READ This TC Electronic Corona Chorus Review Before You Buy

Right off the bat – we love the TC Electronic Corona Chorus and here’s why (want to know more reasons? we also included it in our best chorus pedal post):

Let’s start by looking at all the features that this pedal has:

Toneprint – probably the coolest feature in these guitar pedals. Basically Toneprint allows you to download custom tone settings that were created by some of the most well known guitarists in the world. After downloading you can load them onto your pedal with either a USB cable or even wirelessly using the Beam mobile app.
True bypass and analog dry-through.
Super simple battery access using only one screw to get to the pedal’s battery compartment.
This pedal is built tough and durable.
Three different chorus sound types.
Stereo input and outputs.
A compact designed pedal that doesn’t take up much space. We were very surprised about how it can do everything it can do in such a small digital chorus pedal.
Super reasonable price! Like we mentioned before, we wanted to choose something under $100 and were hoping for an under $100 to win. As it turned out, this one did and it is only a few bucks more than $100.

What can you control in this pedal when in your signal chain:

Besides the Toneprint capabilities, there are a number of pedal controls onboard to help you dial in your desired tone:

Toggle Switch – this allows you to set it to either the SCF chorus pedal sound or Tri-Chorus.
Rate Depth Control – handles the chorus modulation guitar effect range allowing you to set it to barely there to very wobbly.
Tone – go from bright and sparkly to dark and warm just by turning this pedal knob.
FX Effect Level – how intense do you want this guitar effect to be in the mix of your guitar tone? The more your turn it up, the richer chorus pedal tone gets with the effect level.
Speed – controls how fast the chorus effect rotates.

We also found this great little bundle available that comes with a power adapter, patch cables, guitar picks and more. Very cool, however, it is the mini version of the pedal and not the full one.

Demo Video Of The Corona Chorus Pedal

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty and see why we chose these guitar effects pedals over all the others that we looked at. Feel free to click any of the links below to check price.

Limited Edition Version – TC Electronic Corona SCF Chorus Pedal

We also just wanted to just quickly mention that there is also a limited edition available right now. The TC Electronic Corona SCF was made to celebrate TC Electronics’ 40th anniversary. These digital chorus pedals have a limited run of 2000 units and has three new Toneprint settings that give respects to the original SCF chorus. These are very limited so if you want one of these, you better get it fast because once they are gone, they are probably gone for good.

Vs MXR M134 Stereo Chorus Ensemble

Now we have to start off by saying that MXR makes some of my favorite pedals, but when I compared the MXR M134 to the Corona, it was a no brainer. While it does sound good and holds up as far as chorus tone, we had to look at other aspects. The fact that it is huge and takes up a ton of space in a pedalboard knocked it down a notch in our eyes. It is also quite a bit more expensive than the Corona Chorus. It also takes double the power and needs two 9v batteries. So, while it is still a great sounding pedal, the Corona Chorus won this little comparison.

Vs MXR M234 Analog Chorus Pedal

This was a bit harder to not choose as the winner because we love the MXR M234. It’s small, has amazing tone and built like a tank. Really, the only thing that the Corona has above it is probably the versatility because you can select different chorus types on the Corona (not including the Toneprint options). All in all, a good pedal and still a great choice.

We also talked about this pedal in our best analog chorus pedal article here.

Vs MXR M148 Micro Chorus Pedal

While the MXR M148 is nice and small, sounds great and easy to use, when compared to the Corona Chorus , it is a bit lacking in features. This is not to say that it isn’t a good chorus pedal because you will be quite surprised how much tone you can get out of this little thing. If you are looking for something that you don’t want to mess around with much, this is actually the pedal for you.

Vs Neo Clone Chorus

The Neo Clone is another good pedal that is super simple with just a single knob for rate and depth control and a toggle switch that controls the effect’s rate depth. It sounds great but the only thing that the Corona has over this is the fact that it isn’t as versatile as our winner. Damn good price though!

Vs ElectroHarmonix Small Clone Pedal

The Small Clone is basically the daddy of the Neo Clone. I actually love this pedal but for the purpose of our comparison here, it gets some points removed due to it’s larger size. It sounds awesome but you sure need a lot of room in your pedal board to accommodate it. Like many other chorus pedals that we looked at though, it just didn’t have the huge number of capabilities that the Corona does. I love the Small Clone too!

Vs Boss CH-1 Chorus

I think every guitarist that I know has owned or owns multiple Boss pedals. They are awesome (definitely the best Boss chorus pedal!) and the Boss CH1 Stereo is no exception. It has plenty of options for shaping your chorus sound and it sounds fantastic in a number of different situations. To be quite honest, we actually almost picked this one as the winner. It was a bit of a toss up but the Corona Chorus just had a few other things going for it that brought it over the edge.

Vs Boss CE-5 Pedal

The Boss CE5 Chorus Pedal was another close winner – awesome chorus. Boss CE5 chorus pedals are built like tanks and can really take a beating if need be. It has plenty of options and can go from a very subtle chorus effect to all out crazy. However, just one little thing made us choose the Corona over it – no stereo chorus flanger pedal inputs. However, if you don’t need stereo input and don’t expect to ever use them, this is an excellent choice.

We also did an indepth look at the BOSS CE5 vs CH1 here.

Vs Truetone V3H2O Liquid Chorus and Echo Pedal

I love the Truetone V3H2O Liquid Chorus and Echo. It just lost a couple points for the same reason as the MXR M134 – large size and price tags. I also am not a huge fan of combining effects in one pedal. I don’t mind it in a multi-effects unit but when you have a pedal with just two effects, I would rather just buy two separate pedals. I feel like I have more control this way.

Vs Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy Analog Echo Chorus Vibrato

Finally we have theElectro-Harmonix Memory Boy Analog Echo Chorus Vibrato. Another good chorus pedal but it has kind of the same issues that the previous pedal has – it takes up a lot of pedal board space. It also puts a few different effects in one pedal which I am not a fan of.

Some Other Chorus Pedal Considerations

When we finally settled on the Corona, we also put together some other helpful items and other information:

Who Else The TC Electronic Corona Pedal?

Here is a list of some of the well known guitarists that currently use this rock chorus:

John Petrucci from Dream Theatre
Paul Gilbert
Andy Summers from The Police
Brad Whitford from Aerosmith
Scott Ian from Anthrax
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez from The Mars Volta and At The Drive-In
Joe Perry from Aerosmith
Orianthi from Alice Cooper
Steve Lukather from Toto
Eric Johnson

Using It For Bass

This pedal sounds great for bass especially if you are a slapper. For a great slap tone, put the toggle on tri-chorus. Then Speed and FX Level at around the 12 o’clock mark. Set the Tone to around the 1:00 mark and then play with the speed depth knob for desired tone. you can also adjust the Speed control if you want to change that up a little bit. It’s very punchy and great for slap.

If you are looking for a smoother tone you can bring the speed up a hair (maybe to the 1:00 position), Depth to 2:00, Tone at 12:00 and FX Level all the way up to 4:00. It really smooths out your tone and is almost a haunting chorus sound.

And if you want to go extremely crazy, you can just put everything at full blast and you get a weird alien bass tone.

Creating A Leslie Sound With The Corona Chorus

You can actually get a pretty decent Leslie like tone with this pedal as well. Set your Speed to 4:00, FX Level to 2:00, Depth to 12:00 and Tone to 12:00. There you have it – kind of a cool rotary sound. A fun tone to play around with sometimes.

Using It For Acoustic Guitar

When using this with an acoustic, setting up a tone and then leaving it on constantly is what we like to do. It is really going to depend on your acoustic but one setting that I found to sound nice is the Speed at 11:00, Depth at around 12:00 (maybe just a nudge past 12), FX Level at the same as Depth and Tone right at 12:00. I found that this really fills the tone up and gives a nice 3D quality.

Using It With A Distortion Pedal

This chorus pedal works great with distortion. The only thing that I find that I have to do is back the tone setting down a bit because it can get a little too bright when combined with distortion. It sounds great with all kinds of distortion – from a slight overdrive to high gain assaults.

Where Does The Chorus Pedal Go In The Chain?

This is really more of a personal preference and we always recommend to try a bunch of different combinations to get to the one you like best for your set up. Personally, I like the chorus and other modulation related best chorus effect near the end of the chain out to the amp.

Purchase Guide

Here are some links if you are looking to get this pedal for yourself. We also included links to other variations of the same pedal: