FX67 Stereo Turbo Chorus

If you are playing jazz, blues, rock, hardrock, metal, etc., DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT buy this pedal. It overtakes your tone completely, allthough subtle settings are possible, but this is not what this pedal was intended to do (hence it's name, TURBO chorus). A mild CE 2, long dash, silver screw, black label, serial number 9800 or one with a green label (as are my 2 Boss chorus pedals) will suit your needs just fine. If you are playing new wave and real old gothic, DO, I repeat, DO buy this pedal. If you play some commercial idiotism like Nosferatu and (later) London after Midnight or heavy metal dressed in gothic clothes, ask Bryan Adams or Metallica respectively how to make your sound. They will tell you that you don't need these clothes for playing their sounds, which are good sounds btw. within their own styles of music. This pedal will not suit you for that, it is worthy of better sound creators like Rikk Agnew, Barry Galvin, Simon Hinkler, Gary Marx and Valor on "Atrocities", one of the best gothic/surreal albums ever made. Combine it with a Roland CE 1 for thickness, and you will get, if tweaked correctly, a nice, rich, syropy "rolling" sound like in the refrain (chorus) of, f.e., "Porcelan Gods" of Mephisto Walz. The two "speeds" interact with each other in a unique way, you have to adjust (tweak) them in a certain way. Use your ears to do this. And use a Marshall tube amp for a fat overdrive. If you are looking for a marvellous Robin Guthrie kind of sound (Cocteau Twins), a polychorus or an older polyflange will suit your needs just fine. Or even a Tsunami. Of course: CREATE DON'T IMITATE I always say. The pedal has the same soundcolour as other analog DOD chorus pedals. The actual colour of the pedal itself is dark blue with an led (red light) which is quite big, especially when compared to boss pedals. This is of course a detail of little importance (if it were pink, I would still use it). The pedal is a bit noisy (you hear the waveforms a bit), even with a battery. I never used an adapter for it, because this is an old American pedal and I live in Belgium, the land of beers and Cardinal Danneels :). 

Built like Captain Kirk's Enterprise. The footswitch is typically plastic, but reliable. I don't throw my pedals to a wall, so I have no problems with them at all. I would certainly use it during a live performance, how else would I get these swirling sounds (well, I know of another way, but I'm not gonna tell you. Experimenting is no papal dogmatic enterpise - or at least, it shouldn't be).

This pedal has 4 parameters (knobs), 2 x speed and 2 x depth. It's actually 2 chorus pedals in one unit, but it has a unique sound. I mean, no matter how many chorus units you place one before the other, you will not get the sound that this baby generates! These two chorus circuits were developped to work with each other, which gives a unique kind of "speed" or "rate". So the manual isn't lying: you can get chorus sounds which you don't get with another chorus pedal or with a combination of two or more (the speeds won't interact the same way as is the case with this "soundpearl" of a pedal). To avoid every misunderstanding: in stereo, each sound is being send to a different channel. In mono, both sounds are mixed together, so you don't have to play in stereo to get the full, complete sound out of the pedal. p.s.: the same goes for the Ibanez BC 9 bi-mode chorus, the BCL and the twin cam chorus. But these units have two choruses with different ranges, the one on the right sounds pretty much like a CE 2 (low range), while the other sounds pretty much like a small clone (high range). The DOD Turbo has two choruses which are exactly the same. This makes adjusting easier, especially if you don't experiment and set both speed/depth combinations exactly the same; this will "boost" your chorus sound a lot (read: it adds syrop and honey :)). However, if you experiment with it, as I hope you do, you will get quite unique "speeds", some of them resemble triangular waves (instead of sine waves), others, well..., I don't know how to translate these sounds in verbal language. You can't get an unusual, non musical sound out of this pedal(when you play gothic or new wave, almost no pedal can, perhaps a polychorus. But then again, to experiment should be the synonym for "new wave").

I never dealt with the company, not even for my very old performer 565 A chorus, for which I will write a review soon, since there isn't one yet.

I play my own humble compositions. I used the labels "new wave" and "gothic" above in order to get my communication through to you, allthough I do not believe in "labelling" music. It's a bit sad this pedal doesn't have a fifth knob or parameter namely the one which is typical for older DOD chorus pedals, the "delay time". This of course is not a "pre delay" to create "doubling" effects, but it controls the delay time of the chorus effect in itself (chorus is based on a mixture of your input signal with one or more delayed copies of it - this parameter determines it's time, so, you could say, it increases/decreases the overall width. Pedals or effect racks without this feature have a fixed chorus delay time, mostly set at it's minimum. However, the turbo chorus has a delay time which comes close to my old performer chorus I spoke about above when turning the delay time almost completely open - hence the wide range of this pedal). Don't think this pedal is all you need in order to get f.e. a Galvin sound, nor should it be, because I believe you should create your own soundscapes and respect the ones your favourite guitar players have made or are making (thank God Barri Barri still plays his music! - Gary Marx, Simon Hinkler, Rikk Agnew, Robin Guthrie, where are you guys? Wayne Hussey, stop your Boss chorus 300 rack from collecting dust! My ears need some more honey!). You need a lot more gear if you would attempt to do so. I'm not going to tell you what I would do if someone would harm or steal my pedal - Cardinal Danneels might hear it and be in shock :). Overall, I'd say this is a very good pedal, especially suitable for "new wave" and "gothic" music. It is also very suitable for "acoustic" music, especially when played in stereo.