I want to preface my review by saying that I'm definitely NOT a Behri hater - just the opposite, I own several of their products and I love all of them, wether it's my Pro-800 or any of my Behri guitar pedals. I stand by their philosophy of giving people good clones without paying exorbitant prices for a brand logo, which hides the same ancient tech from the '70 or '80.
But this one - I have to say I'm extremally disappointed, angry even. This product is piece of...
I am a big fan of Jazz Chorus, I grew up listening to King Crimson's trilogy from the '80 and fell in love with the sound of piercing cleans with legendary chorus. So, naturally, I fell for Chorus Symphony marketing like crazy, with promo showing JC120 in the background and playing mostly clean chorusy stuff. Finally, I can have at least a part of it, without breaking a bank for even basic JC-22 reissue.
In their promo they said that this is THE chorus from JC (ergo, from CE-1) and THE PREAMP from JC. That may be true, electrically, but it is definitely NOT the crystal clean sound without break-up you expect from JC... But I'll come back to that.
First - pros.
Pedal is extremally sturdy and gives me confidence. Fully metal, nice knob and switches, great color scheme and it is big, like VERY big, which I personally love. That would be all. The option to switch between buffered+preamp or true bypas is great.
Now cons.
Preamp. A big, big lie by Behri. As I said, I don't know electronics, but I don't care - when you sell a product to a musician, you have to talk with him/her with musical terms in mind, not electrical. This preamp doesn't work or sound like JC at all! That's because, musically, this preamp works and sounds like preamp from CE-1, in theory of course - completely different characteristic. It breaks up extremally fast, which would make Frusciante fans happy, but as I said - it was marketed as JC preamp, JC being the king of cleans. I've never heard a real CE-1 preamp, but even in the demos I can hear, that the original doesn't have Behri's problems.
Which would be, apart from breaking up too soon - the preamp sucks treble out. No matter how much treble I push before Chorus Symphony trying to compensate - sound going out is muddy as hell. To get decently clean sound I need to boost treble post pedal like crazy.
And now, an absolute dealbreaker - extreme volume drop. This pedal is completely unusable in a pedalboard unless you use it always-on, but even then it completely disrupts gain structure. I read somewhere, that it was true even with the original (CE-1) to some extent and people got around it by putting a buffered pedal in front of it - I did so, but it didn't help. Neither did plugging it in mono. Believe me - volume drop is ENORMOUS. No, it's not just phasing that naturally cancels some frequencies out - it's volume drop at output.
You could get around it by increasing the power in the preamp, but then we get to point one - sure, it'll get louder, but you'll get that overdrive that I don't want.
As for the sound of the chorus - I have the UC200 and I truly like its sound miles better. It' not great at all, but it is still more bright and volume drop is not even close to Chorus Symphony's one.
What I don't understand is why Behri didn't try to improve it - even if the original had similar problems (which it didn't to that extent, judging from research online), Behri could tweak some things. They have a good reputation to givin some modern twists to old designs.
Overall, this chorus absolutely sucks. Muddy, low output, distorts to soon, messes up with a pedalboard gain structure and even its beauty won't help. If you're like me and you were looking for That JC Sound - DON'T BUY THIS PEDAL. My TC Electronic Deluxe Combo with almost any chorus, wether it's from Zoom or anything in Guitar Rig gives waaaaay better sound. Pedal will be returned.
