mkstewartesq
Well-known member
I am a big fan of the Boss CE-1 sound but I wasn’t aware there was a clone of it until I saw @MichaelW’s build report on the Lectric-FX Karaoke Chorus. While that PCB is not a 100% direct clone of the CE-1, it captures its spirit but does not replicate the preamp section that so many players seem to love using all by itself. Luckily, our own PedalPCB makes the Celsius, which is a clone of that preamp, and MichaelW happened to have one around that he had already built, so he demoed the two pedals together. This inspired me to build them both as a two in one to hopefully get the “full CE-1 effect”.
Karaoke Chorus - The chorus effect is beautiful – lush with just a bit more of something extra (almost like a slight reverb or a flange) that isn’t found in its successor, the CE-2. I’m not a fan of fast rate choruses but I know some have complained that they wish the rate on the Karaoke could go faster – in any event it’s fine for me. On the other hand, I do wish the vibrato could go more slowly-at its lowest rate, it’s still fairly fast and so isn’t that suited to slow atmospheric playing. I see over on the Lectric-FX forum on the MadBean site that you can change some resistors to slow the vibrato down but that apparently simultaneously changes the rate sweep on the chorus, so it requires some balancing until you can find a suitable rate sweep for each that you can live with. I decided not to bother with that.
Additional comments on the vibrato - it is much more quiet than the chorus effect. The third setting (“wet“) is basically just the wet vibrato signal without the original guitar signal mixed in. Some may like it but I’m not a huge fan of pitch-bendy sounds, which is basically what you get when you take the original guitar signal out.
Celsius Preamp - eh…. not what I was expecting. Given others’ reports of a lot of additional headroom and gain, I don’t know if I just had different expectations or if perhaps I did something wrong in the build. Low mode on mine is just a clean boost that doesn’t even hit unity until fairly far along in the dial. Once it goes above unity it might add the slightest amount of body, but I could also be imagining things just because it’s louder. High mode surprisingly removes a lot of high-end and thickens up the sound and once you get toward the upper end of the dial, starts distorting but, to me, not in a particularly pleasant or useful way. So I’ll probably use High mode when I want a mellow darker sound, and Low mode when I want things to be louder but not really change the tone.
(I don’t have the white noise issue that some reported, as I built Robert’s updated version that fixed that.)
Notes:
Mike
Karaoke Chorus - The chorus effect is beautiful – lush with just a bit more of something extra (almost like a slight reverb or a flange) that isn’t found in its successor, the CE-2. I’m not a fan of fast rate choruses but I know some have complained that they wish the rate on the Karaoke could go faster – in any event it’s fine for me. On the other hand, I do wish the vibrato could go more slowly-at its lowest rate, it’s still fairly fast and so isn’t that suited to slow atmospheric playing. I see over on the Lectric-FX forum on the MadBean site that you can change some resistors to slow the vibrato down but that apparently simultaneously changes the rate sweep on the chorus, so it requires some balancing until you can find a suitable rate sweep for each that you can live with. I decided not to bother with that.
Additional comments on the vibrato - it is much more quiet than the chorus effect. The third setting (“wet“) is basically just the wet vibrato signal without the original guitar signal mixed in. Some may like it but I’m not a huge fan of pitch-bendy sounds, which is basically what you get when you take the original guitar signal out.
Celsius Preamp - eh…. not what I was expecting. Given others’ reports of a lot of additional headroom and gain, I don’t know if I just had different expectations or if perhaps I did something wrong in the build. Low mode on mine is just a clean boost that doesn’t even hit unity until fairly far along in the dial. Once it goes above unity it might add the slightest amount of body, but I could also be imagining things just because it’s louder. High mode surprisingly removes a lot of high-end and thickens up the sound and once you get toward the upper end of the dial, starts distorting but, to me, not in a particularly pleasant or useful way. So I’ll probably use High mode when I want a mellow darker sound, and Low mode when I want things to be louder but not really change the tone.
(I don’t have the white noise issue that some reported, as I built Robert’s updated version that fixed that.)
Notes:
- Some have noted that the input and output jacks appear to pick up ticking in certain modes so, both to avoid that and due to the general nature of my build, I placed the jacks as far away from the board as possible and used shielded cable to boot. Unfortunately, due to the odd placement of the input and output pads on this board, that resulted in a really long run of cables from the board to the output jack. (All that being said, when I was testing the chorus before combining it with the preamp, I used unshielded cables and did not experience any ticking or other noise. So the shielded cable may have been unnecessary but I’ve gotten in the habit of using it so no big deal.)
- I may need to replace the CLR for the rate LED with a higher value. I’ll have to check the schematics to see what’s in there now but not only is the LED somewhat blinding but it barely registers any change related to the rate (on a very slow rate you can see a bit of a faint pulse, on fast rates it just stays lit the whole time). That actually surprised me because I recently completed the Lectric-FX Old Chap, and the rate LED on that build is a very gentle, very pleasing fading in and out throughout the rate sweep. So again, I need to see whether this build used a different CLR for the rate LED than the Old Chap or, who knows, maybe I put the wrong value resistor in.
- I again used a film-free decal and was very pleased with the results. Once the decal had cured in the oven, I applied clearcoat and then drilled. In the future, I will do the drilling before applying the clearcoat, as the small metal shavings from the drilling created micro-scratches in the clearcoat which I then had to buff out as best I could with rubbing compound.
Mike
