If there’s one effect that tends to get a bum rap, it’s chorus. Sure, opinions vary, but if you polled players about the least-necessary stompbox, the swishy modulator would be at or near the top of the list. Rationales would cite cheesy pop songs where the guitar is so chorused that it sounds artificial and overproduced. For a long time I felt the same way.
But haters forget what a profound impact judiciously applied chorus has had on timeless tunes in almost every genre. Andy Summers is one of the most respected chorus addicts—pretty much every note he played on Police hits has it. Subtle chorus transformed Danzig’s brooding metal anthem “Mother” from a plodding power-chord exercise to a simmering fist-pumper. Chorusing is similarly indispensible to classic rockers by the Cult and Metallica. Nile Rodgers funk fests that have set booties shaking around the globe wouldn’t be the same without it. Even Kurt Cobain—Mr. Raw—used chorus.
Yet the stigma remains. So you’ve got to admire Oklahoma stompbox builder Robert Keeley for diving in with such enthusiasm on his latest pedal, the Seafoam Chorus. He giddily describes the Seafoam as his most exciting design since his popular compressors. According to Keeley, the Seafoam’s circuit is based on the notion of combining an IC chip rarely used for such applications—the ES56033—with an opto-isolator LFO. Whatever the methodology, the results are remarkable.
Foaming at the Mouth
Besides the expected rate and depth knobs, the Seafoam includes tone and blend controls, and they’re the real keys to this green machine’s potential. Turned counterclockwise, blend serves up the Doppler dandiness of vintage-style vibrato circuits. At the other extreme it conjures the Seafoam’s watery namesake effect. In between are intriguing blends. (Considering today’s chorus ambivalence, it stumps me why the Seafoam’s enclosure doesn’t proudly shout “Vibrato.” Plenty of players who won’t go near chorus have a soft spot for other pitch-warbling effects.)
Beach Bums and Rayguns
I tested the Seafoam using a Tele with Curtis Novak pickups, a Danelectro ’56 Reissue Baritone, a Schecter Ultra III with a TV Jones Magna’Tron, and a Gretsch solidbody with a P-90 bridge pickup. My test amps were an EL34-powered Jaguar HC50 combo and a 6973-powered Goodsell Valpreaux 21.
Given my predilection for taut tones with plenty of bite, I immediately took to the Seafoam’s tone knob. Many chorus pedals—especially vintage-style ones—either have no EQ control or a one-size-fits-all bright toggle. Without adequate tweakability, certain guitars need a level or treble boost to make the chorused signal cut through as well as non-chorused sounds. With the Seafoam, this concern is obliterated.
Thanks to the tone knob’s wide range, you can plug in a darker-sounding humbucker axe, set blend to the vibe side, adjust tone to taste, and put rate and depth past noon for a trippy “Black Hole Sun”-style solo. You can then switch to a bright single-coil guitar, tweak the tone again, dial back depth and rate, and add some slow echo for a hypnotic space-rock effect. In other words, the tone knob avoids having to compromise the strengths of either instrument. I can’t overstate how effective this control is, especially since the Seafoam’s sound becomes brighter as you shift from vibrato to chorus.
Ratings
Pros:
Great chorus and vibe tones, ranging from glossy to warm or weird. Exceptional tonal control.
Cons:
Could use an expression-pedal input or strategically located knob for real-time rate control.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$229
Keeley Seafoam Chorus
robertkeeley.com
Is Maggie There?
When vibrato aficionados get together, the acid test is often, “Yes—but can it do Magnatone vibrato? I thought not. Tsk-tsk.” Keeley doesn’t tout this as a Maggie in a box, and it’s not. But if you’re looking for a neck-snapping, motion-sickness-inducing vibe, you’ll find plenty of weirdness here. One of my favorite recipes was conjuring wicked ray-gun sounds by plugging my Dano Bari or my D-tuned Schecter into an EarthQuaker Devices Tone Reaper fuzz, and then into the Seafoam with rate and depth to 2 or 3 o’clock. Bring on the alien invasion!
The Seafoam sounds very good on the chorus side, too. With a clean tone and my Tele’s bridge pickup and Jazzmaster neck pickup engaged, I set rate and depth around noon for barely audible motion, perfect for Nile-style funk, and then nudged both higher for undulating ’80s new wave tones in the style of the Fixx. It’ll also do full-on slosh for your ’80s hard rock, or animate grunge tones with aplomb.
The Verdict
Whether you’re looking for over-the-top or subtle chorus/vibrato, the Seafoam flat-out delivers. Its tone-connoisseur sonics are remarkably moldable, thanks to the powerful tone knob. With some players or rigs, the blend control’s gradual vibrato/chorus taper might feel a bit too subtle. I usually set it to full vibrato, full chorus, or a 50/50 blend, but some players might find other blends invaluable. Headier effect users may lament the lack of an expression control input to alter the LFO rate in real time. (Even vintage-chorus fans might wish the rate knob were sized and positioned for easier foot-nudging.) Tweakers might also wish they could alternate between two or more favorite settings. But those things would cost more money and board space, not to mention sacrifice the simplicity most guitarists prize. When all’s said and done, players who prioritize stellar tones, straightforward operation, and economy of scale will be stoked by the quality and power of this compact, easy-to-use box.
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Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
Boss’ firstWaza Tube Amp Expander, built with an integrated power amp that enables boosted signal as well as attenuated sounds, was and remains the OX’s main competition. Both products have copious merits but, at $1,299 (Boss) and $1,499 (Universal Audio), each is expensive. And while both units are relatively compact, they aren’t gear most folks casually toss in a backpack on the way out the door. The new Waza Tube Expander Core, however, just might be. And though it sacrifices some refinements for smaller size, its much-more accessible price and strong, streamlined fundamental capabilities make it a load-box alternative that could sway skeptics.
Micro Manager
The TAE Core is around 7 1/2" wide, just over 7 " long, and fewer than 4 " tall, including the rubber feet. That’s about half the width of an original TAE or OX. The practical upside of this size reduction is obvious and will probably compel a lot of players to use the unit in situations in which they’d leave a full-size TAE at home. The streamlined design is another source of comfort. With just five knobs on its face, the TAE Core has fewer controls and is easier to use than many stompboxes. In fact, the most complicated part of integrating the TAE Core to your rig might be downloading the necessary drivers and related apps.
Connectivity is straightforward, though there are some limitations. You can use TAE Core wirelessly with an iOS or Windows tablet or smartphone, as long as you have the BT-DUAL adaptor (which is not included and sets you back around 40 bucks). However, while desktop computers recognize the TAE Core as a Bluetooth-enabled device, you cannot use the unit wirelessly with those machines. Instead, you have to connect the TAE Core via USB. In a perfectly ordered world, that’s not a big problem. But if you use the TAE Core in a small studio—where one less cable is one less headache—or you prefer to interface with the TAE Core app on a desktop where you can toggle fast and easily between large, multi-track sessions and the app, the inability to work wirelessly on a desktop can be a distraction. The upside is that the TAE Core app itself is, functionally and visually, almost identical in mobile and desktop versions, enabling you to select and drag and drop virtual microphones into position, add delay, reverb, compression, and EQ effects, choose various cabinets with different speaker configurations and sizes, and introduce new rigs and impulse responses to a tone recipe in a flash. And though the TAE Core app lacks some of the photorealistic panache and configuration options in the OX app, the TAE Core’s app is just as intuitive.Less Is More
One nice thing about the TAE Core’s more approachable $699 price is that you don’t have to feel too bad on nights that you “underutilize” the unit and employ it as an attenuator alone. In this role, the TAE Core excels. Even significantly attenuated sounds retain the color and essence of the source tone. Like any attenuator-type device, you will sacrifice touch sensitivity and dynamics at a certain volume level, yielding a sense of disconnection between fingers, gut, guitar, and amp. But if you’re tracking “big” sounds in a small space, you can generate massive-sounding ones without interfacing with an amp modeler and flat-response monitors, which is a joy in my book. And again, there’s the TAE Core’s ability to “expand” as well as attenuate, which means you can use the TAE Core’s 30-watt onboard power amp to amplify the signal from, say, a 5-watt Fender Champion 600 with a 6" speaker, route it to a 2x12, 4x12, or virtual equivalent in the app, and leave your bandmate with the Twin Reverb and bad attitude utterly perplexed.
The Verdict
Opting for the simpler, thriftier TAE Core requires a few sacrifices. Power users that grew accustomed to the original TAE’s super-tunable “resonance-Z” and “presence-Z” controls, which aped signal-chain impedance relationships with sharp precision, will have to make do with the simpler but still very effective stack and combo options and the “air feel level” spatial ambience control.The DC power jack is less robust. It features only MIDI-in rather than MIDI-in/-through/-out jacks, and, significantly, 70 watts less power in the onboard power amp. But from my perspective, the Core is no less “professional” in terms of what it can achieve on a stage or in a studio of any size. Its more modest feature set and dimensions are, in my estimation, utility enhancements as much as limitations. If greater power and MIDI connectivity are essentials, then the extra 600 bones for the original TAE will be worth the price. For many of us, though, the mix of value, operational efficiencies, and the less-encumbered path to sound creation built into the TAE Core will represent a welcome sweet spot that makes dabbling in this very useful technology an appealing, practical proposition.
