What is it?
Nux CH-3 Chorus from Nux’s analog pedal series. Made in china, 2013.
There is something appealing in these super cheap new chinese pedals. I have no idea whatsoever what is the amount manufactured, but these are mostly well made and fine sounding boxes. I’m fairly convinced that china will be new japan in decade or two. After all, the japanese electronics were considered crap all the way up to mid 80’s. What chinese pedal industry would need now is tighter quality control for components and a few good graphic designers. Most Joyos and Calines with horrible graphics you can find on ebay are now even pricier than when they were first introduced. There’s not much appeal in those. At least not for me. So it’s good that we finally have a chinese brands that try. No comic sans as labels and Nux’s even have their own, reasonably stylish logo.
Opening the box up shows the Nux standard designs idea. Two boards stacked and through hole components seem to have solid connections, but with residue as usual. Switch is standard 3PDT mini stomper wired as true bypass. There’s the same goo locking the 6mm top adjustment trimmers and the top board ribbon cable connection.
3102/3207 pair is responsible for the chorus delay and TL072 is used for LFO. So it’s safe to say that the design is so far pretty standard analog delay chorus. The third knob, blend, adds a nice flavour. You can dial this to the max which by itself sound “out there”, but then you can blend it with the clean signal. More uses for ugly chorus sounds! Yay.
There’s again just one piece of bad news. I seem to be repeating myself, but i would have gladly paid 50 cents (or $1-2 even) more for these Nux units – if they just would have better quality pots. The pots just feel cheap and turn too easily. Bad decision to save money. Because of the poor feel on the pots, i suspect these units will never get the attention nor userbase that they would deserve. From electronical point of view i mean.
How does it sound?
Nice. Extra nice. From clear and mild signal widening to near flanger styled massive sweeping. Wide control range and you just can’t go wrong with 3102/3207 based choruses. Or you can, but not with this thing.
Hey Mirosol
Would it be fair to say if I changed the chips in mine to 3007/3101 you’d have a pretty close BOSS CE-2?
Great website by the way
:)
Thanks David!
Not sure about the circuit footprint, but that would be an interesting and cheap thing to try out as you can score the pedal for ~20€ including shipping.
+m
Hey! Looking for the cheapest chorus available in eBay, I am pretty tempted to give this a shot. But now having read your review makes me afraid of the pots… I have a Caline Blue Ocean delay (chinese too) and I play with the knobs a lot during shows, making spacial sounds and overall setting it up for each song, after about a year so far no problem. Do you think the Nux Chorus pots could handle that kind of stress without breaking? The “very sensitive” think is not an issue to me, but breakable pots are a sure deal breaker. Thanx in advance \m/
I don’t think those will break more easily than any other. Those just feel somewhat loose and thus, are subject to move if one touches them while using the stomp. They will probably last just as long as any others.
+m
Anyway, it is a very nice unit for the price.
+m
Oh! Thanks for the answer. I just shoot the trigger on this. I’m also considering the NUX OD-3 and my bandmate is going for the Amp Simulator… I think I’ll also get the Distortion to have the whole family… okno B:
Saludos \m/
Hi & thanks for the review , I have doubts that my CH-3 is sucking tone when bypassed , It’s plugged in the effects loop of a marshall valvestate 8080 and I find tha only when I plug it I find the tone has lost a bit of treble and presence…do you have the same problem with this pedal ?
The pedal is hardwired true bypass, so if you experience highs/presence loss, i’d suggest you triple check your cables. Cheap patch cables can easily have something like 100pF of capacitance between the leads.
+m
Hi I’ve just got one of these for Christmas and it seems like a half decent pedal, but I was very surprised to see it requires a minimum 300 mA power supply. This seems quite high for an analogue chorus, and it means I have to use the single 500 mA output on my power supply which I was hoping to use for my looper which also needs that, so I have to use a wall wart for my looper. Other chorus pedals seem to draw much less Biyang 11 mA, BOSS CE-2 Chorus 9mA, Wampler Nirvana Chorus 13mA, Maxon CS505 Stereo Chorus 23mA etc. Does it really need 300mA?
Not a chance. I don’t see any mention to the current draw on the pedal. It could be one of those where the < character is reversed. +m