Boss CE-20 Chorus Ensemble

Knobs are good. Memory not difficult to program.

I bought for the CE-1 and Dimensional D sounds, but have found the Bass sound good for boosting highs and lows--jangly like a Vox AC30. It changes the signal, but not in a bad way. I do not like the Brilliance knob because it adds noise to the signal.

No problems in the short time I've had it. No problems at all with previous BOSS pedal, RV-3. Solidly built.

Not required

The BOSS CE-20 is a very useful pedal that enhances the sound of my guitar while adding dimension--A high quality sound. I do not need an additional EQ. While I play mostly clean sounds with boosted overdrive for solos, the pedal makes my very good Warmoth Tele-style hollowbody guitar with neck PAF pickup sound great through my Mesa-Boogie Subway Rocket amp. For background, I've been playing since 1979 and own a Strat and a Jazz bass. I also own a Digitech RP-50 which I use for amp, delay and reverb sounds direct to a church sound system with monitors and for direct recording. The CE-20 chorus sounds are much better than the RP-50's.

Very easy to use, manual is useful.
Editing is a snap - dial and save.
More Chorus sounds than anyone will ever need.
Go to the Boss Corparate site -

http://www.bosscorp.co.jp/en/index.html

for better sound & setting samples.

My set up consists of the following:
Amps - (Mesa Engineering)

Duel Rectifier & 4-12 cab
F-30 1-12 Combo

Guitars -
2 LP Standards
American Deluxe Strat
Ibanez AS-120

Effects - Boss
CE-20
DD-20
SD-1
FZ-3
PH-3
TR-2
TU-1
Budda Bud-Wah
Dunlop Brick Power Supply

I use the CE-20 in the effects loops of either amp with great results.
The sounds are clear & quiet. I feel the CE-1 and Dimensional D are the Standouts. I can get just about any chorus sound out there, anyone who says that they all sound the same is not spending any time getting there sound. It's a fantastic tool. I also power this with its own adapter, it has certain voltage requirements. (as do all the twin pedals).

DUH

Never had to deal with

My style is Rock, Blues, Fusion thing - or at least try to.
I have been playing for well over a decade and i think this may be the last chorus i buy, it has every damn chorus Boss made in there. While i can't vouch for the accuracy of the CE-1 (never heard the original). The Dimensional is right there, and sounds great. I would replace it if need be. I used to own all "boutique bullshit" pedals and never got the right sound, they all lacked something. I guess they are left for "vintage type tone snob players" I have come full circle and back to Boss, when you step on the them, they work, and sound great - bottom line. If Boss if good enough for all my favorite guitar hero's, they are good enough for me.

Peace & Music

There are so many combinations that it will take you a while just to give each of them a fair try, but its not hard to do.

This is a great pedal. So many sounds, very clear, no noise. Just follow everyone else's advice and get a power supply for it. I use a carvin mts 3212 with a gibson sg, other pedals right now - maxon comp ->boss bd2 modded -> george dennis super volume/phaser -> boss ce-20 -> arion saf-1 -> ibanez de7. just waiting to get a tremelo and some sort of pitch shifter. i can get about 4 million different tones and sounds out of all of this...its great. But right now, the ce-20 is my favorite pedal, i never want to be without one again.

Seems like it might be a bit easier to injure than other Boss pedals, but it is totally solid.

don't know

For the price I got it at, its been a great investment. I love using it all the time, its just the coolest box of sounds. If you find a reasonable deal on one, I would say to grab it.

This is to address the noise issues listed below from users

I just purchased this item & if you do not have the proper power supply it WILL make tons of noise.
It needs its own Boss PSA adaptor.
The unit requires a 9 volt with 160 mA draw. The Dunlop brick & voodoo lab pedal power currently do not. Same goes for daisy chaining from a boss tuner or noise suppressor. Not powering correctly will make all the swirling sounds that other users have listed below. After using a standalone Boss PSA the unit is dead quiet ? even with distortion.
Powering this unit properly is the key for any effect to be quiet & sound great.

this was just a short issue i discovered after getting it home.
Will post full review in a few months.

Peace

Its fairly easy to get a great sound, but it is best to find a few "great" sounds and then store them in the memory. Fiddleing with all the controls in a gig would be best avoided.
With that in mind then it is very easy to use. One pedal puts the sound on or off. The other pedal steps you through the memorised settings. If you are on a setting and tweak the knobs then that suond is temporarily modified....easy.

I use this with various basses. I wanted the "Dimension D" sound so thats why I bought it. That sound is very good, in fact all the sounds are good but you probably wont need them all. It is in fact 6 individual chorus pedals in one box. If you are searching for the "right" chorus sound this box might help you find it, it did for me.
You have to be careful with the EQ controls on this machine, if you turn them up to much you may get hiss - especialy the "brilliance" control, (mind you "brilliance" controls useualy get hissy when turned up high).
This equipment can be rigged for stereo and the chorus's sound best like that. You can also switch the impeadances on it and use it for recording in a studio setup - actually very usefull !!!!
If you just want a quick mono chorus sound, don't get this, it will annoy you. However if you want special "rack system" type stereo chorus sounds without the hassle of rack gear then this could be for you. I think that it is the best standalone chorus pedal available and thats why I bought it :)

Like all BOSS stuff its well made and you will have to try hard to break it.

BOSS are helpful

I play modern Jazz and world fusion. This pedal is part of my sound. I tried all other options and finally settled for this, so yes, I would replace it. All the other effects I use are EBS bass pedals.(the EBS Unichorus was good , but not the sound I wanted).

vrey easy... except you need to understand the mode butten changes
the the warmth and rating option. but unit is flexable/

i use guitar (many)--->big muff pi--> maxon od9--> rocktron rampage
--> cry baby 535q--> Marshall vb1--> BOSS CE20--> akai headrush-->
amps/d.i/record stuff.....

sound is amazing, really unbelivable, many option and ce1 sounds better than the original (belive it or not i had the pleasure to compare), i like best the ce1 and dimensional d with full rate and depth and the rich.

SOME PROBLEMS::::::
1. the noise from rate butten - but give a power supply with no sharings. or use a noise gate after - problem fixed.
2. bypass is not amazing at all (im a purist about my tone) but if you
have more boss pedals and you dont care (like most people) than its
not a problem.
3. DONT use the brilliance control at all becouse its makes it sound like shit. BOSS PLEASE remove this butten. but if its off then its
not a problem.
4. if you drive with crazy gain before the the unit starts to overdrive by it self and the peak led starts to light and sound quality is falling a bit but its doing it even when the unit is off
(becouse the bypass is not really bypass).

sound is still great and it worth it and i kept the unit.
really the best sounding chorus i have heard yet (compared to ce1 ce2 ce3 ce5 ch1 ice-box)

boss never brake - forever

boss dont need a costumer support

buy it.

but if you look for the best of all and money is not a problem THAN
buy the DLS Costum Chorus its better its about 300$

I don't normally have a clue about these things but it is
straight foward and easy to use.Excellent!The manual book is spot on.

I use a Rickenbacker 330 and a Fender Stratocaster with the pedal
and a Marshall Amp.Sounds lush with the Rickenbacker really rich
sound.The hissing doesn't really bother,it sounds quite cool actually
like flying through space!I love the Stone Roses and you can get
their sound through this pedal.

It's been pretty reliable so far and i would gig with defo.

Never had to use it.

I love this pedal,I have been wanting a chorus pedal for ages and
it adds that dreamy sound to the music.Songs like Purple Rain are
totally transformed with this little baby.I tried a MArshall Chorus
but this one kicks it ass.If i ever had it stolen i would cry!

A brief glance at the manual is more than you will ever need. This pedal is simple to use as are all boss pedals. You can get a usable sound in minutes right out of the box.

Other reviewers have stated a problem with hearing hissing noise that is associated with the rate knob. I had this same experience and it only took me 2 minutes to fix. First of all, this pedal takes a lot of juice to run. If you are using it on a pedal board and running it off say a Boss Tuner or Noise Reduction pedal than you will have problems. Run the unit from a separate power source or Psa adaptor. Amazingly, this kills the extraneous noise dead. I run this pedal thru a Mesa Dual Rectifier with a variety of other Boss and Mxr/Digitech pedals. I do not put the effect in the FX loop. I do, however, turn the Ambience knob all the way off. The ambience control is great but once you hit distortion with it it sounds awful. I sometimes forget to turn pedals off when I change from clean to dirty so I turn the ambience off due to this.
I have a Boss Ce-5 which cannot even compare with the CE-20. The CE-20 ranks with digitech and other rackmount effects I have had in the past. The key to this unit is the power source and perhaps using a noise reduction unit after it.

Its a boss.

The only reason I didn't give it a 10 is because you have 6 different chorus choices. You need only to skim the manual. If you've used a chorus before, then this one will be a piece of cake. Editing and storing patches is a breeze.

I don't know where the noise complaints come from, I'm using the CE-20 in the middle of a bunch of other Boss pedals into a Fender Powerstage 100 PA and it is dead quiet. I like the chorus better than my CE-5 (the acoustic, rich, & CE-1 models all shine and the standard is just like my CE-5). The cool thing is you can tweak this more than most other chorus boxes (you have basic rate & depth & effect level w/ high/low tone controls + controls for brilliance & ambience). I'm sure this could be made to sound bad, but I am very pleased with the tone and variety of choices.

Only had it a week, but... I have the DD-20 & 2 Loop Stations plus a V-Wah and a dozen Boss pedals and have had no problems as of yet. I can't say that about other manufacturers.

The CE-20 rocks! A few years ago I sold all of my Boss stuff to get rack gear (TC Electronics and Rocktron). I already had Lexicon stuff (Alex, Vertex, Jamman) which I still have. While I liked the quality of the TC & Rocktron, I missed being able to turn each effect on/off without MIDI and I hated having to program each unit. So, I have come back to Boss and can honestly say that their gear matches the sound quality of the "higher end" manufacturers. And it's reliable, which I did not experience when I became obsessed with Electro-Harmonix gear (EVERY pedal I had by them had switches go out). Now I am aware that there are many quality manufacturers out there that make great stuff, and I have used a lot of gear over the past 25 years. I'm happy with Boss. The CE-20 continues the tradition and, as with the other pedals in the Twin series, takes the new technology further.

I bought mine new and when the salesman put it back in the box after i demo'd it he forgot the manual so i arrived home with no instructions..no problem! Very easy to use!!

I have a stereo mesa boogie setup with a selection of overdrive/distortion pedals, EQ, etc. I find the sound quality to be excelent except for some hiss on more radical settings. It also required that i use the specified power supply to get rid o some other noises as complained about in other reveiws.

never ever in 15 years of using a multitude of boss pedals have i ever had one problem with reliability!

i have put 5 as i have never had to use customer suport so i dont know if its good or bad

once again i am a very happy boss customer.