New Toy - Carl Martin classic Chorus

Bob-Dubery

My guitar playing exploits are exclusively acoustic. However I don't think it's beyond the pale to use stomp boxes with an acoustic. In fact two players that I admire greatly, John Martyn and Richard Thompson, do some interesting things with pedals and acoustics. In particular I think the fx that do things with time - DDLs, chorus, even a UniVibe (Thompson) - can make useful and attractive modifications to the sound of an acoustic guitar.

So the new toy is a Carl Martin classic chorus.

I think the shape of the box is a bit impractical if you want to have a lot of pedals on a board. But I don't want that, so it's no great issue to me. In fact I like the looks - very retro - and the box seems pretty rugged. I am not recommending buying a pedal for it's looks, but as a conversation piece....

Some observations....
1) Cool sound. I liked the chorus sound a lot. Rich. Nicely spacious. I'd been playing around with a "software" effect built into a Line 6 tone port, but all the time-shift type effects (chorus, phase, flange etc) seemed to have this notch in the sound as the sweep reached the extremities of it's cycle and started moving back the other way. You could hear this big "whomp" in the sound. Very off putting. In this pedal the sweeping is very smooth.

2) By-pass seems to be a true by-pass. And it seems that the effect can boost the volume. But they give a control that allows you to balance by-pass and FX levels to taste.

3) I found some of the the controls a little confusingly named. You get "rate" and "speed". Speed did what I expected, but "rate" seems more like a mix knob that allows you to adjust between a straight chorus sound and a vibrato effect. The pedal has a vibrato feature - which you can turn off with a second button. So you can have by-pass, chorus, or chorus and vibrato. "Rate" allows you to vary the mix between chorus and vibrato.

4) No manual. But the web site was very helpful. The on-line manual takes you through the controls and then gives 4 sort of "starter point" settings. You can find one of those that is reasonably close to the sound that you want, and then start tweaking that. I decided that the last example (with some vibrato in the mix) was cooking and then started tweaking that one.

Other than the confusingly (to me) labelled "rate" control I got to grips with this quite quickly. It's not the world's most compact pedal, but since it's the only effect I will be likely to use the size is not that much of an issue to me (as long as it's small enough to sling in my carry bag - which this one is). And the colour and the size make it easy for my myopic eyes to find ?

Gearhead

Eh... any Chorus effect when set completely wet (no original signal mixed in) is a vibrato. Depth is a good term for the other setting, the extent to which the original signal is being taken out of tune by the LFO. Rate could mean both mix or depth could it not?

AlanRatcliffe

Eh... any Chorus effect when set completely wet (no original signal mixed in) is a vibrato.

Only partly. Chorus also has a short delay (20 - 30 ms) similar to a flanger, but the delay time is longer and also modulated. This simulates the timing variance of two people playing together.

Bob-Dubery

Gearhead wrote Eh... any Chorus effect when set completely wet (no original signal mixed in) is a vibrato. Depth is a good term for the other setting, the extent to which the original signal is being taken out of tune by the LFO. Rate could mean both mix or depth could it not?

It has four pots "Rate", "Speed", "Depth" and "Level".

"Depth" made sense to me immediately.

The web site (http://www.carlmartin.com/product_classic_chorus.htm) explains "rate" thusly: By adjusting the Rate knob clockwise you change your sound from Chorus to Vibrato with the full Vibrato effect.

I haven't bought any stomp boxes for years now (20 odd years ago I had an Ibanez chorus pedal which sounded really good - better to my taste than anything else around at the time). In the meantime time and technology have marched on, and my brain might be slowing down, but IIRC four knobs is rather a lot for a chorus pedal.

No problems though. I like the sound, and with the help of the CM web site I was able to dial in a sound that I liked pretty quickly. Now I just have to remember those settings ?

C-LYDE

..what's the difference between the RATE and the SPEED control..? {the RATE at which SPEED is changed ???)

AlanRatcliffe

IIRC four knobs is rather a lot for a chorus pedal.

Unusual, but not unheard of. Nice actually - I struggle with the lack of controls on most chorus pedals.

..what's the difference between the RATE and the SPEED control..?

From Bob's description, the rate probably changes the mix to all wet and also dials out the delay. Could actually be a delay modulation rate control too (would need two separate LFOs, but possible, and probably quite a nice feature if it has it) - not quite what they describe though.

It would be nice if someone made a chorus that only operated on the higher frequencies of the signal, which should thicken up the sound without the awful pitch warble that makes the guitar sound out of tune on all but the subtlest of settings.

Anyway - what it sounds like is the important thing. glad you're happy with the new toy Bob. Congrats!

C-LYDE

Alan Ratcliffe wrote
It would be nice if someone made a chorus that only operated on the higher frequencies of the signal, which should thicken up the sound without the awful pitch warble that makes the guitar sound out of tune on all but the subtlest of settings.

Tend to agree - I have never gotten too excited about chorus pedals as I always figured the best use was either really deliberate or very subtle. The old Roland Dimension was nice for 'widening' a sound without the obvious warbling though.. it also does/did not affect the bass frequency in an extreme manner.

Still I suppose a compromise would be to lower the 200~400Hz region before going into the chorus pedal - a decent parametric before the pedal could really help to define the sound?

Squonk

Looks like a good pedal Bob. The purple is quite snazzy as well. what else do you use when you play?
Do you run through the pedal into an amp, or do you use a PA?

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote Looks like a good pedal Bob. The purple is quite snazzy as well. what else do you use when you play?
Do you run through the pedal into an amp, or do you use a PA?

My guitars have under-saddle pickups. I run a lead from the pickup to the chorus, and then from the chorus to whatever - usually into the PA.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote
From Bob's description, the rate probably changes the mix to all wet and also dials out the delay. Could actually be a delay modulation rate control too (would need two separate LFOs, but possible, and probably quite a nice feature if it has it) - not quite what they describe though.

It would be nice if someone made a chorus that only operated on the higher frequencies of the signal, which should thicken up the sound without the awful pitch warble that makes the guitar sound out of tune on all but the subtlest of settings.

Some more notes on this box - which may shed some light for those who know their collectimisers from their flowgate arrays....

"By not using the compander circuitry found in contemporary chorus pedals, both the chorus and vibrato have the same warm round tone found in the most desirable vintage pedals. The Bypass switch engages a warm analog chorus with Speed, Depth, and Level controls, while engaging the Vibrato switch allows the user to dial from chorus (counter clockwise) to vibrato (clockwise) and any blend between with the Rate knob. " http://www.pedalgeek.com/cgi-bin/new_shop.cgi?command=link--cmcc

"Kicking on the Vibrato doesn't really add a ton of sonic zaniness, but rather, it adds a subtle extra layer of rippling modulation. I found myself setting the Chorus sides Speed control low, then for a faux-Leslie effect, I set the Vibratos Rate control high and kicked it in accordingly. The Classic Chorus is no joke. With a ton of rich, high-quality, utterly musical sounds, it may even make a non-chorus dude a believer."
http://www.stevesmusiccenter.com/CarlMartinClassicChorus.html

There's a youtube clip demonstrating this pedal, and somebody eventually switches on the vibrato and ups the "rate" knob.

The good folks over at Harmony Central seem to think well of this pedal (well... most of them)
http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Effects/product/Carl+Martin/Classic+Chorus/10/1

Gearhead

Offtopic: Methinks people that put a good review up in Harmony Central happen to be the same people that at the same time are selling the same item on Ebay, especially with the less well-known items.

Bob-Dubery

Some of them could be just putting information out there, though I'm sure there is the overlap that you suggest. I have added my review of my Morgan - and I'm not selling that on e-bay or anywhere else ?

I think if a review justifies it's position "I like it because...." "I found this control did..." then it's worthwhile, irrespective of the motivation for putting it up.