Mad Professor Electric Blue Chorus

The Mad Professor Electric Blue Chorus is a compact chorus pedal from Mad Professor, the Finnish maker better known for its amplifiers. Premier Guitar's reviewer described its range as running "from subtle and tasteful tone thickening to wet chorus that retains detail," which positions it as a chorus that can sit almost invisibly under a clean tone or be pushed into a full modulation effect¹. The reviewer also noted that Mad Professor set out to design a chorus for players put off by the heavily processed chorus sounds of the 1980s, aiming instead for an effect that can be profound while staying subtle¹.

Like other Mad Professor pedals, it comes in an enclosure the reviewer called "both rock solid and slender," making it easy to fit on a crowded board¹.

What it does to your sound

The Electric Blue Chorus is a chorus in the classic sense: it mixes a delayed, pitch-modulated copy of your signal with the dry signal to thicken and animate the tone. Where it sits in that spectrum is the player's choice. At gentle settings it works as tone thickening, adding body and dimension without announcing itself as an effect. Turn it up and it becomes a wet chorus, and the point Premier Guitar emphasized is that the detail of the playing survives even at those wetter settings, rather than smearing into the modulation¹.

The reviewer tested the pedal through a rig of a Telecaster, a Stratocaster, a Fender Pro Reverb and a Peavey JSX, covering both single-coil and humbucker-style guitars into clean and high-gain amplifiers¹.

The Blend control

The pedal's key control is its Blend knob, which sets the mix of the wet (effected) and dry (uneffected) sound¹. This is the control that governs how far the pedal travels between background thickening and a prominent chorus: keep the wet signal low and the effect stays understated, raise it and the modulated copy of the guitar moves forward.

Premier Guitar's one criticism of the pedal was aimed here. Among the review's listed cons was that the "Blend knob could have a slightly wider wet range," meaning players who want an extremely wet, almost all-effected chorus sound may find the ceiling lower than on some other pedals¹.

Power and bypass

The Electric Blue Chorus is true bypass, so the signal passes straight through when the pedal is off¹. Power comes from either a 9V battery or a standard 9V adapter, the same arrangement as most compact pedals, so it runs from a typical pedalboard power supply without any special requirements¹.

The Electric Blue II: the chorus and vibrato successor

In March 2021 Mad Professor released an updated version, the Electric Blue II, described by GuitarPlayer as a successor to the Electric Blue Chorus². The II is a compact all-analog chorus and vibrato pedal, with a mini-toggle selecting between the two modes³⁴.

The differences from the original are substantial:

• Vibrato mode. The original Electric Blue was chorus only. The II adds a dedicated vibrato circuit that Gearnews reported was designed from scratch rather than tacked onto the chorus circuit⁵. Delicious Audio quoted the builder describing it as "the most expressive vibrato with expanded vocabulary"⁶.
• Tone knob. The MkII adds a Tone knob the original lacks; GuitarPlayer reported it creates more "modern" sounds²⁶.
• Fuller control set. The II carries Depth, Speed, Mix and Tone knobs plus the mode toggle, against the original's simpler layout⁵.

In chorus mode the II is voiced for slow, traditional chorusing with deep, musical movement at low speeds, taking on a rotating speaker quality at higher speeds, and Guitar World reported it also delivers faster faux-Leslie type tones⁴³. Delicious Audio described the II as an "innovative and beautifully complex all analog bucket brigade design" and added it to its Best Chorus Pedals list⁶.

The Electric Blue II was announced at €170 (approximately $205) with availability beginning in April 2021³².

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