A few months ago, Nice Rack Canada had a chance to meet the owner of Chase Bliss Audio at an effects pedal show.
We were immediately impressed with the Audio, MIDI, and System Integration aspects of the designs, and the staff at Chase Bliss Audio are some really nice people too!
The MIDI functionality of the pedals is a necessary & forward looking shift in pedal design. Nice Rack Canada is always seeking new avenues for creating value for our clients in the systems we build. Chase Bliss Audio’s functionality fits perfectly with our quest.
Every knob and switch on the pedal is connected to a digital brain while your guitar signal stays 100% analog the entire time and never gets digitally processed. Since the control of the effect is digital, it opens up unprecedented effects and features that have never been heard or offered in analog stompboxes.
The warm, rich analog tones with robust MIDI implementation in a compact footprint with low demand criteria on system power supplies make Chase Bliss Audio an absolute winner in our opinion.
We’re very happy to have in our shop a demonstration pedalboard featuring the entire Chase Bliss Audio pedal line. To completely utilize the MIDI aspect of the pedals we employed an RJM Music MasterMind GT16 MIDI Controller.
The MasterMind GT16 gave us the ability to create a multi layer controller that can handle basic bypass switching and presets on it’s home page, with further pages accessed from each Pedal’s Bypass Instant Access switch by pressing for 3 seconds to launch a page of Instant Access to Favourite Presets in the Pedal and Continuous Control options.
When you’re ready to expand your sonic horizons & rig functionality, you should explore the world of Chase Bliss Audio under our tutelage in our shop or at a guitar show near you.
We’ll be taking this pedalboard with us to the Durham International Music Attraction Show on Sunday, November 19th. Stop by our booth for a demo and a chance to win a Brothers Drive / Boost / Fuzz pedal.
Read on for a little more information about each of the Chase Bliss Audio Designs.
Brothers - Designed in collaboration with Resonant Electronic™, Brothers™ is built upon two independent JFET / IC analog channels comprising a total of six unique boost, drive, or fuzz circuits in one small enclosure.
The pedal can be routed in thirty-three distinct ways, including mixing them in parallel or changing the order of the effects. As with every Chase Bliss pedal, you can save everything and recall presets instantly, on-the-fly either on the pedal or with MIDI.
Gravitas - This tremolo pedal features an all-analog signal path that can do any variety or shape of standard volume modulation, harmonic tremolo (inspired by vintage Brownface) or both simultaneously for a truly unique and beautiful tremolo sound that sits just perfectly in a mix.
The first thing your guitar hits in the signal path is a gorgeous, transparent, discrete class A clean boost circuit, and is followed by buffering and tone shaping with famed Analog Devices AD823 opamps for perfect tonal clarity, and analog warmth.
Wombtone - They just don’t make phasers like they used to. This analog phaser pedal features an all-analog signal path with smooth, vintage tones that harken back to the 70’s while retaining the ability to get plenty weird and psychadelic too.
Wombtone mkII has a few upgrades, including a rare mix control that moves from full dry signal to pure phase vibrato as well as the ability to switch between 2, 4, and 6 stages of phase for all flavors of phase from barely audible to that full, syrupy swirl.
Warped Vinyl - Originally conceived to simulate the effect of a warped vinyl record, but that is only scratching the surface of what Warped Vinyl mkII can do.
This “true pitch” analog vibrato/chorus pedal features an all-analog signal path that can be dialed in to create limitless palette of vibrato and chorus. Warped Vinyl mkII has several changes, including a tone knob for shimmery, transparent vibrato/ chorus as well as an increased signal to noise ratio.
Spectre - Many decades ago, it is rumored that a certain, infamous “Spectre” created the effect we’ve all come to know as flange by putting a finger on a set of identical tape recorders, slightly altering the speed of one of the recorders.
Through-zero flanging is an incredibly rare and inspiring effect, especially in the analog domain. By using two delay lines (as opposed to just one), Spectre can cross over the elusive “zero point.”
This through-zero flanger pedal features an all-analog signal path that can be dialed in to create any amount of subtle and wacky flange tones. Spectre also boasts an impressive array of chorus and vibrato tones.
Tonal Recall - Built around a pair of re-issued versions of the legendary MN3005 bucket-brigade delay chips, the unmistakable analog character of this delay is front and center along with its velvety tape-like modulation.
Tonal Recall expands upon the classic vintage sounds associated with analog delays of yesteryear while bringing modern amenities such as tap tempo, optional bypass with trails, expression control over any parameter, and the ability to save presets.
