With the prices on vintage gear blasting through the roof and with all your favorite pawnshops being pilfered for old pedals, it is becoming tougher and tougher to track down those cool effects from yesteryear. One pedal that has eluded us for years, is the Electro Harmonix Small Clone. It was produced back in the late 1970s and remained a top seller until the company's demise in 1983. That smooth chorus of the Small Clone is imbedded in many of our minds and finding a suitable sound-a-like in the world of mass produced pedals is hopeless. Nothing else has that same magical swirl, at least until now.

Seems the fine folks over at AnalogMan were jonesing just as bad as us for that same Small Clone sound, and decided to whip up a batch of their own. This a near perfect match for the original with the only difference being that the newer Clone Chorus actually sounds slightly sweeter. Apparently, Analogman upgraded a few of the original circuit board components to enhance the tone and thicken things up a bit. Tack on some more modern day improvements like True Bypass and the option of AC power and your long hunt for a Clone might be over. Along with the sonic superiority, the Clone Chorus improved upon the flimsy sheet metal contruction of the original by housing it in an MXR-style enclosure. It's considerably smaller, tougher, and perfectly sized for those pedalboards with limited real estate. Imagine the size of the old MXR Phae 100's and you've got the picture. The housing is painted in a beautiful soft blue powdercoat and all the control functions are silkscreened with vivid white lettering. The artwork has a homespun psychedelic vibe that is charming in a middle school art class kind of way. Our numbered Clone Chorus came packaged in a cute little cloth bag with drawstring and a little one sheet of history, features, and contact information.

Well, after patching this into our pedalboard, we were immediately taken back by how silky soft the Clone Chorus is. There is nothing thin about the sound, in fact it is so thick and billowing that it actually expands, widens, and slightly boosts your signal. The range and feel of the controls is ultra-smooth and well voiced. The slowest speeds are useful for a mellow doubling effects which adds a lot of beefiness without screaming "I have my chorus on now" while the upper rate ranges yields a ton of different textures from bubbly leslie sounds to bizzare ring mod voicings. The CC's depth knob replaces the Small Clones very limiting "depth" switch. It's a very thoughful touch that really opens the user up to a much more versatile range of sounds. At mellow depth settings the CC adds just enough effect to let you know it's working it magic while extreme settings flood your signal with a warm watery sound that completely soaks your signal.

What impressed us the most with the Clone Chorus was the bumpy pulse of the sine wave. It has a very healthy Leslie sound going on and dialing up a very convincing Uni-vibe sound is effortless. At any setting there is a always a definable sweep that is very organic in a squishy undulating kind of way. It has a nice revolving sound that responds well to overdrive and other modulations effects. Nailing that wavering swoosh of Nirvana, the colorful swirl of the Cocteau Twins, or even the vibe-heavy moments of Hendrix is all possible with this little wonderbox. With the recent reissue of the Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, the long hunt for for finding the real deal is is a easy as jumping online and ordering one. But, if you're looking for more versatility, improved sound, better contruction, and thoughtful attention to detail, the AnalogMan Clone Chorus is the best out there.