The world's most respected company in terms of guitar effects from north of the border (which is actually also Taco Bell's slogan in their Guatemalan marketing campaigns), Radial announces the Bones Vienna Chorus -- just one of the products they'll have on display at Winter NAMM 2009. It's an analog chorus pedal with dual mode functionality, making for quick switches between subtle chorusing effects and heavily saturated lead chorus effects.

Radial President and man with the plan, Peter Janis, talks about delving into guitar effects beyond distortion and the story behind the Vienna Chorus:

"For years, musicians have been asking us when we would come out with effect devices other than overdrives, distortion pedals and switchers . . . so as you can imagine, this has been on the back of our minds of a while. We felt that if we could bring something new and exciting to market, it would be of interest to the more demanding players. We considered digital options but felt that this segment was well serviced. Upon further investigation, it also became evident that top end players prefer the 'tone and feel' of vintage analogue chorus pedals even though they tend to have more noise. I think it is somewhat like comparing solid-state guitar amplifiers to tube based on . . . they just do not react to the guitar in the same fashion.

This however presented us with a problem . . . the heart of an analogue chorus is the bucket brigade chip. Alas, low noise versions of these such as the highly regarded Panasonic MN3007 have not been made for years. So we started scrounging the market to find these discontinued chips until we could put together a stash that was sufficiently large to go into production. We have thousands in stock and have built the Vienna in such a way that the MN3007 chip is socket-mounted for easy replacement. This is particularly important for our European customers as we must be prepared to buy these back in effort to conform to the no-lead initiatives for dumpsites.

As mentioned above, The Vienna Chorus had to be different and we achieved this by creating a dual-mode chorus pedal whereby the guitarist can toggle between a slight choral effect to an exaggerated tone for soloing. This really opens the door for sonic possibilities which will surely spur on the creative process."

The Vienna Chorus stays true to the Bones series, which until now, only featured two distortions, an overdrive and an amp switcher. Like the rest of them, the Vienna Chorus features a compact design and standard nine-volt power to fit in easily with any pedalboard.

Controls include two independent channels where speed and intensity can be individually dialed for creation of two different, switchable choral textures. The two footswitches allow access of either channel or neither channel.