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The 7 Best Chorus Pedals for Your Pedalboard [2023 Guide]

Max McAllister
The 7 Best Chorus Pedals for Your Pedalboard [2023 Guide]

Our top selections of the best chorus pedals will help you narrow down just the right effect for your pedalboard.

What Is a Chorus Pedal & What Do They Sound Like?

Chorus is a type of effect that falls into the modulation category. By definition, modulating implies movement, so the various effects that make up this class add motion and depth to the sound in various ways. Usually it’s a matter of combining a dry signal with a wet signal that’s shifted in some way, whether by volume, pitch, or other means.

Chorus has always been a relatively popular effect, and it saw a huge amount of play in the ’80s. A particularly obvious and unobscured example of chorus (not from the ’80s) is the intro from “Come As You Are” by Nirvana. You’ve most certainly heard the effect in all kinds of music over the years!

How Does a Chorus Pedal Work?

Chorus splits the incoming signal into both a dry and a wet signal. The wet gets detuned by a low-frequency oscillator. The result is a pitch-shifting effect. The basic chorus controls include rate, which lets you set the speed at which the chorus shifts the pitch, and the depth which sets how much modulated signal there is compared to dry signal.

It’s quite straightforward, and if you listen to the effect while considering how it’s made, you can probably identify it very easily as a signal being slightly detuned or pitch-shifted.

What’s the Difference Between Chorus and Reverb?

There can be some confusion between chorus and reverb, in that chorus absolutely adds depth and dimension to the sound in a similar way as reverb. The biggest difference is that reverb is a time-based effect, recreating the spatial characteristics of real acoustic environments or the simulated representations of those spaces you get from spring or plate reverbs. There’s no pitch-shifting happening with reverb, but rather a multitude of echoes that create the impression of space.

Where Should a Chorus Pedal Go in My Chain?

Modulation effects tend to go at the end of a chain. You can experiment whether you’d like chorus before or after your time-based effects like reverb and delay. It’s also a good idea to throw modulation in your amp’s effects loop. If you put a chorus before your overdrive and distortion, for instance, the sound gets garbled fast. So experiment with placing modulation either the very end or near the end of your pedal chain, typically in the effects loop with time-based effects.

The 7 Best Chorus Pedals for Your Pedalboard in 2023

1. Boss CE-2W Chorus

You can never go wrong with a Boss pedal. These are truly timeless pedals that tend to distill the essence of guitar effects down into an intuitive, easy-to-use format with fantastic sound. The Waza Craft line is a premium version of Boss pedals. This CE-2W has super simple rate and depth controls, in addition to a three-way switch for standard CE-2 sound or CE-1 chorus and vibrato.

2. MXR M234 Analog Chorus

The MXR M234 utilizes analog bucket brigade circuitry to bring you all flavors of chorus in an streamlined pedal. Use the level, rate, and depth controls to dial in just the right amount of effect, and take advantage of the handy high- and low-cut knobs to keep the EQ clean and intelligible.

3. Ibanez Chorus Mini

Mini pedals were all the rage several years ago — particularly for pedalboard enthusiasts obsessed with organization and tidiness. Don’t be fooled by its size, though; the Ibanez mini Chorus is a powerhouse, featuring speed (rate), depth, and level controls to create that shimmering effect with ease.

4. Boss DC-2W Dimension C

The Dimensional Chorus by Boss is nothing short of being its own animal when it comes to chorus effects. It has completely unique controls in the form of four buttons to create a total of 20 different sounds, and it does a phenomenal impression of the classic SDD-320 studio rack processor. If unconventional pedals are your thing, then this is the chorus for you.

5. Fender Bubbler

Fender’s Bubbler makes use of a custom circuit for a wholly original take on chorusing. For one, it gives you independent rate and depth controls with a separate footswitch to select between slow and fast speeds. So in some ways, you can set two choruses in one. It also includes a switch for sine waves or triangle waves, and an amazing sensitivity control that changes the modulation rate based on your playing.

6. Grobert Effects The One Chorus

One of the greatest things about collecting pedals is stumbling across boutique gems like The One by Grobert. This is a faithful recreation of the original Boss CE-1 from 1976 — an all-analog pedal with a remarkable character. There’s a preamp inside this bad boy that drives the signal into blissful analog saturation that creates a thick, rounded chorus that’s just lovely.

7. Electro-Harmonix Neo Clone

The Neo Clone by EHX is a simplified, miniature version of the classic Small Stone. Sonically it packs all the same depth, while the controls are distilled to just a depth switch and a rate knob. That makes it one of the most easily adjustable chorus pedals available, and just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean its sound isn’t lush and watery like the best choruses around.

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