Tag: Chase Bliss

Bliss Factory

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As many of you know, I have found a new fatuation in Chass Bliss pedals and all their configurability and quirkiness. Also if you’ve known me for even longer than you may know that one pedal I’ve always come back to is the ZVEX Fuzz Factory 7, my all time favorite fuzz. When I found out that they were doing a collab for the Reverb Pedal Movie, I jumped on the chance to snag one.

Of course this being the time of Covid where everyone is home and online, as well as Chase Bliss pedals going for ridiculous markups after undoubtably selling out, I was too late. In the first hour of sale all one thousand pedals were gone with no plans to make more. So back to the board with a plan to watch the flips pop up, and to try and get one for as little as possible, which would still turn out to be nearly double the original price.

But this post isn’t about the troubles of limited runs and the scalpers that markup the pedal the next day, it’s about this fantastic pedal. And it is FANTASTIC. One of the reasons I keep coming back to the Fuzz Factory 7 over the years is that it has fantastic cleanup, and there are a ton of different tones in there. From classic Fuzz Face, to thick molten modern fuzz, octave rich spitty tones and gated video game effects, all are possible. With Joel’s magic done to the Bliss Factory, the biggest part for me was the ability to save all those sounds to presets.

The added resonant high pass is a nice addition, giving some flexibility to tone, whether mellowing it out with reduced high ends, or adding some peak resonant frequencies to give a cocked wah feel. The Aux foot switch let’s you do things like make the high pass in one state and have it rolled off in the other allowing you to sit back in the mix even with a thick tone.

Chase Bliss / ZVEX – Bliss Factory

Lastly in true Fuzz Factory style, the noises that happen when this pedal self oscillates can be used for all sorts of crazy creations. Add this to pedals like the Thermae, Mood and Blooper and you have music potential with no guitar needed. That said, for me this is a fantastic fuzz pedal first, with all those noises coming in as an occasional fun thing to play with. The cleanup on the guitar volume knob is up there with the best of any fuzz and is truly an overlooked feature of this amazing pedal.

If you’d like to support the blog and the channel then please use our links when purchasing through Reverb and pickup your own Fuzz Factory variant today.

Chase Bliss Pedals – Reverb

Chase Bliss Blooper – Can it do normal looping?

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From the creative minds of Chase Bliss Audio and Knobs, comes the “Bottomless Looper”, a creative fully featured looping pedal that can even be customized. But how well does it work as a standard looper, and does it’s extra features provide the normal person with enough value to justify the high cost?

As a standard looper, the Blooper has really just one hurdle to get your head around. The length of the loop doesn’t change even though it may seem like it temporarily. Confusing to describe, confusing the first time you do it, not too hard to work around once you know what’s going on. For example, when you slow the playback, it will play the full loop at half speed and an octave down. However if you then try to “record” that effect permanently into the loop it will only record to the length of the original loop, giving you only half of the slower loop. Like I said, confusing to explain, not too bad once you play with it.

So now how about that Repeats knob? Well when you put the pedal in “Add” mode, it takes any filter and re-applies it per repeat. So a slowdown gets even slower each time, a warp gets more warpy each time around, and the volume drops based on the repeats knob. Turning this creative, character-ful looper, into an awesome, customizable delay. Reverse delay, character delay, high-pass filter, dropper; all kinds of things are possible here.

At about $500 new, this is the most expensive looper that I know of for sale, making my previous looper (Pigtronix Infiniti Looper) look down right affordable. As is the case with pretty much all Chase Bliss pedals, it may look overpriced on the surface, but when you start looking at it as a whole it starts to make sense. Midi controlled, super flexible looper, incredible character delay and future upgradability via usb updates, this pedal gives you ton’s of options in a very small package.

Once again Chase Bliss Audio has taken a simple concept and expanded it to be a creative tool that you can get lost in for hours at a time. This is why I have embraced them wholly and built a board pretty much exclusively from their pedals.

Support the channel and buy you own Blooper on Reverb.

Preamp Mk II Automatone VS The World

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The Preamp Mk II Automatone is a gimicky, over hyped and overpriced overdrive pedal. At least that is what I thought at first when it was first announced and I saw those automated sliders flicking between presets. In a world where pedal prices keep jumping up to new levels, Chase Bliss leads the way in high priced gear, but after spending time and completely loving their Thermae, I understand why.

The Preamp Mk II answers with gusto the main critique I have will all pedals that employ favorites or presets, that when you switch to said preset you have no idea where the knobs are set. Sure some makers have come up with work arounds such as Stymon’s where turning the knobs will blink the light when you read how it is set for the preset, but they have all felt like cumbersome hacks. Chase Bliss and it’s fancy auto-faders have solved the problem, the sliders move themselves to the preset settings when switching. It seems like a gimmick, but man does it work.

Then came the demos by people who’s opinions I hold with regard, the final straw being That Pedal Show‘s episode where they put the Preamp Mk II up against some of the heavy hitters of the overdrive world and even Mick’s Fuzz Face. See their episode here. So I decided to give it a shot and ordered one direct from Chase Bliss (which said it had a 1-2 week backorder, but shipped out the next day) and shoot it out again my newly wired pedalboard.

At first I wasn’t impressed by the sliders, they felt too light and not quite as sturdy as I’d like for a $750 pedal, especially compared to the beautiful knobs that are on other chase bliss pedals. However after some use I realized that they have to be extremely light in order for the motors in the sliders to last forever. It’s sort of like picking up a guitar with super light wood, at first you it feels like a toy, but after a while you realize that it’s lightness is part of what makes it great.

Actually dialing in tones, especially if trying to match another pedal, it takes time a experimentation. When trying to match the high gain sound of my Hudson Broadcast, there was a top end that I found hard to match. In the end I had to turn down the treble and boost the upper mids in a specific frequency range to get it there. Sometimes you get the right high end by cutting lower mids in either the pre or post mid eq setting. It seems simple, but the controls are so powerful that shaping your tone can be more complex than expected.

In the end, I managed to match my King of Tone (at 18v), Hudson Broadcast 24v, Dumbloid Overdrive BTM Boost and even my Fuzz Factory 7 to an extent. While at first it seems like an overpriced bit of a one trick pony, it actually revealed itself to be a true chameleon of a pedal and is going to replace all four pedals on my board… well maybe.

I still love my other pedals, so they’re not going anywhere. It may be time to build my own pedalboard, just for the Chase Bliss pedals I have.

Support the channel and buy your own Preamp Mk II on Reverb.

How to spend your money in a day.

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Ok, I’m an idiot. Or maybe an addict? Hi my name is Andrew and I’m a pedalholic, and I’m ok with that. Sort of.

I go through a lot of gear, and typically I find the stuff I want to try out used at a bargain price. I am patient, calculated and nerdy enough to know exactly what price I need to buy something at in order to be able to resell it later and break even or preferably make a small profit. I’ve done well for myself, with my gear hobby breaking even after all the gear I buy and keep for myself.

Sometimes though, I go off the deep end. I spend every last cent I have saved up for gear and sell off everything I can. It’s been one of those days.

It started when I decided to pick up a used Chase Bliss Thermae for a pretty great price. A price that after selling my ARDX20 and Amaze0 had me in the green, while also being low enough that I could resell it and at least break even. So what happened? Well the ARDX20 after years of service is gone, and I’ve developed a new obsession with Chase Bliss. I’ve tried only 1 other pedal of theirs before (Brother’s Gain Pedal) and didn’t really find it to my taste, but the Thermae was so beautiful sounding, and so inspiring with it’s many options, that I just want more.

Soon after That Pedal Show released their “Tomatotone” vs Everything video and I decided it was time to give it a try, after all I was in the market for a good Fuzz Face and Klon Centaur or clones there of, so if it could do both and more it would make sense, especially now that I’ve started using Midi for controlling my rig (starting to see the cascade of rational yet?). Prices were crazy on Reverb, so I ordered direct (plus a Mood since I had just gotten rid of my looper) figuring I could always sell it on reverb and break even if we didn’t get along.

Speaking of getting rid of my looper, I couldn’t decide between the Mood or the Blooper, so I budgeted for both as they seem to compliment each other in many ways. The Blooper is still back ordered so that isn’t here yet, but just know that will also be on it’s way soonish.

Lastly searching for any other Chase Bliss pedals I might be interested in, I came across two crazily priced pedals on Reverb. The Ayahuasca Tremolo Fuzz and Generations Loss. While I love the sounds of the Generations Loss, I can’t justify the price they command right now when I can get some of the sounds out of the Mood, Blooper and Thermae. The Ayahuasca while really cool, was similarly priced insanely, but I did like it. So in order to ease my wanting, I setup a search with filter on Reverb for an Ayahuasca that would be $750 or less (still double the original list price) but had to be the “Spirit Molecule” coloring, of which there were only 10 made (#50-59). Low and behold a few days later…. well you get the idea.

Buy Chase Bliss pedals on Reverb today and support the site.