Corona Chorus: a Tone Print Pedal by TC Electronics
The Corona Chorus is TC Electronics’s legendary stereo chorus pedal, which came to market over 25 years ago and is still and industry standard to this very day, due to its incredible dynamic range and lack of noise.
A Chorus pedal provides instruments with a doubling effect. It creates harmonics and gives the instrument a fuller and richer sound. Think of it as Flanger “lite” yet the Chorus pedal has it own elements which make it special and necessary on your pedal board.
The Corona Chorus runs in stereo or mono and is equipped with 4 knobs; Depth, Speed, Tone and FX Level along a three position toggle switch that allows you to switch between Stereo Chorus, TriChorus, and the Artist’s Tone Prints.
The Depth knob increases the intensity of the chorus effect. At 9 o’clock there is a subtle amount of “warble” and at “3 o’clock there is a very pronounced thick “warble” almost making the guitar sound out of tune.
The Speed knob changes the repetition time between the notes, think of it as a delay or how fast or slow the effect happens.
The Tone knob works like a treble knob, brightening up your sound and giving it a bit of shimmer
The FX Level knob speaks for itself, it simply controls the level of what ever chorus sound you dialed up, similar to a volume knob.
When you flip the toggle switch to the TriChorus position you get an effect which consists of three choruses working together. This setting is where you can dial up that rich 80's chorus sounds from the light and airy, to full on swirling or warbling.
The special aspect of this Tone Print pedal is that TC Electronics provides a nice array of artist’s sounds that you can download for free from their website. It’s as simple as hooking up a USB cable to your computer and “bam” it’s done. The list of artists is ever growing so check out their site to see whose sounds you can download and play around with.
For my style of playing, I prefer that I use the pedal in conjunction with a distortion pedal but I must say by itself, the pedal produces some beautiful lush chorus effects that would fit nicely in the jazz realm. It produces very clean rich tones when used for arpeggiated chords.
When playing hard rock and heavy metal and using a distortion pedal, I prefer more of a subtle chorus effect. With a little playing around, I was able to achieve some very cool chorus effects used on songs like, Fade to Black” by Metallica, “Road To Nowhere” by Ozzy, the intro to “Knockin on Heavens Door” by GnR, and almost any Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Keep in mind that it takes quite a bit of experimenting with your amp’s settings and the Chorus pedal setting to achieve these effects, but remember with the Tone Print option, you can dive right into Paul Gilbert’s or James 'Munky' Shaffer's sounds simply by downloading their Tone Print.
This pedal is a lot of fun to play and experiment with coupled with the ability to downloadable artists’ Tone Prints makes it the perfect toy for all the gearheads and computer tech guys out there.