MXR M-234 Analog Chorus

  • Thread starter Thread starter Samhain
  • Start date Start date
If you want those Whitesnake's is this love kinda clean chorus sounds, should you get an analog or digital one?
 
Depends what yer goin fer. Sykes recorded WS with rack FX gear.
I got rid of my rack stuff 16 years ago.
This little pedal is really nice and ive had tons of Chorus pedals.
Bucket Brigade chips.
As far as rack goes nothing beats a TC 2290 IMO but who wants to drag that shit around, not me.
 
Formally known as...

mxr_zw38122819_blacklabelchorus_pedal_1171295.jpg


Just a different graphic on the front.
 
This is the best chorus I have personally owned. Previously, I have had the Boss offerings and I currently have the Mini Ibanez Chorus on my "grab n go" board. I have thus far only used the MXR in my effects loop, but I have heard complaining on other forums in regards to tone suck with this pedal - has anyone experienced this?
 
johnny q said:
This is the best chorus I have personally owned. Previously, I have had the Boss offerings and I currently have the Mini Ibanez Chorus on my "grab n go" board. I have thus far only used the MXR in my effects loop, but I have heard complaining on other forums in regards to tone suck with this pedal - has anyone experienced this?
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It's buffered which sometimes gets conflated with tone suck. I have used a fair share of tone suckers for good or bad and this isn't one of them. I was going to get the EVH one or the Boss one but when I found out that MXR Analog is the same deal as my ZW version, I just dialed it in a bit better and it can do what I want from a chorus. No one thinks it isn't the 80s Boss one, so that's a pass in my books.
 
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johnny q said:
This is the best chorus I have personally owned. Previously, I have had the Boss offerings and I currently have the Mini Ibanez Chorus on my "grab n go" board. I have thus far only used the MXR in my effects loop, but I have heard complaining on other forums in regards to tone suck with this pedal - has anyone experienced this?
Click to expand...
I have not. I use this in the loop. Plenty of headroom.
 
TheToneDig said:
It's buffered which sometimes gets conflated with tone suck.
Click to expand...
While some people may do so, yours truly knows a thing or two about building pedals, and as an ex-owner of the M-234 (owned it twice) I can confirm that this one
-has a buffered bypass
-sucks tone; notably a loss of high-end sparkle, when the pedal is bypassed.

So in this case, the buffer is actually the cause for the tone-suck. Not all buffers are created equal, and some buffered pedals even impart their own 'magic' to the tone, even with the effect of such a pedal turned off, but for the M-234 it's not the case.

I've tested this many ways, because I first noticed it in the (true bypass switchable) fx-loop of my EVH 50W. The M-234 was in the fx-loop, but the pedal was off. With the EVH's footswitch I was turning on and off the fx-loop and with the fx-loop on (so signal passing through the M-234 'uneffected'), the tone became noticably darker. Now mind you, the EVH is a hella-bright amp, so it sticks out more.
Also reproduced this with a True bypass-loop box on different amps.

The chorus sound itself is gorgeous; thick, lush, plays well with high gain, but in the end I got rid of it -after testing a shitton of other choruses- in favour of the Mooer Ensemble King. The Mooer *is* true bypass and a good clone of a Boss CE-2. I also found after a while, that the chorus sound of the M-234 is on the darker, thicker side, with no way to fully re-instate the loss of high-end sparkle. While the same goes for a Boss CE-2, the loss of high-end is not as prominent there, partially due to the more prominent mid-boost.
The Mooer maybe a tad more neutral, although it's also still on the thicker side of things. Just not with a crappy buffer.

The other MXR pedals on my live-board are all true bypass; Micro Flanger and Carbon Copy. I use a Phase 95 at home, which is also true bypass.
Not implying that true bypass is the be-all,end-all, but if the M-234 was true bypass, it would probably still be on my board.

The Ibanez CS9 and Mini Chorus (from what I've been told) are more on the bright/metallic side of chorus sounds. Skip the EHX Neoclone; it doesn't play well with high gain.
 
mxr-m234-analog-chorus-384431.jpg


So still getting used to the pedal. Today i used it with a JMP 2203 w/a zero loss Metro loop. Some "loss" of high end which really made it "thicker" sounding but not in a bad way.
Compensated by increasing the "Presence" on the Marshall and reducing the "Bass".
Also have a line buffer downstream/end of the loop return back to the amp set @ unity.
All in all it sounds really good with dirt.
I also have a 1981 Pearl CH-02 & TC Chorus/Flange [set to Flange] on the same board.
I also have an MXR Micro Chorus as a backup.
 
Speeddemon said:
While some people may do so, yours truly knows a thing or two about building pedals, and as an ex-owner of the M-234 (owned it twice) I can confirm that this one
-has a buffered bypass
-sucks tone; notably a loss of high-end sparkle, when the pedal is bypassed.
Click to expand...
It is good to know it does that. I didn't notice that. My definition of tone suck is like Dunlop Wah or Vox Wah buffered type of tone suck, but messing with your tone while off is suck, good or bad, whatever way you look at it. It all depends on what you want to do with it.

Zakk Wylde in his rig rundown says he leaves his on at all times.
 
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I have had several of these over the years including Zakk W chorus, they are outstanding and for the price they cannot be beat.
 
Samhain said:
So still getting used to the pedal. Today i used it with a JMP 2203 w/a zero loss Metro loop. Some "loss" of high end which really made it "thicker" sounding but not in a bad way.
Compensated by increasing the "Presence" on the Marshall and reducing the "Bass".
Click to expand...
If it's in a loop that's always active, sure, raising the treble a bit to compensate the high-end loss works well.
For my uses, whether playing live with the EVH or my Invader 100, both have a true bypass footswitchable fx-loop. So if I turn the loop on, with my 6 pedals in the loop and one of them being the M-234 and that one's turned off, I immediately noticed the high end sparkle loss.

What I typically do, is turn multiple pedals on/off inaudibly, during verses of a song we're playing, so when there's a change, I just hit the amp's footswitch to turn on the effects loop, and then with just 1 button press, I switch to multiple pedals being on. That way I can negative very quick tap-dancing in the heat of the moment. But yeah, because of this method, the M-234 didn't cut it for me.
 
Y'all are playing the wrong chorus
pedal and the end result is tone-suck.
So,- the chorus y'all need is the
Catalinbread Callisto.
Suddenly...from Killing Joke to Miracle Man
& no tone-suck to be all butt'hurt about.
 
I have the MXR chorus but I don't use it in the loop. I use it in front ala Zakk Wylde. Nice chorus for sure albeit a bit noisy.
 
zw38.jpg


Some musicians say when they use stereo for chorus, they never go back again.
 
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