The Blue Box That Rewrote History: Boss CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus

In 1976, Boss shipped the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble to music stores worldwide and quietly changed the sound of popular music forever. It was the world’s first standalone chorus pedal — and also, technically, the first Boss pedal of any kind. In 1979, Boss took that revolutionary circuit and compressed it into the familiar compact format, removing the rack-sized CE-1’s stereo outputs and adding a subtler modulation character: the CE-2 Chorus was born, and it spent the next thirteen years defining what chorus was supposed to sound like. When the CE-2 was discontinued in 1992, an era ended.

In 2016, forty years after that first CE-1 left the factory, Boss brought both circuits back — together — in the CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus. Not a digital emulation. Not a COSM model. An all-analog, bucket-brigade-device recreation of both the CE-1 and CE-2 circuits, built by hand in Japan, in the same compact format that has sat on pedalboards from Madison Square Garden to bedroom studios in every country on earth. The CE-2W is Boss’s own answer to the question: what if the classics had never left?

From Rack to Compact: The CE-1 and CE-2 Story

To understand the CE-2W, you need to understand its parents. The CE-1 Chorus Ensemble was inspired by the Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier — specifically, the lush, shimmering stereo chorus that the JC-160 and JC-120 produced using the MN3002 bucket-brigade chips. Roland engineer Makoto Muroi saw an opportunity to bring that modulation quality into a standalone pedal format, and the CE-1 was the result: a floor unit roughly the size of a hardcover novel, with dual outputs, a chorus mode, and a vibrato mode that could produce everything from gentle spatial widening to full-speed Leslie-style waver.

The CE-1 ran on AC power — no battery, no compact chassis — and it sold well, but guitarists were already falling in love with the new compact pedal format that Boss was developing. When the CE-2 arrived in 1979, it was the CE-1’s little brother in every useful sense: same BBD-based circuit philosophy, same basic character, but battery-powered, compact, and single-output. The CE-2 also introduced a subtle mid-range boost absent in the CE-1, giving it a slightly warmer, fuller presence in a mix. Rate and Depth knobs gave players enough control to dial in everything from a barely-there shimmer to deep, swimming modulation.

Between 1979 and 1992, the CE-2 appeared on more recordings than any single pedal could reasonably count. Andy Summers built entire albums around it. Studio session players kept it on their boards as an always-on color. When Boss finally discontinued it in 1992 in favour of the more complex CE-3, the CE-2 didn’t disappear from the used market — it just got more expensive and harder to find. A fully working CE-2 in good condition commands serious money on Reverb to this day.

Waza Craft and the CE-2W’s Purpose

Waza Craft — Boss’s premium Japanese-made sub-line — exists precisely for moments like the CE-2. “Waza” translates loosely as “art and technique,” implying a level of craftsmanship beyond the standard Wuhan production line. Waza Craft pedals are made at the same Roland/Boss facility in Hamamatsu, Japan, where the original compact pedals were built in the late 1970s and 1980s. The manufacturing difference is real, not marketing: Waza Craft units use hand-selected components, tighter tolerances, and premium construction throughout.

The CE-2W was released in 2016 to mark the CE-1’s fortieth anniversary. Boss’s brief was straightforward but technically demanding: recreate the CE-1 chorus, the CE-1 vibrato, and the CE-2 chorus — all with authentic analog bucket-brigade circuitry — and put them in one compact pedal with the modern addition of stereo output. The CE-2W delivers on all three.

Controls and Modes

Physically, the CE-2W is pure Boss compact: the familiar blue enclosure, the same 73mm × 129mm × 59mm footprint, the same rugged steel construction. On the face you’ll find two control knobs — Rate and Depth — plus a small three-position toggle switch that selects between Standard mode (CE-2), CE-1 Chorus, and CE-1 Vibrato. Two quarter-inch output jacks (OUTPUT A/MONO and OUTPUT B) enable the stereo capability. That’s the entire control set, and it’s exactly right.

The Rate knob controls modulation speed across all three modes. The Depth knob controls modulation depth — how wide the pitch/time variation swings around the center frequency. Both knobs work identically in Standard mode and CE-1 mode. In the original CE-1, depth was fixed; the CE-2W’s variable Depth control in CE-1 mode is therefore a genuine improvement over the vintage unit.

Standard mode is the CE-2 circuit: mono-output-compatible, subtle, warm, with that characteristic mid-boost that gives the CE-2 its slightly forward presence. This is the mode for players who want the exact tone of thirty-one million pedalboards worth of chorus experience. It’s also the mode for guitarists who find most chorus pedals too “swirly” — the CE-2’s character is disciplined even at high Depth settings, staying musical where other chorus pedals go wobbly.

CE-1 Chorus mode opens up the character significantly. The CE-1 circuit is richer, more dimensional, and — in genuine stereo — genuinely expansive. With a single amplifier, CE-1 mode sends the effected signal to OUTPUT A and the dry signal to OUTPUT B; the two amp setup that results creates a physical sense of movement that mono chorus cannot replicate. This is the mode that defined the sound of The Police, The Cure, and a generation of 1980s atmospheric rock.

CE-1 Vibrato mode removes the dry signal entirely. What remains is pure pitch modulation — the effected signal only, no blend. At slow Rate and moderate Depth, it produces a subtle warble that suggests a slightly out-of-tune guitar playing against itself. At fast Rate and high Depth, it’s a full Leslie-style pitch oscillation that can sound organ-like, mechanical, or psychedelic depending on the guitar and amp driving it. No clean blend softens this effect: what you hear is pure modulation.

Specifications

Famous Players: The Circuits Behind the Icon

The CE-2W reproduces two distinct circuits, and the players associated with each are among the most celebrated in rock history. These artists used the original CE-1 and CE-2 — the CE-2W gives contemporary players direct access to those exact sounds.

Andy Summers — The Police

If there is one guitarist for whom the CE-1 and CE-2 are inseparable from professional identity, it is Andy Summers. His tone throughout The Police’s five studio albums and their associated touring is built on a foundation of Boss chorus, and his technique for layering multiple modulation sources — CE-1 or CE-2 alongside the Electric Mistress Flanger, running into a Roland Jazz Chorus combo — produced the shimmering, stereo-wide sound that “Message in a Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” and “Every Breath You Take” are constructed from.

Summers used the CE-2 extensively as his go-to compact chorus for live use, often running dual amp rigs that exploited the spatial width the CE-2’s subtlety allowed. The CE-1 mode of the CE-2W captures what his live CE-1 rig sounded like before the compact transition; the Standard mode captures the CE-2 he used from 1979 onward. No other single pedal in production gives you both halves of the Summers chorus spectrum.

John Frusciante — Red Hot Chili Peppers

John Frusciante’s relationship with the Boss CE-1 is one of the most extensively documented equipment associations in modern rock. He began using the CE-1 on his return to RHCP in 1990 — the compact pedal format of the CE-2 was never his primary choice. His Californication-era pedalboard famously ran not one but two Boss CE-1 units, treated as discrete voices routed through different signal paths. The result was the glossy, three-dimensional chorus shimmer that defines his clean and semi-clean tones across Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium.

The CE-2W’s CE-1 mode is the closest any current production pedal comes to what those two CE-1 units were doing. It won’t be identical — the specific MN3002 chips in Frusciante’s vintage units have their own character — but the CE-2W’s Japanese-built BBD circuit and variable Depth control in CE-1 mode puts that sound within reach of players who cannot source or afford a working CE-1 in 2026.

Robert Smith — The Cure

Robert Smith’s guitar tone is inseparable from chorus modulation. His use of the CE-1 throughout The Cure’s post-punk and atmospheric periods — combined with his Fender Jazzmaster or Gibson ES-345 through various echo units — created the distinctive wet, billowing texture that “A Forest,” “In Between Days,” and “Lovesong” are built on. The CE-1’s dimensional depth, its ability to make a single guitar sound like a soundfield rather than a point source, was precisely what Smith needed to create the emotional scale of The Cure’s sound without a second guitarist.

Smith also relied heavily on the Roland Jazz Chorus amplifier’s built-in stereo chorus, which shares its circuit DNA directly with the CE-1. The CE-2W CE-1 mode — especially in a stereo setup — reproduces the spatial character of that sound with accuracy that no digital model achieves.

The Wider CE-1/CE-2 Player Ecosystem

Beyond the canonical three above, the CE-1 and CE-2 appear throughout the gear documentation of a wide range of influential players. Prince was a documented user of multiple Boss compact pedals through the 1980s and 1990s, favoring their clean, musical signal processing alongside clean amp platforms. Kurt Cobain’s use of Boss pedals — particularly the DS-1 and DS-2 — is exhaustively documented, though his use of the CE-2 or chorus pedals specifically is not confirmed via primary sources. Without verified rig documentation of CE-2 use, the article treats his association as speculative rather than primary-source confirmed.

What is unambiguous is the scope of the CE-2’s professional adoption across rock, pop, jazz, and post-punk in its thirteen years of production. The CE-2W is the continuation of that history in current production form.

Tone Recipes and Settings

How the CE-2W Compares

Buying Guide

The CE-2W retails at approximately $199 USD new, positioning it squarely in the mid-tier premium pedal market — below boutique pricing but above standard Boss compact pricing. The 5-year Boss warranty applies. There are no variants or special editions beyond the standard current-production CE-2W; no MkII revision has been announced as of 2026.

Used CE-2W units appear regularly on Reverb and eBay in the $130–170 USD range for excellent condition examples. The CE-2W has no known reliability issues — Boss compact construction is legendarily robust — so a used unit at a significant discount is a rational purchase. Check that the mode switch moves cleanly between all three positions and that both output jacks are functional. Power: the CE-2W draws 25mA, which is low enough that it will work on virtually any isolated power supply output.

For players specifically seeking the original CE-2 rather than the CE-2W, the original 1979–1992 units remain available used. Expect to pay $150–300+ USD depending on condition and year. The CE-2W Standard mode reproduces the CE-2 circuit authentically, and adds stereo capability the original lacked. For most players, the CE-2W is the more practical choice.

Owning and Using the CE-2W

The CE-2W’s buffered bypass means it integrates well anywhere in a signal chain. Unlike germanium fuzzes or certain vintage-style overdrives, it does not need to be first in the chain for impedance reasons. Standard practice is chorus after dirt (overdrive/distortion) and before delay/reverb, though chorus before overdrive is a valid and distinct approach as described in the tone recipes above.

The stereo operation deserves real attention if you run any kind of dual-amp or wet/dry setup. Routing OUTPUT A (wet) and OUTPUT B (dry) to two separate amplifiers creates a physical left-right dimension that no mono chorus effect can reproduce — the spatial effect comes from actual room acoustics, not just electronic manipulation. Even two small practice amps in this configuration produce a distinctly three-dimensional result. Live players with budget constraints who can borrow a second combo will find the CE-2W in stereo transformative compared to its mono operation.

In CE-1 Vibrato mode, be aware that no dry signal reaches the output. If you’re using a wet/dry rig with the CE-2W in a parallel loop, the vibrato mode will still have dry signal in the chain via the loop’s dry path — but if you’re running serial, the vibrato is complete pitch modulation with no blend control. This is the original CE-1’s behavior and is correct; it simply means vibrato mode requires some preparation before deployment in a live set.

The 25mA current draw is unproblematic for any quality isolated power supply. Battery operation is possible (approximately 20–30 hours from an alkaline 9V) but not recommended for regular use — the two-output design means leaving a cable in OUTPUT B while running mono from OUTPUT A will work normally; both outputs are always active when the pedal is on.

Frequently Asked Questions