 70's early 80s. They weren't all that great because they required memory chips to create the short echo that gets flanged. Mutron was big as were other Mestro phasers. Big stone and small stone stuff by electro harmonix was big sellers. Other then that, there just weren't that many good stomp boxes back then being sold in music stores guitarists could afford until maybe the later 80's and 90's.

 

For a Flanger, the Electric Mistress was the big one used back then. http://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/products/electro-harmonix-classics-deluxe-electric-mistress-flanger-filter-matrix?utm_source=googlepla&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CMDUu8j4tsACFWoR7AoddGQASQ

 

 

The CE-1 came out in '76, followed by the CE-2 in '79. Both were extremely popular, both live and in the studio. Why are BBD chips "not that great," exactly?

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I love the old Electric Mistress Deluxe ( $55.95), my mom got it for me when I was fourteen in 1979, for X-mas. I love the way it made me have the sounds of David Gilmore ( the Wall), Robin Trower, Pat Travers or Alex Lifeson of Rush. To me , that Flanger was (is) the best Flanger ever made !!!!

 

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The CE-1 came out in '76, followed by the CE-2 in '79. Both were extremely popular, both live and in the studio. Why are BBD chips "not that great," exactly?

 

 

I recall Chorus pedal effects being *very* popular with the jazz-rock bass crowd during the late '70s and stayed that way certainly well into the '80s. All of that thick chorus effect jazz bass playing got nauseating rather quickly.

 

Bucket Brigade analog technology worked great as long as the noise problem was overcome with a good implementation of compression / decompression in the circuit. My trusty '78 A/DA flanger proved that.

 

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The CE-1 came out in '76, followed by the CE-2 in '79. Both were extremely popular, both live and in the studio.
They became popular but you have to realize how long that actually took for that popularity to catch on.

You have to remember, there was no internet, no music super stores, and even knowing about the gear might have been limited to adds in a few magazines that few musicians had access to.

 

Most was word of mouth which was very slow. In comparison to internet sales today something can become popular in a month and be obsolete in a year. Back then it may have taken 5 or more years to become popular. What was available to the masses came through the mom and pop music stores in their area and at best most might carry a single product line of gear.

 

Some larger stores in big cities may have had more of the latest gear available, but the stuff would need to be big sellers to become popular enough to be sold in your smaller stores in rural America. Your top recording stars were usually ahead because they were given gear to try out by manufacturers and studios. Average time for those same pieces of gear to become popular and affordable for local bands took a long time by todays standards.

 

 

I found this from the boss site which kind of explains what I'm talking about.

 

The sales of the CE-1 were slow at the beginning until at the end of the '70s its popularity started to grow especially among hammond player's, led by the example of Herbie Hancock. Slowly its favor grew also among guitar and bass players, but since it was a relatively large sized and expensive pedal, it did not sell to the big markets. Thus, Boss developed smaller and more affordable versions housed in the cast iron shells (known as the compact pedal series) in order to target larger market shares.

 

This is from sos magazine

 

Although the Boss B100 predated it, the CE1 was the first Boss effects unit, and therefore occupies a unique place in history. The effects circuitry was based on a single modulated BBD delay line and was lifted in its entirety from the previous year's JC (Jazz Chorus) guitar amplifiers, which had been almost instant successes. But the price of the CE1 was high — many times that of existing effects such as fuzz, wah and phaser pedals — and at first it sold slowly. Very slowly. Furthermore, whereas the JC amplifiers were stereo, and boasted a lush, spatial sound, many people ignored the all-important right output on the rear of the CE1, using it as a mono effect, and thus seriously compromising its performance.

 

The turning point came in the late 1970s, when prog-rock keyboard players and jazz-rock (or 'fusion') guitarists started to use stereo amplification on stage. Suddenly, the chorus effect came into its own, and, within weeks, the mountain of unsold units had started to shrink. By the time Tony Banks of Genesis had decided to use a CE1 in preference to a Leslie cabinet, Boss were already well on the way to selling their one millionth effects unit.

 

The other item is Rolland stuff wasn't cheap. I believe that CE1 sold for around $300. You could buy a Les Paul for that much. I bought a Rolland CS1 Sustainer back in 78 and I think it cost about $150 and its just a simple opto compressor. The Space echo was another high dollar item few bands could afford. When they came out with their Japanese pedals that sold for $50 and less, they became ultra popular. Most of that didn't begin till the mid 80s though. I'm sure if you lived in the big cities that may have happened much sooner but I am mainly talking peak eras here, not release dates of the products.

 

Why are BBD chips "not that great," exactly?

 

Radar Love beat me to it. They were often noisy and the fidelity was pretty darn poor. Allot of it had to do with the chip type and circuit design of course. Guitars are often driven into saturation anyway so a little extra noise and lack of fidelity may not be noticed and may even be a signature sound for a pedal. Newer chips eventually made the sound quality much more transparent sounding.

 

I still have one of the first Multivox Solid State echo units that use analog chips. I have one of Multivox tape units too. When you compare the older SS echo to a real Tape echo or one of the newer digital 24 bit echo units the sound quality is like night and day. Which is better is a matter of what you need for a given situation. We all know Bad Fidelity can be contrasted against High fidelity especially for guitars to give the music a unique sound guitars may be what is needed for a unique mix.

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