CEB-3 Bass Chorus

I use a MM Stingray 5 --> BDDI --> CEB-3 --> Markbass LMII head with STD 104HR cab. The chorus effect is quite smooth, and can be quite subtle, which suits me perfectly. You can make it thick and watery or subtle and sweeping with ease. The low filter is great for maintaining a solid bottom end with the lush chorus effect when going up high within the same bassline, rather than affect everything.

It's BOSS, it's built to be gigged with for years and still perform night after night.

Straight out of the box, plug it in and away you go. Like most BOSS pedals you have to play around with it, but that's half the fun of buying a new pedal. I'm giving it a 8 because of it's plug-n-play capabilities.

The only other time I've played with chorus is on an old Peavey bass amp, which was cool, but I like this a little better. I haven't used it enough so I'm in the process I've acquiring a few more effects, building a pedal board and then I'll use it a lot more. Overall it's reliable, well priced and sounds great.

Some reviewers have really dumped on this pedal saying it's not aggressive enough. I'll tell you right now that this effect is not and will never be a bass flanger or phaser. The Boss guitar versions of both those pedals work just fine for bass if you want an edgier sound. This chorus is a very subtle effect; that said, it is quite flexible, and definitely audible. It adds a softening, ethereal quality at lower rates and high depth; at higher rates/lower depth, you get a range of vibrato effects. Turn them both up too much and it sounds out of tune as mentioned before. This pedal is on a board that I use with both guitars and basses, and includes, in signal-chain order, a Boss TU-2, LMB-3 limiter, CS-3 compressor, ODB-3 OD/dist, and the CEB-3. I use this rig with an Ibanez SG clone as well as a Yamaha BB-404 J-bass clone (the only one where I use the enhancer part of the LMB-3), a Fender Mexi Jazz with Dimarzio Ultra Jazz pickups and independent volume/tone (this thing is PUNCHY), and a Yamaha TRB-1005 5-string active, all piped through a Peavey 210TX 200W 2x10+h combo. For both guitar and bass, this pedal is outstanding as a single effect. Mixing it with distortion/OD can have mixed results, but produces some interesting sounds especially for bass. It might be interesting to try this with an octave pedal, or in an effects loop after true tube overdrive. This pedal adds very little noise at any setting, being a modulation effect as opposed to a gain-boosting effect. If you use the level control to boost signal, you might notice a little more noise, but that's just as likely to be your axe or amp as anything else.

Plenty of good words about Boss durability, and this pedal's no exception. One thing that will kill this pedal dead, though, is reverse polarity or too much amps. You don't have to use the Boss PSA adapter, but the one you do use MUST be 200Ma and negative tip polarity.

Four knobs, three of which are standard on any chorus pedal: level, depth and rate. The fourth is a Low Filter knob, which is pretty intuitive once you learn what it does; basically as you turn it off full it stops applying the chorus effect to the lower frequencies. At minimum only the G-string gets much of the effect. If you want a clean low groove but some character in your upper noodling, you'll want to play with this knob. I find that even with it on full I don't lose any low end, so I don't mess with it much unless I turn the rate way up. Depth and rate are pretty easy; depth controls how present the synthesized voices produced by the effect are, while rate controls the speed at which the effect's waves align and misalign with your bass' clean tone. Technically, it does this my adjusting how far out of tune the waves are with your bass. Be careful when adjusting rate, as it will very quickly start sounding like "beats" which makes you sound out of tune. You can use faster rates to great effect if you turn down the depth to about 9 o'clock; then the effect becomes a vibrato. It takes a little experimentation to find settings that work well if you've never played with a chorus before, but once you get the hang of twiddling the knobs it becomes very easy to dial in the sound you're looking for.

Never dealt with Boss customer support. Never had a Boss pedal die.

Overall, this is a very subtle effect, but perfect for acoustic rock (helps your electric bass blend with the guitars; bass lines in Jars of Clay songs usually use a bit of chorus) to alternative (this thing does a great 3 Doors Down impression) to some of the tamer classic rock/metal passages calling for bass chorus. If I had it to do over, I'd probably pick one up on eBay or otherwise used, but I have no regrets buying this thing new.