[troyhead]

Has anyone had any personal experience with the Chase Bliss Brothers pedal? Or better yet, does anyone have one in the K-W area that would let me come over and try yours out?

I've only heard good things about this, but sometimes it is the negative comments that are useful in helping me decide if I can overcome the challenges. So far, the only negative I've come across is that it requires a bit of tweaking to get what you want. I have a hard time trusting YouTube videos as there are so many variables involved there. Some I've found sound terrible to me (the "knobs" demo), but others sound great, so I'd be curious to know others' personal experiences.

To get an idea of what I like, I'm a fan of low-to-medium overdrives like the Klon, Zendrive, etc., and Plexi tones. I'm not a fan of high-gain and not really a fuzz guy -- although the JFET fuzz on many demos sounds more like usable overdrive to me, so I'd be interested to hear some first-hand opinions on that too. I mostly play guitars with Tele pickups, P90s, and low-output humbuckers into clean-ish Blackface/Silverface amps. The internal stacking options of the pedal and MIDI preset capabilities really appeal to me, but none of that matters if the pedal doesn't sound awesome.

 

[Chitmo]

@CMCRAWFORD

 

[mhammer]

I tried one out, albeit through a headphone amp, at the Montreal pedal show about 6 weeks back. An extremely flexible unit, with a wide range of sounds and personalities under its belt. Some were very familiar and some were new, but all were very usable. I leave the judgment of "awesome" up to you; distortion being a very subjective kind of thing.

I'll wager that none of the demos you've seen paid much attention at all to the dipswitch bank on the rear skirt, which is where a lot of the magic happens.

 

[troyhead]

I'll wager that none of the demos you've seen paid much attention at all to the dipswitch bank on the rear skirt, which is where a lot of the magic happens.

Just one from the Chase Bliss site, and it was weird & cool. Being able to change the knobs via expression or MIDI CC is definitely a neat feature, but using presets to have it takeover from multiple dirt boxes is what I'm after the most.

When you say you recognized "some familiar" tones, which ones are those? I know it's probably not going to replicate the entire range of tones that some pedals/amps offer, although I've heard some people say it's replaced most of the dirt pedals on their board (which seems a bit hyperbole to me), but which familiar tones did you genuinely find?

 

[CMCRAWFORD]

I did have one When it came out and would have kept it but had the opportunity to get a bucket list pedal and it was replaced with a Pete Cornish CC-1.

I did not have any issues getting the sounds I liked. The boost is really nice and the fuzz had a lot of options that I never got to spend enough time with. I can't really think of a negative but I am a bit of a fan boy of the Chase bliss pedals. The warped vinyl being my favourite.

 

[mhammer]

Joel's a wonderful guy, with an interesting background and an open mind. He learned a great deal about how to fit a lot of stuff into a small pedal while he was working at ZVex (also a Minneapolis-based pedal-maker). We are slated to collaborate on a pedal or two, but I have to learn more about micro-controllers first, and the time slot for that does not begin until October. Given the current clutter of the landscape, coming up with something that is innovative and feature-rich, but doesn't just make dumb unmusical noises, will be tricky.

 

[Vincent Boissinot]

I just bought one today, i will get it by the end of the week. I'll let you know how I think it sounds. Chase Bliss pedals are really nice, I have a Tonal Recall and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. I don't think I'll have any bad surprise with the Brothers