good eyes, y’all. i cant find any more; it seems that they have the matthews kids on there, yet i can’t seem to find the man himself. i even tried reading backwards, diagonal and backwards diagonal!

the classic stone has a noticeable volume drop that hampers it’s usefulness on a clean guitar but actually works to it’s advantage when you’re running it before distortion – the drop serves to clean up the dirt slightly and let the ‘swoosh’ become more prominent. the nano stone fixes the drop, which makes it more useful in clean situations or if you’re running it after any dirtboxes (or if you just don’t want to lose any distortion).

ps luscious is remarkably apt when describing small stones

i haven’t seen the classic chassis in a cardboard box for a while actually, they’ve all been pine recently. also, i finally saw the nano grails in store today and it’s likely only a matter of time before the POG is phased out. i notice the holiest grail is gone as well, which is odd – it seemed such a popular pedal. are we to expect an ‘i know we said the last one was the holiest but we were mistaken, this new one is the holiest’ grail?

The Small Clone sounds quite fetching on bass, the kind of tone that you can use clean for super lush passages or distorted for fat, spacial lines. Super versatile and it’s got the classic vibe, very cool. This effect makes me think of the Beastie Boys’ “Something’s Got to Give,” rad. This one gets points for being the quietest EHX chorus, as well as being the most simple to get working. The best ‘straight ahead chorus’ tones in the Polychorus sound like the Small Clone, which says something about how good this box sounds. It’s the one if you’re looking for something simple to click on and off.

I’ve always had a thing for the Polychorus, myself. It can do all the Small Clone stuff but then there are 10,000 other sounds available. The flanger mode sounds really neat on a clean bass because it’s so subtle and trippy, and in the chorus mode you can dial in a slapback echo as well. I know several bassists who swear by the Polychorus, and it is by far the most versatile of the bunch. Also it is the only chorus pedal that has ever actually made me think two guitars were playing, usually they all just sound like someone is using a chorus pedal. The controls are a bit finnicky at first but once everything starts to make sense, you’ll never want to shut it off. The feedback control is the real winner here, and this box actually gets my vote for the first one you should check out. There is a lot to learn here so go somewhere with a return policy and bring it home for a week or two, that’s the only way to really get into this pedal.

The Clone Theory sounds wonderful as well, but it loses out to those two for one reason: I tend to set my amp fairly bright and then kill the top end with the tone knob on my bass. This leaves me wide open to the oft-complained about noise present in the Clone Theory. If you’re running a dark amp that will mask the white noise in the higher frequencies, this is probably the clearest chorus you will ever hear. It actually allows you to cut through a mix on most settings, and it can get the bubbly Small Clone sound as well as the ‘frosty whisper’ chorus tone prevalent in the 80’s. The vibrato mode sounds cool but a little odd on bass, although with the depth down and the rate up it sounds a little better. Also, you may just think it sounds great so who am I to say?

None of these pedals cut a significant amount of low end, at least not to my ears.

The EHX boxes are the only ones I have ever played with a bass, although I can say from guitar experience that the MXR chorus is worth checking out if a local shop has one in stock.

Anyhow, hopefully it helps!

lots of effects buzz when there is nothing in the input, i know this happens to my zvex fuzz factory in particular and i think my phase 90 does as well. however, if it continues at a lesser volume when something is connected, i would start looking for ground problems.

actually the whole issue sounds like a ground problem to me*, ive had similar issues with my microsynth (a cold solder off the bat which, once fixed, allowed the pedal to run problem free for several months. this was followed by sudden loss of signal and ground humming issues that still intermittently arise to this day).

*my electronics knowledge is somewhere below ‘basic’ so please please dont read my ‘diagnosis’ as being anything more than simple supposition based on past experience. please!

fender 65 twin reverb for guitar, traynor ts-60b for bass

it doesn’t matter how cool dinosaurs are, there’s no sense in flogging them.

re: costch, i refuse to believe that creative music will ever die. there always has been and always will be people trying to do new things, the issue is when the mainstream floats away from these people and pretends that nothing has progressed or improved since the late 60’s. although progress may be primarily trapped in the underground, i firmly believe that for every jet, there is a king khan or a brian jonestown massacre – someone who realizes that there were some really cool trends and styles back then, but there is still alot of room for improvement and progress.

i would like to see another ‘unifiying explosion’ like what happened with the beatles or nirvana, but according to my calculations that is another 10 or so years away. in the meantime, we have alot of work to do.

Polychorus. Pairs nicely with a Metal Muff for leads AND sounds gorgeous on clean passages.

“But John, I don’t play clean bits!”
“Buy a Polychorus, you will.”

There are settings that actually sound like two guitars playing unison, something I’ve never experienced from a chorus pedal before (I know that’s what they’re meant to do but they always sound like chorus pedals to me). And it self-oscillates!