and was largely unimpressed.

It has 3 modes: Chorus, Tri and Vibrato and 3 knobs: Rate, Depth and "Color". It also has tap tempo which changes the sweep rate. The box itself is pretty beefy and very solid feeling and would make a good weapon in a bar fight. It also sports stereo inputs and outputs.

The Color knob is interesting and does different things in each mode.: With the Chorus model, the Color knob lets you go from vintage analog tones (knob pointing left) to more modern chorus sounds (knob pointing right). For the Tri model, color gives you a choice from warm and mellow sound to shimmering and bright. For Vibrato, the Color knob works more like a three-way switch for Vintage, Blue and Euro style sounds. I found these voicings to be pretty subtle and had trouble determining what the knob was actually doing for the tone at times. But then again, some old dude came in and sat down about 6 feet away and started playing every Digitech X Series box in the demo setup at the same time. Tons of flanging, delays, fuzz, etc., and doing the standard "old guy" bends. You know - bending the "wrong" intervals to the "wrong" pitches. So I was fighting that for a while - until one of the sales guys came over and turned his amp down. Cool.

The Tri mode is a multi voice chorus and sounded pretty decent. But the regular Chorus mode was not acceptable to me because there was a noticeable loss of bass response in this mode. The Bass was fine in the TRi and Vibrato modes. And speaking of the Vibrato, I am no expert, but I spent a fair amount of time trying to dial in a convincing Vibe sound and I never really got there.

I was about ready to get one of these to hold me over until I could get my hands on a Retro-Sonic Chorus Ensemble, but I decided against it. That bass loss thing is a huge "failure" from my perspective and frankly, I don't know why Line 6 would release a pedal that does that. For the same money, I bought a used Voodoo Lab Analog Chorus off ebay today. Sure, it doesn't have the extra bells and whistles, but it's a decent pedal that will serve my limited needs.

All in all, this was not an impressive first test drive of the new Tone Core line for me. And BTW, I was having a problem with it when i first plugged in a dn thought it might have been a dying battery. But the sales guys said it had been changed several times and they were still having problems with some of the Tone Core peds. He gave me an adaptor and it seemed to be working fine after that was plugged in.

I have been wanting to try the Echo Park. I was largely unimpressed with the DL-4. Sounded very digital to me despite the hype. Also I hated the DL-4 form factor. But since I mostly use pedal delays for slapback and even the DL-4 pulled that off pretty well, I think the Tone Core might work better for me. The Tone Core (if it works at all) will at least be closer to a normal sized pedal. Hope to try one out next week sometime. Anyone already played one?

On a side note, I owned two of those VL Analog Choruses. Kind of swooshy chorus, but pretty cool Leslie sound in a pinch. I think I am going to sell my old Boss CE-2 which has way better chorus than the VL, but won't do a leslie (not fast enough) without a mod.

I wanted to try the Echo Park but they didn't have one in. That was the only other one I was possibly interested in getting at some point so I will test drive that one too. I don't want to slam the Space Chorus too bad - if it wasn't for the bass loss in the basic chorus setting, I probably would have picked one up - they're very reasonably priced and I don't expect stunning performance from a pedal in this price range. And again, I don't use a whole lot of chorus and/or leslie type sounds so for the little I do with those tones, any half decent box would be OK for me. The VL should be fine for now.

bummer- I guess it was too much to hope they'd get the CORE of the TONE right eh?

YEah the VL AChorus is excellent, I had a oscillator tick problem with a couple of t hem, but Tone and sound wise they are wonderful.....

What interested me in those pedals was the stereo ins. Since I run my amps in stereo, I like the idea of multiple stereo effects. My only current stereo in pedal is the Boss DD-6, which I run last in the chain (after chorus). If I had a stereo in chorus, I could run my phaser in stereo too.

But I'd heard so much mediocre press about the Line 6 modulation modeler (specifically about it's affecting bass response) that I figured these pedals might just be sounds from the big Modelers in a smaller package, or, at least, that they might suffer from the same problems. It looks like that's a safe assumption. Thanks for the review, Tone Dog.

quote:

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Originally posted by mongoose_eyeball:
What interested me in those pedals was the stereo ins. Since I run my amps in stereo, I like the idea of multiple stereo effects. My only current stereo in pedal is the Boss DD-6, which I run last in the chain (after chorus). If I had a stereo in chorus, I could run my phaser in stereo too.

But I'd heard so much mediocre press about the Line 6 modulation modeler (specifically about it's affecting bass response) that I figured these pedals might just be sounds from the big Modelers in a smaller package, or, at least, that they might suffer from the same problems. It looks like that's a safe assumption. Thanks for the review, Tone Dog.

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oops--how did I do that?

My pleasure, Dr. Eyeball!