The story of the JHS Emperor Chorus / Vibrato with Tap Tempo 

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Penguin Joke: So a penguin takes his car to a mechanic for a tune-up. He asked if there was a place to eat while he was waiting and the mechanic said, "There's not much, but there's an ice cream shop across the street. So the penguin goes across the street and has some ice cream while he waited. About an hour later, the penguin goes back to the mechanic to check on his car. The mechanic says, "It looks like you blew a seal." The penguin quickly says, while wiping his mouth, "No, no! That's just some ice cream!"

Growing up my favorite show was "how its made", I always found it interesting seeing the process behind everything so now as a pedal builder myself this is fascinating to hear the whole story. Looking forward to the next episodes in the series!

"Behind the Circuit" - great idea for a series. As a musician and as a listener, I think sharing the stories behind the songs is an enjoyable element of an entertaining show.

finally JHS video about a pedal that actually I own

Nick’s drip has reached legendary status with the bolo tie 🕴️

This is the type of story I want from pedal makers. It’s fascinating to hear why a pedal was created and how it was originally thought it would be used.

Rewatching this and requesting more of this series in 2023!

Absolutely addicted to the JHS content, and loving this style of video.

Hi, Josh, a Milwaukeean here! Thanks for shouting out Wade's! That's a legendary, awesome shop that has been here for my entire life. Wade is such a cool and friendly guy, and the people who work there are always helpful!

Love seeing that old unit in the group photo. Would really like to see a vid about 'famous' people that use JHS pedals.. Kinda like a reverse rig rundown.. Thanks for all the amazing content. You guys have indirectly built my board.

I would love a show about the Morning Glory, featuring a discussion of that tiny Morning Glory you teased in a previous video, but never got around to talking about. Honestly-and I’ve mentioned it elsewhere-I would love a series of nano versions of some of your full-sized pedals, particularly the Morning Glory. Also, I’d love a show about the Pandamonium-how it came to be, how it came to be discontinued, and give us the big reveal that you’re bringing it back to the regular lineup! 😊

OK. So this was incredible. So looking forward to more of this series.

More of these please! Would love to hear even more nerdy technical details about the circuit and some trial and error which went into each design. Vote for the Unicorn next.

This is my favorite video you guys have done in a while. Love learning about the history of your pedals. A vid on the panther would be awesome 🤙🏻🤌🏼

This was great. I always love when Brian Wampler does deep dives into specific circuits, so it’s great to see that from you folks as well. I think you should do one on whatever pedal Josh is the saddest about discontinuing

I live in Milwaukee and everything about this DIY pedal checks out.

Spent some time this evening playing through my Emperor - love it.

I had no idea about the stereo function. It is now capable for my rig. So excited!

I love my Emperor V1. It’s crazy to think how long It’s been

Thanks so much for posting this. First, I thought this could have been a 10 minute video but I'm glad you guys took your time with the storytelling and gave the Emperor its due. Great job on the color and its sideline story!

I'm glad to see a video on the Emperor. I love mine. I'm always finding new ways to use it. From reading reviews, I think there are a lot of people that don't understand it -- especially the buffer and stereo features.

awesome discussion. I love to see something like this about the kodiak.

great show. really enjoy seeing pedal circuits broken down and dissected. thanks fellas!

Man, back in the 80's my high school had an Arion SCH-1 floating around in the band room and I borrowed it a few times. I always assumed the boss was cooler just because of the enclosure, but I did love the sound of the SCH-1 and especially running it out to two amps!

+1 for the Unicorn V2, amazing pedal, thanks!

Yes, more history please! 👏 And more Smoky the Bear hats!

Josh, your family doesn’t say things wrong. They say things wrongly. Great show!

I thought this would be like Behind the Music, and we'd learn when the pressures of fame would convince the young pedal to try performance-enhancing diodes.

Loved this!! The Emperor has certainly been on my radar, lately.

Fascinating to hear about the thought process and design evolution of any creative process, not least guitar tech and of course with JHS pedals. Looking forward to more of these episodes. On another note… I’ve ordered my first JHS pedal - the 3 Series Harmonic Trem. Super excited about finally getting one of your creations in my hands and rig and exploring new tonal vistas of joy!

You guys are awesome I have watched your show for a few years and I can’t get enough. Love all the random bits of history and info, please keep it going guys

I'm one of the few people that uses the TRS splitter for chorus on this pedal. Works great to make the sound that much bigger

Great episode! Love my Emperor: a constant on my gig board.

Thanks guys, love the channel. I'd love to see a Behind the Circuit for the Angry Charlie and include the JB-2 Angry Driver!

This series (sub-series?) will be fun to catch more of. Love the idea of it, and i really will enjoy this as like a podcast while driving! Thanks JHS!

Great new show guys. Really liked the style and pace of it all. I think it would be cool to learn about the Charlie Brown at some point on this new show.

I did have some questions about this pedal. This video 💯 % answers them all and more. Thanks, guys

This was a great episode and I look forward to more. I would love a series "On the circuit" and explain how pedals work and what goes into designing them on more of an electronics level.

I'm loving Nick's Smokey Bear hat!! Only you can prevent boring guitar tone!

Love the Milwaukee shout out, we never get any love. Also love cream city music

Enjoyable episode. Love the Crayon to get the same treatment.

It was really nice to hear Josh talk about how the Emperor came to be and see what his goal was with its design and how he uses it. I had an Emperor on my board going into a Wampler faux tape echo for a long time, that is a great combination.

500 series episode please! Sounds like an interesting story :)

Looking forward to this new series!

My Personal favorite flavor of chorus is the Rockman Chorus from the headphone amps and later the Rock Modules. A great example is the sound on Boston’s Third Stage, ‘“We're Ready" with a slightly driven guitar tone, short delay and the stereo chorus was just perfection in that edge tone. Tom Scholz has his own view about where guitar belongs in the sonic spectrum of a mix, and I'd love to see you guys delve into the SDR product catalogue. they were really ahead of their time for cab emulation and direct to PA systems for live situations.

I loved this show. This is touching! Greetings from Berlin / Germany

Love the story from my hometown Milwaukee! Though it came with some potential condescension 😆 (now live in KC actually). Also love the Emperor pedal.

Great video! I had just made the decision to buy this pedal and then you put this video out. Can’t wait to get my hands on it! Side note: missed opportunity at the end when Nick says “Josh, play us out.” Should have responded with “What does that mean to play us out?? I’ll do it live!!” - Bill O’Reilly.

Also, I think it would bee cool to know the story of the Pollinator v1 into v2 transition--such a great-sounding fuzz!

RIP Bubbles the Penguin.

Pinguin? Londau? Me thinks you’ve been sniffing way too many solder fumes. I do love my OG mij Arion stereo chorus in stereo mode into my Synergy valve stereo poweramp. It really comes alive in a wet/dry/wet rig with the switch set to stereo out. Love ya work Josh🎸

Josh, I too grew up on a highway 24, a two lane highway in the rural south. We didn't have penguins though, we had peacocks. True story. Their eerie cries from the dark pine forests across the plains (my 1/3 of an acre yard) are what inspired me to be metal af.

The bow tie would’ve been so awesome; need me an emperor baaad Edit: I got it in the mail yesterday and the thing is freaking amazing; I’ve had a ce-5 and a mooer ensemble king, and the emperor soars above them. Sooooo good 🔥🐧

Josh, we need a Flanger in this sub series. Flanger is back.

Great video and series idea! Milkman for me would be so cool to watch :)

Great video. I really liked this. Do the other two pedals in that series now. The Unicorn and the Panther Cub. The Emperor is the only one I don’t have yet. I love chorus but I just don’t have it yet.

Awesome! Looking forward to more of these!

Hoping they'll do this this for all their pedals!

Big shout out to Kidd, at Wade’s Guitar in Milwaukee. The best pedal dealer ever!

Josh should do a crossover with RedLetterMedia next time he's in Milwaukee. He'd be great on a Best of the Worst.

Great idea. Would love to see this for each JHS pedal. :)

…it’s still goofy; this is a good thing. It’s teen-friendly; thus, you guys are fun to see for us old guy newbies too.

Can anyone explain how to slave the tap tempo to the Unicorn and/or Panther Cub? Do you need a TRS splitter? Can you sync all three together, or just two at a time?

Thanks for the behind the circuit series. I’m a proud owner of a few JHS pedals including an Emperor. I also have a Kodiak tremolo pedal. Please do a behind the circuit episode on the Kodiak.

Love the concept of this video - thank you!

Would love to see the comparison of a Charlie Brown vs the old version with 4 knobs. I mistakenly thought I had the V3 with 5 knobs but I have the 4 knobs one. This pedal sounds killer when stacked for solos!

Love the original emperor trailer. It has a great home made character to it.

I LOVE this format! And chorus was never uncool for me- I own like 6 different choruses and there’s always at least 1 on my board.

I would love to see an episode on writing code for pedals. I'm looking around and I don't see much in the way of resources for people who want to write pedal algorithms, any suggestions?

The Emperor is the only JHS pedal I own but keep these up and I’ll have an entire board dedicated to JHS

Question: Is there any way you can put these in a podcast format? It would be easier for me to listen to that sit and watch. Yes, I know there are a lot of things to look at during these shows that might get lost in a podcast. Just a thought. Keep up the good work.

Interesting show! I would definitely like to see this format for other JHS pedals

I'd love to know more about the Panther, especially about the design process. I bet there are some cool stories about the decisions you made along the way.

Glad to see this! I own this pedal and it does so much it took me a while to figure it out, especially using the square wave. This episode helped connect some dots and fill in some blanks do the PG 14 next plz the paul Gilbert one with the pre eq boost!

danget josh. thanks for the recommendation. 🤯

PLEASE DO THE UNICORN. That pedal has so many things you can do with it. Please also include a deep dive into placement in the pedalboard chain on that one as well.

I was at the Khruangbin concert the other night and about 40% of the audience was sporting wide brimmed hats. Did I miss a memo?

Two questions. Why did you make the "blend" a switch instead of a pot? That seems like it would be cool. Also, what kind of cables are you using on your board?

My favorite Chorus will always be the Boss CE -2. Because it sounds great without the glassy artifacts. And if you set it just right, kind of subtle, lead notes with a little finger vibrato can give an almost wah affect to the sound. Something I can’t get from any other chorus.

I really like this format; learning about the JHS product from a historic perspective. How does the 3 series chorus relate to this pedal aside from the tap tempo feature?

Ooh man y'all should really do a Behind The Circuit of the Unicorn.

I don't love the chorus effect, but whenever I hear the Emperor demoed, I think, "maybe I need a chorus pedal." Love the vibrato on it.

Nick has serious Perd Hapley vibes on the intro & outro.

JHS pedals! Love you guys. Hey quick pedal idea. Is there a such thing as an envelope pitch shifter/harmonizer? If not can you make one? Specifically it would be a pedal that modulates like an envelope filter with release decay and sensitivity controls but instead of a filter it's an octave pedal that shifts from down octave to up octave when triggered by the signal envelope. (Might want to add a reverse switch so you could make it go from octave up to octave down). Ideally the pitch tracking would be excellent because I found when I do this with chords with the chord setting on using my digitech whammy I love the awesome effect of quickly shifting from octave up to octave down. It gives you a really wavy funky sound. I just think how cool would that be in a less bulky package without needing to work the pedal. Right? Am I nuts? Well anyway cheers! And thanks for the great videos, pedals, and laughs. You all rock.

My first pedal was the Arion Tubulator. Broke eventually but knew nothing about types of pedals at that time and didn't realize I was a TS style player from 14 on :)

Does the Emperor have also TRS input so it's stereo in/stereo out... or just stereo out?

Ah a question as old as time: which came first, modulation or U2?

Question can you breakdown your expression capable pedals one day and do a live jam with them on a board? I'm wanting the Emperor now. I use exp with my Riverside and EHX, so I use analog and digital via expression controllers. I think I'll end up with Four expression pedals with a mini pedal board ( no power ) for the expression pedals only. I'm seriously Curious what you guys could do and how even with Nick's drums and Addison's playing, getting different sounds for color and different examples... I prefer expression in real time from subtle to extreme settings...as opposed to a lot of presets. Any way a breakdown on your own Expressables Range and how You guys would improvise the sounds Live...and for Spotify to us to hear just the sounds from your Recording would be awesome.

This was a phenomenal watch/listen. I've been between this and the baby blue Waza for a while now. I was leaning toward the Waza, this made the decision more difficult.

I would love a video on the 500 series. I'm increasingly more interested in in rack mount gear as I'm looking at ways to use less plugins, and also so I can hopefully reduce the amount of computer memory my Mac is having to process.

In a strange way it's like future Josh whispered through the stream of time to foretell the discovery of the Korg Animal series but past Josh misunderstood and came up with the Best JHS line

36:00 BS!! Josh's favorite chorus song is "Run To You"! He plays it every single time he turns on a chorus pedal.

the dogs... if I don't laugh, I'll cry

How many pieces is the body of that butterscotch Strat? Looks like 4 or more.

18:02 I was just about to mention about it. Cheers. By the way, he use a Diamond Vibrato VIB-1. It will be a good comparison between both pedals and the ZVEX Instant Junky Lo Fi. Cheers.

Hey I have a question: what is the difference (if any) between the vibrato on a chorus and the vibrato on a classic style vibe like a déjà vibe?

Nick, you can’t have it both ways. Are you definitely or probably glad the volume control is there? 32:00 😂 😆

love the emperor and the unicorn! When I use with my les paul classic they tend to distort, I can turn my volume knob down to fix but is there a reason this happens? Our my pickups just too hot? Maybe a dumb question...thx!

Great new series. A question: when you're setting the upper and lower limit for a pot how do you decide (for the customer!) what the minimum and maximum level would be for the effect? I assume that some things (e.g. delay time) will be restricted by the chip set, but how do you define the sweet spot between usability and flexibility for something like modulation where tastes differ so much?