# Made in Japan Boss CE - 3 stereo chorus pedal value



## stringer (Jun 17, 2009)

Hi all. I will be trading away the pedal mentioned in the title and I was hoping to get a value so we can make a fair trade. It's like new in the box with all paperwork, boss catalog, stickers etc... very mint 9.5 outta 10 cuz there's a small blemish on the box. Made in Japan green label and with period correct, made in Japan boss power supply also with box but beat up a bit.
I know it's just a boss but made in japan and basically dead mint, it's gotta be worth something, I was thinking around a hundred bucks all in.

Thanks for looking.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Actually, while a decent chorus, there's nothing really special about it. I say this based on the one I own. The dual outputs allow it to double as a vibrato, but that's about it. The association with country of production is meaningless in this context, as it conveys nothing about either the quality or design. I would put its worth as around $60, if you can find a buyer.


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## markxander (Oct 24, 2009)

I had one and liked it a lot, but it doesn't have the same value as a CE-2 does for whatever reason. $60 sounds about right, but in my experience it's way harder to find a buyer for chorus or other modulation pedals than it is to find one for overdrive/fuzz.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The CE-3 uses the same plain vanilla bucket brigade chip as pretty much every other contemporary chorus; the principal reason why it does not fetch the same prices as a CE-2.


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## stringer (Jun 17, 2009)

Okay thanks guys. I thought for sure there would be a collectors market for a 30/35 year old new old stock mij pedal.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

As much as folks on Kijiji and CRaigslist would have us believe otherwise (often because they do themselves), age does not automatically equal "vintage". Sometimes older stuff is just old.

Sometimes, older things are unique in some manner, whether because they had a certain unique feature set, employed a different design, or used components no longer available or in production. Time also has a way of making some things rarer. The CE-3 is none of those things. Mine was given to me by one of my oldest friends as a birthday present, in a box of about 8 pedals he picked up for a song at yard sales and Value Village. 
For your interest, here is a table of release/production dates for many of the Boss pedals, classic and otherwise. You can see the CE-3 was in production for roughly 8 years. I would imagine that a great many were produced, so it's not a very rare bird.

I hadn't looked at this chart in a while. Clearly the DS-1 and the BF-2 are the "survivors" in the Boss stable.


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## Grainslayer (Sep 26, 2016)

I just listed my mint ce-2 on cl and plan to buy a ce-3 cause I think it’s a better sounding chorus...pm me if you still have it.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

mhammer said:


> The CE-3 uses the same plain vanilla bucket brigade chip as pretty much every other contemporary chorus; the principal reason why it does not fetch the same prices as a CE-2.


What does the ce-2 use?


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

Everything CE:

ElectroSmash - Boss CE-2 Chorus


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The MN32xx series of delay chips was essentially developed to address a circumstance arising from battery use, which would have been more typical at that time. With the rapid growth in both digital pedals (which couldn't survive more than a few hours on a battery), and mini-pedals that have no room for a battery, pedalboards with external power-supplies are now the norm, making the _*need*_ for the 32xx series a non-issue. ***

Panasonic/Matsushita abandoned production in the mid-'90s. Until just a few years ago, when Xvive started making MN3005 and 3007 chips again, pretty much all we had available were 32xx chips, made by Beiling and later on, Coolaudio (a Behringer spinoff/subsidiary/supplier). I don't know why it took so long for 30xx chips to return. Coulda been something legal, coulda been a question of fabrication difficulties, coulda been a matter of perceived market/demand. I have no idea. EHX uses a quartet of them for their various analog delay pedals, so that provides a pretty steady demand for production.

Are the 30xx chips "better"? Some folks say so. They do have a little more dynamic range and better S/N ratio, but the threat to noisy delay pedals comes much less from the delay chips, and more from the clock used. The common misunderstanding is that the ability to run off 15V, rather than 5V magically translates into _much_ greater headroom. But the reality is that the _actual_ headroom in bucket-brigade chips is rather limited, and restricted to a mere fraction of the supply voltage. It's not as if the signal swings nearly 15V instead of just under 5V. There IS an improvement in headroom, though, just not nearly as much as presumed.

*** Why does the supply voltage matter? All bucket-brigade chips need to be "biased", such that the audio signal rides in on a DC voltage that the chip needs to simply pass signal. The bias is derived by dividing down the supply voltage. This involves a trimpot that you will find n pretty well every analog time-based pedal, whether delay, chorus, flanger, doubler, or vibrato. However, deriving 14/15ths of 9.6volts (a fresh alkaline battery) is not the same as 14/15 of a battery that has dropped to 7.8V. Manufacturers could not expect users to constantly adjust bias as the battery aged, so Panasonic developed the alternate 32xx (and later 33xx) series of chips. They could run off 9V, but could also run well off 5V. A 9V battery can be dropped down to a regulated stable 5V until the battery itself declines to 7V, which provides sufficient lifespan. The bias voltage derived from that stable 5V supply remains stable and needs no further adjustment, such that the pedal behaves consistently. But again, all of that is a practical response to running a pedal off a battery. If you're running off an external regulated supply, it adds nothing to the reliabile performance of the pedal.


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