Noise Boyz Review

All you’ll ever really need to get the chorus sound

So let’s talk about ‘the chorus sound’ for a minute. When I was 12 the crappy little $75 amp (that I loved) my parents bought me had chorus built in and 12 year old me fell in love with it right away. Sadly, as I started to write music and became more jaded about life in general I found that I was able to find fewer and fewer actual musical uses for it, until I realized that the problem was that my expectations for what chorus should be used on were a bit off. Much like a compressor or boost pedal, I find that chorus is generally better applied as a slight additional layer of color on your guitar tone, rather than a full blown effect in and of itself (like reverb or delay). Now that’s not true in all cases, but chorus definitely has a VERY 80s vibe that not everyone loves and definitely won’t fit every type of music. If you’ve never played through a chorus pedal before or have trouble differentiating its sound, take a listen to the samples below: the first is a completely clean guitar tone with literally no effects applied whatsoever, and the second is the same riff with the rate setting at 10 and all other setting at 5. You’ll notice the difference right away.

To me, the sound at this setting brings the riff to life a bit more and has a feel to it that is somewhere between a slight reverb and a tremolo. I find with this setting that chords ring a little bit more and are a little less thin, giving a little lighter sonic characteristic when playing along with others. To bring this effect out a bit more, I really like setting everything on the Boss Ch-1 at around 6 because to me this is sort of the sweet spot where you get a noticeably different and distinct sound from it without it falling to deep into washed out territory. Here’s a nice little riff played with everything around 6.

Leaving all dials around 6, I also wanted to show you what it sounds like over distortion. Below you can hear a little hammer on riff played for 2 different samples - the first is slightly distorted (through the Deltalab RD-1 without chorus applied and then with chorus on. This is where chorus really shines to me - to give something a little bit extra to the tone without completely washing it out.

Of course, heavy chorus can be a great effect in and of itself with the correct types of riffs. I’ve always felt it had sort of an alien-esque sound at extreme settings and so I tried to apply it to a riff that brought that characteristic to life. Below is a sample of everything at 10 – it won’t work for everything you play but given the right type of music it can actually be a super cool effect.

To sum things up, the Boss Super Chorus gives you just about everything you need in the chorus sound. It can give you that 80s smooth jazz feel, can add a little bit of levity to your tone when playing chords with all settings around 6, and can get nice and weird with all settings turned to 10. Want to give it a shot?

Tech Specs