If it were up to me, all the chorus pedals would be in a landfill.
All the JC120s too.
Along with the DX7, these are some of the things that ruined the '80s.
All pop music sounds go through a cycle of ‘very in’, ‘very out’, and then several decades later ‘retro cool/knowingly usable‘. Pop music is always technology driven, it is the sound of whatever is the current trend in instrument design. I was always on the alt/leftfield of ‘80s music, so I guess more on the then ‘retro cool/knowingly usable’ side of Velvet Underground, ‘60s psyche etc and avoiding DX7s etc, though now in hindsight I have made peace with them. I can certainly enjoy Prince (DX7s, Boss Dimension C on *everything*), Miles Davis Tutu, Propaganda etc (Linn Drums, Fairlights) etc. It is as identifiable to its decade as Phil Spector or George Martin, or the dreaded auto-tune today (which I hate to be honest).
Dan on TPS was funny today as one of the viewer questions was ‘can chorus ever not be cheesy?’ and he concluded that it wasn’t chorus that was the problem, but shimmery digital chorus, which is “worse than global warming and covid 19”. I’m inclined to agree as a nice analogue bucket brigade chorus like the CE-2 is just Seventeen Seconds/Faith-era Cure, Durutti Column (actually a 501 Chorus Echo), Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine etc. None of which are even remotely cheesy to my mind. All wonderful stuff.
I’m of the mindset that there are no bad instruments, only bad contexts and lack of imagination. Everything is useful.
PS The problem with the DX7, and to a lesser degree Roland’s D50, was 98% of people were either too thick or lazy to program them and just played the cheesy and hopelessly overused presets. You can get all manner of crazy stuff out of a DX7 with a little time and effort. It’s great for industrial stuff, great for techno bass etc. You don’t even need to learn the theory either, half an hour randomly prodding the buttons usually ends up in interesting angle-grinding a bin-lid or grainy ambience sort of stuff. Early on it’s like a TB-303 in that what comes out is never anything remotely like what you thought you put into it, and that’s great fun. The DX7 presets were terrible emulations of ‘real’ instruments. No one should ever use any synthesiser for that. They are for creating whole new sounds. If the DX7 had been ‘one knob per function’ rather than the tedious letterbox programming it would have been way more interesting and the ‘80s would have sounded quite different.