Behringer's latest release is a clone of the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble pedal, as used by Andy Summers and Joe Satriani. With the original pedal fetching big bucks on the used gear market, it was only a matter of time before Behringer stepped in with its low-cost £69/$79 solution.
"It is, of course, a faithful recreation of the Chorus Ensemble, the very first chorus pedal," says Behringer of its latest pedal release, the Chorus Symphony. The original pedal was released in 1976 and was the first to feature the chorus effect introduced in the company's Roland JC-120 and JC-60 Jazz Chorus amplifiers a year earlier (the latter of which Roland has just released in software form).
Notably, it was also one of the first to include the bucket-brigade (BBD) delay - short delays only previously made possible using tape.
Thanks to those innovations and the likes of Summers (who used the pedal on several Police hits including Message in A Bottle, Walking on the Moon and Don't Stand So Close to Me), and other artists such as Nirvana, Satch and Johnny Marr, the pedal has, like so many other early Roland/Boss products, not only achieved legendary status but exorbitant secondhand prices.
You could be looking at as much as four figures for a battered example of the original pedal, so step forward Behringer in a 'hold my pint' fashion to come up with a clone for a fraction of the cost, just £69/$79.
"I hope that someone gets my… chorus in a pedal," Uli Behringer probably isn't saying right now.
Like the CE-1, Chorus Symphony enables you to select between chorus and vibrato with a footswitch, and has a Chorus Intensity dial to adjust both chorus speed and depth simultaneously. There are separate dials to the right to adjust the same parameters for the vibrato effect.
The pedal has two outputs, so can be used in mono or stereo, and you can also simply use it as a preamp to produce the harmonic saturation as heard on the original Jazz Chorus amps. Tinkering with a dip switch in the Chorus Symphony's innards even lets you bypass this effect, should you wish.
There's more info on the Boss-a-like pedal at the Behringer website and in the video below, in which some Behringer youngsters also produce some decent Police-a-like music.
