You wouldn’t serve ketchup with chocolate cake, would you? They’re not the proper pairing for blues or hard rock, but for clean chorus-sounding tones, they excel more than a tube amp. Solid-state amps sometimes get a bad rap. It’s the best.Ī compressor paired with a solid-state JC120 amp gets you some lovely New Wave clean sounds. It’s also hard to beat the chorus on a Jazz Chorus. CompressionĪ great way to get an 80s guitar tone is a Stratocaster into a compressor pedal into a Roland Jazz Chorus. On the digital side, the Boss DD-2 became available in 1983. In particular, the decay of the repeats is notably different. It reacts quite differently than a tape delay.
Pedals like the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man became popular. DelayĪnother way to get a doubled guitar sound is by using a really fast delay. I’ve had the most success using the UAD API channel strip with a little bit of compression.Ĭheck out Chic’s “Le Freak” for a fine example of DI tone.
Mind you, it’s a $100,000 board! But, to really nail some of those 80s funk tones, plugging in direct will get you part of the way there. Nile Rogers, for instance, goes straight into the board. DIīy the late 70s/early 80s, engineers started using a DI for some guitar sounds. Only the pitch modulated source is heard - 100% wet sound. Since we’re talking about chorus and flanging, we should have a side note abut vibrato.Ī vibrato effect is similar to a chorus, except there’s no dry signal mixed in. The longer delay time in chorus pedals results in a subtler effect. Typically, flangers use a shorter delay than chorus pedals. Check out builders like Analog Man that are making true bypass chorus pedals.įlangers and chorus pedals both split your signal into two, and then delay one of the signals before they’re combined again. I’m not a fan of the buffer in Boss pedals. Boss later released the CE-3 chorus pedal in 1989.īoss still makes popular chorus pedals. This is the same chorus circuit found in the Roland Jazz Chorus. It’s all over the place.Īn early example of chorus was the Boss CE-1 which was released in 1976. You really can’t get the sounds of the 80s without chorus. They were also an early contributor to the flanger world. I have similar feelings about Electro-Harmonix… modern versions always break on me. This can be heard on many guitar solos from the era.Īn early example of a flanger was the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress. You can also use flangers for a faux double tracking sound. At certain settings they can sound similar, but when you make broader adjustments, they actually both sound quite different. Sometimes, people get confused between flangers and chorus effects. “Barracuda” by Heart and “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” by The Cars both use a flanger. Sometimes used subtly for a fake double tracking sound and sometimes in extreme ways for a jet plane sound. Flangingįlangers also came into regular use in the late 70s/early 80s.
I don’t find the reissue MXR pedals to sound exactly like the originals. However, I opt for handmade versions like the JAM Pedals Ripple. Some early examples are the MXR Phase 45 and Phase 90, both of which are still available today. Unlike a chorus pedal, there is no pitch modulation happening. Then it phase shifts one of the copies and combines it back in with the original. Phasers split your signal into two exact copies. You can also hear a phaser on “The Rover” by Led Zeppelin. I tend to think of phasers as filling out the sound - making it rounder.Ĭheck out “Paranoid Android” from Radiohead to hear some phasing. Genesis, Queen and a number of funk artists regularly used a phaser for some drippy sounds. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s when it showed up in the form of a guitar pedal that it became widely used. Phasersīy the late 1960s, the sound of phasing started showing up on records. (Playlist of all the mentioned songs at the bottom of this article.) 1.