What is it?
Ibanez SC10 Super Stereo Chorus. 10/Power series box, made in taiwan late 80’s.
You guessed it. Blue as it should be and without the stereo output circuitry, this looks like close match to Cs5 Super Chorus. According to schematic found online, the design is almost verbatim to CS5 – or one could argue (and be correct) that the CS5 is almost verbatim to SC10. The main (and only) difference is the output section.
SC10 has splitted output unity drivers for stereo output where the CS5 has only one output driver. The boards are nothing alike in layouts, but the electronic design is nearly the same. Except the added output driver here inverts the phase of output signal for its channel, giving out the perfect bi-phased chorus output. (Sorry for super crappy photo below)
The delay and timer circuitry is created with 3102/3207 pair, and LFO is driven by TL022. Maxon engineers have apparently solved most of the possible clock bleed issues by taking the LFO on the control board instead of main board. The main board only having the mixers, buffers and delay circuitry on it.
Quite standard design with no surprises. Solid.
How does it sound?
If i only had this and CS5 in reversed order, i would probably love this one more. Basically because the sound is pretty much the same. But i happened to get CS5 first, so that one made a bigger impression on me. Usable chorus. The addition of delay time control opens a lot of new worlds. One can easily use this as mild and focused chorus, or tweak the delay time to make it sound monstrous. Versatile and good basic chorus.
Are you sure this one was made in Taiwan? I’ve read somewhere else that these are Japanese. Someone is offering me one of these and he says it is made in Japan.