Waterfall Bass and a Phase 95 are what's on my board. I love the 95.
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Seven Chorus and Three Phaser Comparison
- Thread starter 600 Ohms
- Start date
After using this for a while, I realize I'm wrong about the — and + positions. It's not a delay or feedback knob, it is a toggle between two waveforms.
Your three Lunar Chorus patches sound like they have the output gain quite low compared to the other pedal recordings. Analogue Chorus pedals often add a dollop of extra gain to hide their slightly subtractive nature to the overall signal. So you'll need to add a bit of gain, mine are set to about 2 O'clock on the dial (178 value). Also, I find the low retain needs to be bumped a wee bit and the mix re-dialled (I like mine at 217 value), With the Quad Chorus, I dial the speed down a lot too (62 Value).
The Lunar's phasers for me are all stock and pretty good out of the door, however...that gain needs tweaking.
I ditched my long term Strymon Mobius for the SA Lunar and it's been more of a bumpy ride than I expected. I've found the stock Chorus sounds all needed more tweeking than I anticipated. It's taken me a few months to bottom out my Choice of 6 selectable patches (3 green zone, 3 red zone) but now I've happy to have effectively dropped the Mobius and I don't miss it any more. Each patch has needed some attention to their 4 band semi parametric EQ's too. I also supplement some of the missing Mobius sounds that I can't easily get from my Lunar with my Eventide H9. I felt that the stock Mobius Chorus presets to be quite weak on bass and needed a fair bit of editing, but I found the range of options to be quite limited. The preset either worked or didn't on the Mobius and the EQ and Mix options are very limited.
I've stuck with the SA Lunar and it's now my fav Modulation on bass pedal. It's not as easy to use out of the box like other SA pedals. Every patch I've used needs a fair bit of work to get right. I think a lot of the patches are dialled in for guitar and not bass. Unlike other SA pedals it needs work on every patch, the Aftershock...very easy...C4...LOADs of great community patches, Ultrawave...again very easy dial in and a growing base of community patches. The Lunar needs tweeking.
A few call outs of the Lunar features that aren't always noticed: it's fully midi compatible (with a hub), this is a massive feature. I use Expression over midi and it works great. This device has a number of routing options, but essentially it's a stereo in and Stereo out. Each channel has the same settings, so each control adjusts both channels. You can in theory put this pedal in two locations on your board by splitting the left and right output channels and use the on/off and mix control to dial in the left / right. For me, I use this pedal as part of my Stereo output from my Pedalboard.
It's got a really comprehensive 4 band Semi parametric EQ, a HPF filter and a Lo Retain control. The mix control is stereo / dual channel and shifts between fully dry (0) on the left and fully wet on both channels at noon (128) to fully dry on right channel at max (254). So that's to be considered when using the mix control. The Offset knob controls the slight phasing between the two channels and you can invert the mix and the trem.
I think that SA would be well advised to re-think or re-fresh their modulation pedals with newer hardware and coding that is available on some of the newer SA units. However...from a pure audio point of view, the Lunar has everything it needs. It's more than capable of sounding like a fat or warm, true analogue Chorus, Phaser, Resonator, Flanger or Vibe. For a fully digital unit, it sure sounds analogue. It just needs a careful dial in. This is a 21 knob stereo Multi-Mod pedal after all.
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Agreed. I thought it was odd that it defaulted there.
I couldn't agree more on the above. It really doesn't sound nailed out of the box, but you can get it there, with some love and fortunately, the ability to save/backup/share etc. That was more commitment than I was willing to give it!
This big friend (on the right) arrived just now:
...and I can confirm that the big box performs very similarly to its clone. Here's that sweep:
Big Box 1981 Small Stone (v3)
Behringer VP1 Vintage Phaser
And for the reminder of what went wrong in the Nano, at slower speeds (rate knob 11:00 and below):
The real BBSS is about 4dB louder than the Behringer, but when you normalize the levels, they sound really, really similar. I would say the v3 sounds ever so slightly creamier and more gratifying.
I wish it was able to go slower than it does, but no matter.
Bummer about the Nano. If EHX could have regulated the width of the sweep, it would be the clear winner, given it’s powered by conventional means, has a wide and usable range of speed, is small, true bypass (the v3 also is), and appears to solve the dip in level problems (my v3 doesn’t have any drop in level. I think I got a really good one).
Josh Scott did this video and article on whether vintage pedals were better than their modern or reissued counterparts, and in the Small Stone review at least, I think he fumbled the ball by omitting this massive difference in the sweep. From my standpoint, having owned a Nano, a v3 and the Behringer clone, the v3 very clearly wins, with the VP1 in second. The v3 has something extra "harmonic" in its sweep that I dig. If you never use Color mode (keep the switch down) on the Nano, I think there's not enough difference to matter.
...and I can confirm that the big box performs very similarly to its clone. Here's that sweep:
Big Box 1981 Small Stone (v3)
Behringer VP1 Vintage Phaser
And for the reminder of what went wrong in the Nano, at slower speeds (rate knob 11:00 and below):
The real BBSS is about 4dB louder than the Behringer, but when you normalize the levels, they sound really, really similar. I would say the v3 sounds ever so slightly creamier and more gratifying.
I wish it was able to go slower than it does, but no matter.
Bummer about the Nano. If EHX could have regulated the width of the sweep, it would be the clear winner, given it’s powered by conventional means, has a wide and usable range of speed, is small, true bypass (the v3 also is), and appears to solve the dip in level problems (my v3 doesn’t have any drop in level. I think I got a really good one).
Josh Scott did this video and article on whether vintage pedals were better than their modern or reissued counterparts, and in the Small Stone review at least, I think he fumbled the ball by omitting this massive difference in the sweep. From my standpoint, having owned a Nano, a v3 and the Behringer clone, the v3 very clearly wins, with the VP1 in second. The v3 has something extra "harmonic" in its sweep that I dig. If you never use Color mode (keep the switch down) on the Nano, I think there's not enough difference to matter.
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Hmm. The v3 also has a bit more headroom than the VP1, which gets a tiny bit overdriven-sounding on louder notes, or if the sweep is in a place where the effect is emphasizing the low end. V3 is slightly brighter, or the VP1 is a little darker. But they're quite close. I played a few "chords" on the wrong instrument (that had too many strings):
In the end, having compared:
My Small Stone v3 is going to sit on my Rhodes, permanently connected. My VP1 is in a box, on its way to a keyboard playing friend.
- SA Lunar
- EQD Grand Orbiter
- MXR Phase 95
- EHX Small Stone Nano
- EXH Small Stone v3
- Behringer VP1
- Aguilar Grape
- my old Terraform
My Small Stone v3 is going to sit on my Rhodes, permanently connected. My VP1 is in a box, on its way to a keyboard playing friend.
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Thanks a lot for doing this. Funny how we all hear or like different things for different reasons. I loved your fretless on everything by the way.
I have the mxr bcd and love it for the reasons you don't. The crossover is what I use 98% of the time. I want the chorus on the higher register stuff to stand out more when I use it while playing in church each week, but for the bass to still be normal on the rest of the song parts. I dig the dynamic it adds, but after hearing all your clips, I really liked the Seafoam a lot too as well as the Julia. I liked the BCD the best though but probably because that's what I am used to.
My next pedal will be a phaser and so I really also enjoyed your useful comparisons there. Now I'm leaning toward the phase 95, but also dug the sound of the Grape a lot too.
Once again, thanks for doing this 600 Ohms!!
I have the mxr bcd and love it for the reasons you don't. The crossover is what I use 98% of the time. I want the chorus on the higher register stuff to stand out more when I use it while playing in church each week, but for the bass to still be normal on the rest of the song parts. I dig the dynamic it adds, but after hearing all your clips, I really liked the Seafoam a lot too as well as the Julia. I liked the BCD the best though but probably because that's what I am used to.
My next pedal will be a phaser and so I really also enjoyed your useful comparisons there. Now I'm leaning toward the phase 95, but also dug the sound of the Grape a lot too.
Once again, thanks for doing this 600 Ohms!!
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You might like the Whirlwind Orange Box, which I thought had a similar sound to the block logo Phase 90.
Empress Phaser is the one I eventually settled on, though I wish they would make a simplified version without the auto modes and tap tempo, neither of which I ever use.
Very much appreciated. I'm glad we don't all prefer the same things, otherwise there would be nothing to talk about. I hope you find what you're looking for.
There were some pretty fancy phasers out there, with three footswitches and tons of controls that I kinda passed over because the sizes were larger than I thought any phaser ought to be. If my tone depended on phase, I could understand something like the Toadworks Phantasm, but that's a real extravagance for me.
I'll have a look at the Whirlwind. I hear the original designer is on board.
I love the sound of the Empress, so I kept it despite the fact that I only use maybe 10% of its features.
Tap tempo doesn’t make much sense to me in modulation pedals. I’d rather have expression out to control the rate, or just a big knob like the one that comes extra with the Phase 90.
I think it's fair to say that in the world of Multi Modulation pedals...no one has yet created the definitive answer for bass. The Strymon Mobius was the first of it's class and gets SO much right. However, it's is blatantly focussed on guitar and that is it's limiting factor. The EQ centres can't be altered and do nothing for bass. The mix control goes from "slightly distant and vague sound" to "very distant and vague sounding".
The Boss range (MD200 etc) are digital models of their earlier pedals, which is fine, but didn't quite do it for me either.
The GFI Synesthesia looked promising but seems to have a supply issue...no one's has actually received a retail version yet.
The Source Audio Lunar has come closest for me, I think that the lack of good Bass content / Patches have been the limiting factor here. I still think that there is an opportunity in the market for a really good digital Multi modulation. It probably wouldn't sell as well as a Delay or Reverb, however if it's obvious that it's THE pedal to get then it'll be popular and cause a lot of pedal flipping.
Splitting hairs a little but the Line 6 MM4 would probably be considered the first of the "modern" multimod pedals (came out in 1999-2001 timeframe?). With it being that old and with limited parameter control, I can see excluding it from the current generation, however, the Eventide Modfactor (2008) and TC Nova NM1 (2010) also predate the Mobius (2012).
For me, 2- and 4-stage phasers are fine with guitar but I find thin and lacking on bass. I very much prefer 6+ stages. By far my favorite is the Maxon PH-350, with the 6- and 10- stage modes absolutely amazing. The Maxon PH9 6-stage and MXR Phase 100 10-stage are also quite good.
While I do not currently own one, the Mr. Black Gilamondo 8-stage phaser is also excellent but very hard find.
I agree with @GMC, the Source Audio modulators are quite versatile but take a lot of time to get just right.
While I do not currently own one, the Mr. Black Gilamondo 8-stage phaser is also excellent but very hard find.
I agree with @GMC, the Source Audio modulators are quite versatile but take a lot of time to get just right.
I used to have one, along with the DL4! Both great units and yes very much at the fore front of the digital revolution. However, in my view, the Strymon is the first of it's type that had full Midi control as part of the digital package. Although looking at the big Model Dial that Strymon were certainly influenced with that concept. I passed on the Eventide Mod factor, however I currently use a pair of Eventide H9 max's which I really like....Actually looking at wikipedia...it looks like the Eventide modfactor was launched late 2010...2 years before the Strymon. Lol...
It's interesting that the Eventide H9 and Line 6 both use 24bit architecture. It's just the memory and clock speed that separates them physically, although the mathematical models (algorithms) on each device are very different. Strymon use a more advanced 32 bit SHARC processor. These hardware platforms pales next to the Source Audio 56bit processing architecture. It's an old school vs new school level of DSP capability.
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I have been looking for chorus pedal that don't compromise the low-end. After trying several, I came to the conclusion that by its nature, any modulation effect that relies on phase-shifting are likely to affect the low-end because of potential phase cancellations.
However watching this thread got me looking at phasers, in particular the MXR Phase 95. Unexpectedly, I discover that I dig phasers and that the 2 stage mode simulates perfectly the “chorus” sound that I have been searching for. The low-end is still “affected” but more in a cyclic way, a bit like an envelope filter, depending on the speed setting whereas with the chorus effect, the loss of the low end is immediate and permanent. Obviously, this is not science but just my impressions.
So for my application, MXR Phase 95 = phaser (mode 90) + chorus (mode 45).
Thank you for this thread.
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I still hold out hopes that Source Audio will do a Nemesis-sized multi modulation — BUT — I think if they do, they should consider starting fresh with their algorithms and models. The Lunar/Gemini experience for me was a turn-off and best-foot-forward would be
Yes, 2-stage phasers sound great for this! It's not "real" chorusing based on detuning, but a single-notch LFO is subtle and different and really pleasing.
To add to @600 Ohms reply, the JAM Waterfall maintains the low end better than any chorus currently on the market.
He's not wrong. It's a fantastic pedal, price fully justified. I never think about low end loss with the Waterfall.
