Yeah. I know. it’s december already, but this is the last uncovered chorus pedal in my collection for the moment. I want to cover it now – so that i don’t have to write about choruses for a while…
What is it?
Morley CCB Crystal Chorus from Jewel Box series. Made in US around 1995-98. Serial number maimed by velcro (grrrr!).
The aesthetics are heart warming. The box is too big, but the white sparkle coating makes amends. Knob pointers are glowing in the dark and the graphic design reminds me of something 50’s. Stylish and very neat. Blinking LED for the indicator that shows you the LFO speed is also pleasing.
I thought i heard something that wasn’t like on most standard analog chorus designs. Taking a look at the schematic confirms my suspicion. The chip driving the 1024 stage 3207 BBD isn’t your standard timer. As always with Morley, the buffering and mixing is done with a quad opamp. Motorola MC3403 acts as a LFO and the timer for BBD is created with CD4007 and CD4047 CMOS chips. To be honest, i’ve never seen that don before. The stereo output is just simply splitted and connects only when the first output is in use. It could have been inverted, but then the board would not have been big enough for Morley engineer.
There’s also user manual available with example setting. Those ara always fun.
Negative points come from the big box and the rate knob. And a small additional minus for the board layout. The ground strip that connects the left and right side goes under the battery hole of the board. It’s not too convincing way to ground the board.
How does it sound?
Smooth and gets quite flangerish with depth maxed. Feel of the rate knob isn’t perfect as the best part of the sweep is located at last 10 percent of the sweep. Schematic shows that pot to be a log taper one, so it undoubtedly is performing in the best possible manner. If you ever get a chance to play with one, try to place it in front of some massive distortion unit like Boss MD-2. That’ll give you something a lot closer to synth than a guitar. Soundwise, this turned out to be my favourite chorus.
I was lucky enough to purchase one of these years ago. I just recently plugged it in (3/11/2023), and oh wow! my tc corona is comming out of my pedal board and this is going in. i am flabergasted
These are quite amazing pedals. Just saw the delay from the series for sale, but couldn’t grab it before someone else did.. I’m also missing the flanger at this point… :)
+m
Does yours get distorted when you play with hot humbuckers? Mine does. I use a powerfull power supply.
Hi.
No, mine doesn’t distort. Some old analog choruses i’ve had have been a little distorted, probably due to BBD’s clock being ever so slighly off. There’s a trimpot on the board that should bias the clock. You could try tweaking that gently to see if that would cure yours.
I guess this behaviour may come around when some components age and drift off spec.
+m
Does yours get distorted, when you play it with hot humbuckers? Mine has this issue and I´m trying to figure out, if it´s normal.